Tapescript

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 553.

Communication is the ability to share information. We need communication in every sphere of our life: family, school, friends, work, business, medicine, sport, entertainment…

The word ‘telecommunication' comes from Greek and means ‘communication at a distance'. Now it is a general term for systems or technologies that are used in sending and receiving messages over a distance electronically. Mobile and satellite phones, radio, television and networks are a few examples of telecommunication. It is sometimes hard to realize that your computer began with primitive and even ancient forms of telecommunication.

There was a time when cave drawings were painted on the walls of caves and canyons to tell the story of people's culture. But real communication began with language. Story-telling was used to tell stories before there were books. Town criers shouted their messages across short open spaces. People ran to deliver messages faster. When running with a message, to deliver it in spoken form, it is safer to do it oneself. Sending anyone else is unreliable, as the game of Chinese whispers demonstrates. So a system of writing was necessary. When writing appeared, messages on stone columns communicated very well across time, but they were an inefficient method of communication across space. The system became more efficient when it was the message that travelled. People ran with the written messages, rode horses to save time. For example, the network of Persian roads in the 5^th century BC made communication faster and more reliable. New men and fresh horses were available at posting stations. A message could travel the full distance of the road from Susa to Sardis (3200 km) in ten days. What helped to make communication even more efficient was the Aramaic language as a Lingua Franca used in Ancient Persia.

There were forms of long-distance communication not based on words. The smoke signals used by American Indians are of this kind. So are fires which usually meant ‘danger' or ‘victory'. Drums in the jungles of Africa and Asia were one way to send signals to neighbouring groups. Ancient Egypt was the first country where birds - domesticated pigeons were used for sending messages. Genghis Khan saw their potential and pigeons carried news of each new victory to his homeland in Mongolia. Ship's flags and semaphores – mechanical devices on towers - were other forms of telecommunication.

The true ‘jump' came with the electricity leading to the telegraph and signal lamps. 1843 was the year when Samuel Morse proposed a way to give every letter and number a special code (point, line and space). It was Morse's Symbol code, which we can still find used today.

Seven years later, Antonio Meucci and Graham Bell independently managed to build an early telephone. Since Meucci didn't have the money to patent his invention (the cost was $250 at the time), it was Bell who managed to register it first.

Many other innovations were soon to come: in 1895 Guglielmo Marconi invented the ‘wireless telegraph' – radio. Alexander Popov from Russia whose invention of the radio came before Marconi's, did not patent it.

In 1923, television was invented, in 1947 the invention of transistors gave birth to the field of electronics, in 1969 the first microprocessor was invented. The rest of the story is widely known: in 1983, the military project Arpanet became available to universities and research centres, which finally gave birth to the Internet. Email began to take place of snail mail.

In short, telecommunication has come a long way from cave paintings and smoke signals to radio waves traveling to other plants.

Maybe someday, all we will have to do is to think, and it will be done for us ...

Only the future will tell... after all, hundreds of years ago no one would have dreamed of all the things we have today.