Machine recognition of hand-sent Morse code

A transistorized special purpose digital computer called MAUDE (Morse AUtomatic DEcoder) has been designed, built and analyzed. This computer decodes a hand-sent Morse message, which is printed on a teletypewriter. MAUDE's decisions take place at a number of different levels and its "knowledge" is not only that of relative durations of dots and dashes, but also of the Morse code and even of certain elementary properties of language. MAUDE has successfully decoded between 90 per cent and 95 per cent of 184 operators. A successful decoding is one which results in a text which can be easily read by a man who knows the language. It is felt that MAUDE can be a practical piece of equipment for a site with heavy traffic. Its performance will be inferior to that of a man until more sophisticated language rules, using at least a word vocabulary, are included.