Thursday, September 17, 2015

Which letters in the alphabet are used most often?



The inventor of Morse code, Samuel Morse (1791-1872), needed to know this so that he could give the simplest codes to the most frequently used letters. He did it simply by counting the number of letters in sets of printers' type. The figures he came up with were:

12,000 E 2,500 F
9,000 T 2,000 W, Y
8,000 A, I, N, O, S 
1,700 G, P
6,400 H 1,600 B
6,200 R 1,200 V 
4,400 D 800 K
4,000 L 500 Q
3,400 U 400 J, X
3,000 C, M 200 Z

Read the full story at:
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/words/which-letters-are-used-most


Image from:
http://www.officemuseum.com/Telegraph_key.jpg