麻豆约拍

Stephen Coates travels to Tunisia to meet contestants in the International Morse Code championships in Tunisia. For a week, they will face each other off tapping at tiny Morse machines so fast that it sounds almost like a sung language.

The Belarusians are the team to beat. But the Romanians are hot on their heels. And you never know what the Albanians might pull off at the last minute. Or the competitor who has just arrived from Tokyo.

It's a polyglot community. "Yet we all speak the same language," says the organiser Ashraf Chaabane.

Morse was the first instant communication technology. It changed the world almost 200 years ago. Its words are composed of just dots, dashes and spaces, transmitted in electrical pulses of sound or light. It can travel by vibration, touch and even be knitted. Anyone can learn it in just a few weeks. In the age of cell phones and instant messaging, Morse still has a magic.

Producer: Monica Whitlock
A Storyscape production for 麻豆约拍 Radio 4