US Navy 051129-N-0685C-007 Quartermaster Seaman Ryan Ruona signals with semaphore flags during a replenishment at sea

Flag semaphore (from the

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic pe ...

() 'sign' and - (-) '-bearer') is a

semaphore Semaphore (; ) is the use of an apparatus to create a visual signal transmitted over distance. A semaphore can be performed with devices including: fire, lights, flags, sunlight, and moving arms. Semaphores can be used for telegraphy when arr ...

system conveying information at a distance by means of visual signals with hand-held flags, rods, disks, paddles, or occasionally bare or gloved hands. Information is encoded by the position of the flags; it is read when the flag is in a fixed position. Semaphores were adopted and widely used (with hand-held flags replacing the mechanical arms of shutter semaphores) in the maritime world in the 19th century. It is still used during

underway replenishment Replenishment at sea (RAS) ( North Atlantic Treaty Organization/Commonwealth of Nations) or underway replenishment (UNREP) ( U.S. Navy) is a method of transferring fuel, munitions, and stores from one ship to another while under way. First devel ...

at sea and is acceptable for emergency communication in daylight or using lighted wands instead of flags, at night.

Contemporary semaphore flag system

The current flag semaphore system uses two short poles with square flags, which a signal person holds in different positions to signal letters of the alphabet and numbers. The signaller holds one pole in each hand, and extends each arm in one of eight possible directions. Except for in the rest position, the flags do not overlap. The flags are colored differently based on whether the signals are sent by sea or by land. At sea, the flags are colored red and yellow (the Oscar flag), while on land, they are white and blue (the Papa flag). Flags are not required; their purpose is to make the characters more obvious.

Characters

The following 30 semaphore characters are presented as they would appear when facing the signalperson: File:Semaphore Alpha.svg, A or 1 File:Semaphore Bravo.svg, B or 2 File:Semaphore Charlie.svg, C or 3
Acknowledge / Correct File:Semaphore Delta.svg, D or 4 File:Semaphore Echo.svg, E or 5
Error (if signaled 8 times) File:Semaphore Foxtrot.svg, F or 6 File:Semaphore Golf.svg, G or 7 File:Semaphore Hotel.svg, H or 8 File:Semaphore India.svg, I or 9 File:Semaphore Juliet.svg, J
Letters to follow File:Semaphore Kilo.svg, K or 0 File:Semaphore Lima.svg, L File:Semaphore Mike.svg, M File:Semaphore November.svg, N File:Semaphore Oscar.svg, O File:Semaphore Papa.svg, P File:Semaphore Quebec.svg, Q File:Semaphore Romeo.svg, R File:Semaphore Sierra.svg, S File:Semaphore Tango.svg, T File:Semaphore Uniform.svg, U File:Semaphore Victor.svg, V File:Semaphore Whiskey.svg, W File:Semaphore X-ray.svg, X File:Semaphore Yankee.svg, Y File:Semaphore Zulu.svg, Z File:Semaphore Ready.svg, Rest /

Space Space is the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have relative position and direction. In classical physics, physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consi ...

File:Semaphore Numeric.svg, Numerals ( #) File:Semaphore Error.svg, Error / Attention File:Semaphore Cancel.svg, Cancel / Annul
Disregard previous signal Numbers can be signaled by first signaling "Numerals". Letters can be signaled by first signaling "J". The sender uses the "Attention" signal to request permission to begin a transmission. The receiver uses a "Ready to receive" signal not shown above to grant permission to begin the transmission. The receiver raises both flags vertical overhead and then drops them to the rest position, once only, to grant permission to send. The sender ends the transmission with the "Ready to receive" signal. The receiver can reply with the "Attention" signal. At this point, sender and receiver change places.

Origin

Flag semaphore originated in 1866 as a handheld version of the

optical telegraph An optical telegraph is a line of stations, typically towers, for the purpose of conveying textual information by means of visual signals. There are two main types of such systems; the semaphore telegraph which uses pivoted indicator arms and ...

system of

Home Riggs Popham Rear Admiral Sir Home Riggs Popham, KCB, KCH (12 October 1762 – 20 September 1820), was a Royal Navy commander who saw service against the French during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. He is remembered for his scientific accomplishment ...

used on land, and its later improvement by Charles Pasley. The land system consisted of lines of fixed stations (substantial buildings) with two large, moveable arms pivoted on an upright member. Such a system was inconvenient to install on board a ship. Flag semaphore provided an easy method of communicating ship-to-ship or ship-to-shore when the distances were not too great. According to Alexander J. Field of Santa Clara University, "there is evidence" that Popham based his telegraph on the French coastal stations used for ship-to-shore communication. Many of the

codepoint In character encoding terminology, a code point, codepoint or code position is a numerical value that maps to a specific character. Code points usually represent a single grapheme—usually a letter, digit, punctuation mark, or whitespace—but ...

s of flag semaphore match those of the Foy-Breguet electrical telegraph, also descended from the French optical telegraph. Although based on the optical telegraph, by the time flag semaphore was introduced the optical telegraph had been entirely replaced by the

electrical telegraph Electrical telegraphs were point-to-point text messaging systems, primarily used from the 1840s until the late 20th century. It was the first electrical telecommunications system and the most widely used of a number of early messaging systems ...

some years previously.

Japanese semaphore

The Japanese merchant marine and armed services have adapted the flag semaphore system to the Japanese language. Because their writing system involves a

syllabary In the linguistic study of written languages, a syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent the syllables or (more frequently) moras which make up words. A symbol in a syllabary, called a syllabogram, typically represents an (option ...

of about twice the number of characters in the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the ...

