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For today's 10000: amateur radio operators call Morse code "CW" since it's a Continuous Wave (unmodulated) transmission while you're pressing the key. The most basic kind is a straight key which simply transmits when you push and stops when you let go. Electronic keyers often use iambic paddles/buttons where you use one switch to create a series of "dits" and the other switch to create "dahs" yourself, which is less physically demanding and lets you hit higher WPM. There are examples of both types here.
By throw-qqqqq 2025-08-294:543 reply > For today's 10000
Just in case someone didn’t catch the reference: https://xkcd.com/1053/
By low_tech_love 2025-08-297:59 Nice, they used an obscure reference to explain another obscure reference, requiring two nested levels of explanation.
By swiftcoder 2025-08-296:392 reply You can't 10,000 the 10,000...
Somebody could probably throw out the probability of those two 10,000 sets overlapping. Not me though, unless it's 10,000^2...
By type0 2025-08-2922:00 It's never 10,000^2. But the important part is: It's Over 9000!
By swiftcoder 2025-08-317:05 The Venn diagram of "people who regularly read xkcd" and "people who think about morse code" is pretty much a circle
By actionfromafar 2025-08-298:141 reply You wouldn't 10,000 a car.
By thunderbong 2025-08-297:50 Mobile view https://m.xkcd.com/1053/
A CW Key is apparently a switch used for transmitting Morse code. Make sure to click through to the individual pages to see them in use, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghx3r_OFmt4
Great video.
Trying to think of another activity where one hand is doing something so complex while the rest of the body practically looks bored. Nothing comes to mind.
By jdietrich 2025-08-2916:32 For a skilled CW operator, it's just like touch-typing. There's no conscious effort involved in either sending or receiving. You hear words, not dits and dahs, and your hand just sends whatever you're thinking automatically.
By alanbernstein 2025-08-2910:12 Video games?
Some of these would make great oldschool spy- or detective-movie props, like the rubber stamp being overlooked by "stupid" detectives whilst the smart detective directly connect it to a callsign to uncover the murder victims secret life with regards to ham operations.
I've seen morse code written around the border of images (e.g. Spy vs Spy did this) which easily goes ignored by the uninitiated, and even when noticed can often escape further detection.
Another note: since in the US there are only four letters allowed as the first letter (A, K, N, or W) and will be 4-6 characters with further restrictions on which can be letters and which can be numbers (2-by-3 being the most common, 1-by-2 and 2-by-1 only being available to higher license classes, where those are the numbers of letters before and after the region identifying number). You could use this in your detective story, along with other details like inferring where they got their license from or getting more details from the FCC. Following this up with an inspection of the radio and which frequency was recently used, could make for some interesting detective work. Ham Radio doesn't make very many appearances as a plot device.
By cluckindan 2025-08-296:141 reply Judging by the paraphernalia, this is what happens after a Finnish amateur radio operator retires and suddenly has way too much free time.
By geoffeg 2025-08-2913:28 There are a few members in my amateur radio club that have a (~200) collection of CW keys. Bugs, paddles, straight keys, etc. Some very obscure ones (only one or two made), some old ones, strange designs, etc. They'll occasionally bring one to a club meeting and pass it around for people to examine and try.
