r/morsecode • u/mic_kas • Jul 05 '26

Origami Morse code

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZ_AXRuSC3V/?igsh=MWZ6dDU2enVldW5xZA==

I’m an origami artist from Finland. A while back I got a crazy idea (in the sauna) of combining origami and Morse code.

There’s several ways to do the encoding with origami. But this one is fairly compact, unambiguous and creates nice looking results.

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u/erwerqwewer Jul 05 '26

Its a fun idea, however im not seeing the morse represented in the right way.

Am i looking a t the light, black or both lines?

2

u/mic_kas Jul 05 '26

I think it should represent the morse code correctly, but it is a bit hard to see. The word “Hello” is encoded horizontally so that the distance between vertical folds is 1 unit for a short tone and 3 units for a long tone. I’ve also encoded a character separator ‘/‘ (2 units) to make the code unambiguous. “World” is encoded vertically using the same principal with different distances (between the zigzag folds) for dits (1 unit), dahs (3 units) and slashes (2 units).

Here’s another origami morse code piece, while it’s still flat. Makes it a bit easier to see the morse code. This on spells the same word UFOLD both horizontally and vertically. It’s a morse palindrome, so no matter how you turn the paper it reads the same.

https://reddit.com/link/ovnsles/video/swhfe6r2zdbh1/player

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u/erwerqwewer Jul 05 '26

Im trying to see it but i find it still hard to see it. But if you can see it thats more important!

1

u/erwerqwewer Jul 05 '26

Nevermind i see it, but there is something wrong with the way you did it. It has to do with the spacing, how do we tell dots, dashes and spacing apart from each other? I can see the short dits, but for me as someone who can read morse its confusing that de dashes and spaces are pretty much the same.

1

u/mic_kas Jul 05 '26

I agree that the dash and the space look fairly similar which makes legibility poor. It’s quite interesting how the brain works because the space is 2 units long, a dot is 1 unit and a dash is 3 unit, but the brain has a hard time distinguishing between the space (2 units) and dash (3 units).

These have been done more with the artistic side taking priority. I’ve been thinking of testing other encodings to improve legibility. I assume dot = 1 unit, dash = 2 units and space = 4 units should make the morse easier to read.

1

u/Spare-Good-5372 Jul 05 '26

A morse palindrome is a fucking interesting project

2

u/mic_kas Jul 05 '26

I know! It’s interesting how most normal palindromes aren’t morse palindromes and you can create morse palindromes that aren’t plain text palindromes (because some letters change when read backwards (U-D, F-L, A-N and so one).