Telecommunication And The History Of Communication

Telecommunication and human's methods of talking over distance is a story that started since the beginnings of history. People have found a need to talk to each other over long distances and this is the essence of telecommunications. The Greeks were some of the first civilizations to develop ways to communicate with each other through visual means. They used semaphore systems which transmitted messages to each other. Since then there have been tremendous breakthroughs in the way people talk with each other over distances.

One of the first civilizations to develop methods of communications was the ancient Greeks. They developed beacons and used these to relay messages to each other. This was a good invention however it was limited in that it was only able to transmit information through visual means. People had to be in sight of each other in order to see the message that was being passed on.

There were several other visual ways of communication that were used in the ancient times. Some of these included the use of smoke signals. Flags have also been used for this method of communication. All of these ways of talking suffered from the fact that they were limited to what could be seen.

The first commercially built telegraph was done so in 1839 by Sir Charles Wheatstone and Sir William Fothergill Cooke. This machine was used in England. In 1837 Samuel Morse and Joseph Henry built an electrical telegraph. Their invention was developed for use in the United States.

There have been a great amount of inventions in the telecommunications field. In 1876 Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone. His work was done with Gardiner Greene Hubbard and they built the Bell Telephone Company which morphed into AT&T. In 1909 Guglielmo Marconi won the Nobel Prize for his innovations in the field of wireless radio communications. Nikola Tesla was also instrumental for his work in furthering progress in this field.

Radio and television also transmit information over long distances. Philo Farnsworth built the first electronic television in 1927. He demonstrated it to his family in Idaho. These inventions paved the way for the modern advances of the mobile telephone and the internet.

The internet has become a tremendously popular method of communication. It can be traced to beginnings in the 40's. However some say the true roots of this invention belong to the decade of the 60's. It was in the late 1960's that a method known as packet switching was developed. Essentially this allowed computers to relay packets of data between each other.

The internet is founded on what is termed protocols. These protocols are rules which govern how computer and routers communicate. These rules allow computers to relay data no matter whether they're running on ethernet or Wi-Fi platforms. In the year 2000 the internet passed up telephones as the method most chosen to relay information. This was the year that over half the data being sent was sent via the internet.

Mobile phones have also enjoyed an unbelievable growth in users. They are now outpacing land based telephones for their amount of users. Basically they transmit communication over distances through the use of towers which help to relay data. Home based lines use electrical signals to pass data through analog channels.

Telecommunications and human's methods of talking has to do with the history of people communicating over distances. These roots can be traced to ancient civilizations who used to communicate over distances through visual signals. Since the industrial revolution the way in which people can communicate has grown exponentially. There are now a multitude of ways in which messages can be sent between people.