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Is it possible to translate the telegraph message at the beginning of the film or is it just random noise?

I made a recording and passed it through sound analyser Audacity and I didn't see a pattern but maybe it takes a professional telegraphist to see it.

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    Well done people for making a new contributor feel welcome - downvoting both their first two questions. Applause.
    – iandotkelly ♦
    Commented May 18, 2021 at 21:06
  • 5
    Pete - I'm sorry - there are some grumpy people here who downvote at the drop of a hat. You're being penalized because in their eyes they don't see why it's interesting to know the answer to this. In particular the question about the year that the movie is set could significantly affect your understanding of what is happening in the wider context of the story.
    – iandotkelly ♦
    Commented May 18, 2021 at 21:08
  • It's Morse code, right? Try looking up the Morse code table, then try to match the peaks in that sound wave to the characters in the table. A bit painstaking but not complicated I reckon.
    – magarnicle
    Commented May 19, 2021 at 0:37
  • Morse code is interpreted by listening to the tones (or watching it in the case of signal lights). It takes practice, especially to decipher the code at the sort of speeds an experienced operator would send the signal.
    – GeoffAtkins
    Commented May 19, 2021 at 10:32
  • Admittedly, my knowledge of morse itself is almost nil - however, the machine is a tickertape machine, meaning that you can't really tell the difference between a dot & a dash unless you read the tape; it was not really designed for 'live' decoding. Perhaps if you were right in front of it you could hear the 'tapper' return & judge the length from that, but really the tap is considerably louder than the release, so all you are hearing are "events" you can't really tell which is dot & which is dash. Possibly a morse expert could 'read' it, but I can't find anything online that would decipher it
    – Tetsujin
    Commented May 19, 2021 at 11:26

1 Answer 1

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it is in morse code, the whole message is:

.-- . .-.. -.-. --- --. ..- --. .... - ..--- ..-. .-.. .- --. ... - --- -. ... . ...-- --- ...- . .-..- ..-. .-. --- --. ....- ..-. .-.. --- --. -... --- .-. -. .----. ...-- --- ...- .-.. .-..

I hope I am not making too many mistakes,

"Welcome to Flagstone. This is from overseas. Request immediate reply. There are two killers headed your way. They are killing everybody/have killed everyone. Please forward this message to Rock Point."

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  • Wow, that's great if it's correct. It makes total sense in the scene. How did you work it out?
    – magarnicle
    Commented Apr 4, 2023 at 23:02
  • There are not enough characters in the morse to make a sentence that long without major abbreviations. What is the literal morse message in text?
    – matt_black
    Commented Apr 11, 2023 at 13:56
  • Your code says "welcogmght7flagstonse3ove?frog4flogbo13ovll". Is that what you meant?
    – Some Student
    Commented Apr 14, 2023 at 21:33
  • in my opinion this doesnt invalidate your answer. Probably there was no actual message.
    – Some Student
    Commented Apr 14, 2023 at 21:37

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