, most characters take two displays of the flags to complete; others need three and a few only one. The flags are specified as a solid white square for the left hand and a solid red one for the right. The display motions chosen are not like the "rotary dial" system used for the Latin alphabet letters and numbers; rather, the displays represent the angles of the brush strokes used in writing in the

katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived f ...

syllabary and in the order drawn. For example, the character for "O" �� which is drawn first with a horizontal line from left to right, then a vertical one from top to bottom, and finally a slant between the two; follows that form and order of the arm extensions. It is the right arm, holding the red flag, which moves as a pen would, but in mirror image so that the observer sees the pattern normally. As in telegraphy, the katakana syllabary is the one used to write down the messages as they are received. Also, the Japanese system presents the number 0 by moving flags in a circle, and those from 1 through 9 using a sort of the "rotary dial" system, but different from that used for European languages.

Practical use in communication

Semaphore flags are also sometimes used as means of communication in the mountains where oral or electronic communication is difficult to perform. Although they do not carry flags, the

Royal Canadian Mounted Police The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP; french: Gendarmerie royale du Canada; french: GRC, label=none), commonly known in English as the Mounties (and colloquially in French as ) is the federal and national police service of Canada. As poli ...

officers have used hand semaphore in this manner. Some surf-side rescue companies, such as the

Ocean City, Maryland Ocean City, officially the Town of Ocean City, is an Atlantic resort town in Worcester County, Maryland along the East Coast of the United States. The population was 6,844 at the 2020 U.S. census, although during summer weekends the city hosts b ...

Beach Patrol, use semaphore flags to communicate between lifeguards. The letters of the flag semaphore are also a common artistic motif. One enduring example is the

peace symbol A number of peace symbols have been used many ways in various cultures and contexts. The dove and olive branch was used symbolically by early Christians and then eventually became a secular peace symbol, popularized by a ''Dove'' lithograph b ...

, adopted by the

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) is an organisation that advocates unilateral nuclear disarmament by the United Kingdom, international nuclear disarmament and tighter international arms regulation through agreements such as the Nuc ...

in 1958 from the original logo created by a commercial artist named

Gerald Holtom Gerald Herbert Holtom (20 January 1914 – 18 September 1985Westcott, Kathryn (20 March 2008"World's best-known protest symbol turns 50"'' BBC.co.uk (News)'' (Retrieved: 21 February 2010)) was a British artist and designer. In 1958, he designed ...

from Twickenham, London, using the semaphore for N and D. Holtom designed the logo for use on a protest march on the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston, near Newbury, England. On 4 April 1958, the march left Trafalgar Square for rural Berkshire, carrying Ban the Bomb placards made by Holtom's children making it the first use of the symbol. Originally, it was purple and white and signified a combination of the semaphoric letters N and D, standing for "nuclear disarmament," circumscribed by a

circle A circle is a shape consisting of all points in a plane that are at a given distance from a given point, the centre. Equivalently, it is the curve traced out by a point that moves in a plane so that its distance from a given point is cons ...

. Along with

Morse code Morse code is a method used in telecommunication to encode text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called ''dots'' and ''dashes'', or ''dits'' and ''dahs''. Morse code is named after Samuel Morse, one ...

, flag semaphore is currently used by the US Navy and also continues to be a subject of study and training for young people of Scouts. In a satirical nod to the flag semaphore's enduring use into the age of the Internet, on April Fools' Day 2007 the

Internet Engineering Task Force The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster or requirements an ...

standards organization outlined the Semaphore Flag Signaling System, a method of transmitting Internet traffic via a chain of flag semaphore operators.

Use in popular culture

The

album cover An album cover (also referred to as album art) is the front packaging art of a commercially released studio album or other audio recordings. The term can refer to either the printed paperboard covers typically used to package sets of and 78-r ...

for

the Beatles The Beatles were an English Rock music, rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the Cultural impact of the Beatles, most influential band of al ...

' 1965 album ''

Help! ''Help!'' is the fifth studio album by the English rock band the Beatles and the soundtrack to their film of the same name. It was released on 6 August 1965. Seven of the fourteen songs, including the singles " Help!" and " Ticket to Ride", ...

'' was originally to have portrayed the four band members spelling "help" in semaphore, but the result was deemed aesthetically unpleasing, and their arms were instead positioned in a meaningless but aesthetically pleasing arrangement. The second episode in the second series of ''

Monty Python's Flying Circus ''Monty Python's Flying Circus'' (also known as simply ''Monty Python'') is a British surreal sketch comedy series created by and starring Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam, who became ...

'' depicted the

Emily Brontë Emily Jane Brontë (, commonly ; 30 July 1818 – 19 December 1848) was an English novelist and poet who is best known for her only novel, '' Wuthering Heights'', now considered a classic of English literature. She also published a book of poe ...

novel ''

Wuthering Heights ''Wuthering Heights'' is an 1847 novel by Emily Brontë, initially published under her pen name Ellis Bell. It concerns two families of the landed gentry living on the West Yorkshire moors, the Earnshaws and the Lintons, and their turbulent re ...

'' enacted in semaphore. In '' Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out!'', Uzaki attempted to talk to Sakurai over a noisy cafeteria to no avail, then she resorted to using Japanese semaphore signal (which he again failed to recognize.)

References

External links

Visual Signalling in the Royal Canadian Navy

Semaphore translator applet

Interactice Semaphore Animation
{{DEFAULTSORT:Flag Semaphore Encodings of Japanese Latin-script representations Nonverbal communication Optical communications Signal flags Scoutcraft Semaphore