Spektrum der Wissenschaft, writing in German with dpa, marks 120 years since the 1906 Berlin radio-telegraph conference, where 27 nations agreed on a binding international distress signal. The surprise: SOS is not an abbreviation at all. The Morse pattern of three dots, three dashes and three dots was picked because it is easy to send and hard to mistake. 'Save Our Souls' and 'Save Our Ship' are later folk explanations; the treaty does not even name the letters.

The conference was also a fight over Marconi's company, which banned its operators from talking to rival systems. Distress calls got absolute priority, the signal became mandatory in 1908, and after the Titanic sank in 1912 it was enforced worldwide. A small lesson in how a tidy story can replace the real, messier history.

Source: Spektrum der Wissenschaft / dpa (German) (2026-11-02)

Summarised by the FTI newsdesk.