THE MEANING OF SOS

-- 100th Anniversary of First Use in 2009 --

     We’ve had some questions about our name, SOS, what does it mean? Where does it come from? Shouldn’t it be SFOS for Solutions for Occupational Safety?

    That last one is probably technically correct but somehow SFOS doesn’t ring the same bells as SOS. In fact, it doesn’t ring any bells at all.

      But where did the familiar term SOS come from? What does it mean and why is it used?

     According to my online research, it all began with the problem of naval communication. How to send messages back and forth from ship to shore and ship to ship. Before about 1890 and the advent of “wireless telegraphy” ships communicated using a variety of techniques: flags, bells, lights and foghorns. But when Marconi invented radio communication (wireless telegraphy) a set of international standards were needed for the new technology to avoid confusion particularly in emergency naval situations.     When radio first began signals were sent in the form of Morse code but no standards were adopted until 1905 when Germany set national radio standards and the common usage of SOS became the distress signal. The decision to use Morse code for the letters SOS was made in great part by how easy it was to transmit and read this code, the familiar three dots and dashes, …---…

     The letters originally had no meaning, the dots and dashes just happened to be SOS. Such interpretations as “Save Our Ship” came into use later.

     ^{The first time the SOS signal in Morse code was used was on June 10}th 1909 when the SS Slavonia sank in the Azores.

     The SS Titanic mixed the SOS code with an earlier code (QCD) while in distress. After the sinking of the Titanic the SOS signal became the international standard.