I started to read Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software by Charles Petzold two days ago - and he starts with morse code (and braille). You're right, it's no programming language (just an encoding) - but seemingly near conceptually to a language (for Petzold, anyway - yay it's got 0's and 1's, too).
Does the book really focus on Morse code having 0s and 1s? Isn't it technically a ternary encoding as opposed to a binary (0/1) one? The gaps between letters are pretty significant.
This is what I found funny about Gmail Tap 28 days ago. They managed to take Morse Code - a tertiary encoding with only one input button - and "simplify" it by having three buttons.
