SOS is the universal distress code, used as a message to alert when someone is in a life-threatening situation and needs help as soon as possible.
What many people don't know is that the letters SOS mean absolutely nothing more than just that: a distress and warning signal.
Typically, the code is associated with an abbreviation of expressions such as "Save Our Ship" ("Save our ship", in English), or even "Save Our Souls" ("Save our souls"). However, these relationships were only created to help people remember the letters of the code.
SOS was not created based on any expression, but because it is a group of letters that do not mean absolutely nothing when they are together, avoiding the chances of getting confused with another kind of meaning. Furthermore, the signal was created at the beginning of the Radio Telegraphy Era (more precisely in 1906), when communications were mainly made by Morse code, and SOS was the easiest set of letters to reproduce and least difficult to confuse.
In Morse code, the code was written as follows: S (...) O () S (...) - an uninterrupted sequence of three dots and three dashes.
For those who don't know, the Morse code is a communication system that emerged in the late nineteenth century and which was mainly used to send military messages or transmit information between ships. The Morse alphabet is made up of short (.) or long (-) signs, which together form whole letters, words, phrases or messages.
How the S.O.S came about
Before SOS came up, the alert code used was the CQD, which also had no meaning and was chosen because it was formed by letters that together would not allow any other type of interpretation. However, writing CQD in morse code was not practical. C (-.-.) Q (--.-) D (-..).
It was quite complicated to send the CQD code (QC was the signal used to call all stations and D meant "distress" - "alert" or "danger" in morse code, for this reason, during the II Conference Berlin radiotelegraph, in 1906, came the suggestion of using the new sequence of dots and traces, the SOS.
O SOS it was only made official in 1908, however it was still common to use both codes to signal danger. In 1912, for example, when the famous ship Titanic sank, distress signals were emitted in SOS and CQD.
Anyway, the Morse code has been in disuse since 1999, when the maritime communications system was officially retired. But SOS remains a symbol universally associated with the danger alert and distress call.
