New Aspects for Modernization Global Maritime Distress and Safety System (GMDSS)

Since the invention of radio at the end of the 19th century, ocean going ships at sea have relied on Morse code, invented by Samuel Morse and first used in 1844, for distress and safety telecommunications, and on radio transceiver invented in early 1895 by Russian professor of physics Aleksandar Stepanovich Popov. The need for ship and coast radio stations to have and use radiotelegraph equipment, and to listen to a common radio frequency for Morse encoded distress calls via onboard radio station designed by Marconi, was recognized after the sinking of the liner Titanic in the North Atlantic in 1912.