The early history of technology and communications: Summary

The early history of technology and communications: Summary

Technology has always been helping to develop communication means. First aspect, that thanks to technology started allowing fast communication, is the telegraph. In the early 1800s, the invention of electricity was well established that it started being carried through wires. Later on the first commercial electric telegraph was patented by William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone. They successfully developed a device of signaling messages up faster than trains for their railway company. Around the same time a signaling method based on a coding system was developed in the US by Samuel Morse. It became well adopted because of its high reliability. However, the telegraph reception wasn’t as Cooke, Wheatstone, and Morse expected it o be. The new electric device was seen as a technological curiosity rather than a useful new communication device. Fortunately, a number of events happened started drawing attention to the worth of the telegraph, especially that it reported the birth of Queen Victoria’s son within 40 minutes. After that, not just Washington and Baltimore, but other countries became linked too by 1850s. However, by 1858 the system got worse and eventually failed after connection was established due to its poor quality. Another mean of communication that progressed through technology is the radio. People spent average of 23 hours listening to it. And despite the technological changes in radio, people’s listening patterns were the same as they listened to the same channels and same programs. Modification in the device were minor such as stereo broadcasting, RDS data system on car radios, and later on digital radio presented differences in the way of listening to the radio. But when did this device develop? Actually the radio waves existed since 1880s, when Heinrich Hertz found it. And after that, other scientists naturally started experiments to refine and improve Hertz techniques. Guglielmo Marconi was the first one to secure a patent on a radio wave detection device on his arrival in London from Italy in 1896 after he saw the practical applications of those developments. In 1892 the use of radio waves possibility was declared by William Crookes. In 1901, the capability of this wireless communication, generated publicity after successfully transmitting a code from Poldhu in Cornwall across the Atlantic to St Johns, Newfoundland. After a lot of unfortunate events, the RCA was formed in 1919 in the US, that tried to control radio stations but failed to do so. As in the UK, the BBC was formed in 1922 where it’s point was t make programs. And so the broadcasting developed and more powerful transmitter were used with additional relay stations. More stations were created and commercial companies started to expand thanks to the radio. The third aspect developed by technology is the television. In the beginning it was frequently called radio with pictures. It was considered a consequence of radio establishment. It was quite an achievement to see moving pictures on the screen of a box with no moving parts. The whole idea emerged in humble form of a number of ‘parlour toys’ that were produce in the first half of the 19th century for entertainment. The phenakistoscope and the zoetrope from 1830s, consisted of slithlty different drawings and displayed in a rapid succession. Each image was fixed but it appeared as crude moving cartoon image. Developments in photography through the 18th century, allowed sequences of photographs to be taken in rapid succession too. Then, Muybridge developed a device to project his images which later became a cinema. Later on the idea to send images through wire cables developed naturally after the electronic telegraph. Printing telegraphs started operating in telegraph offices. And then cinema ideas were established an ultimately applied into television. In 1936 television broadcasting begins. And with the battle between scanning techniques settled in favor of electronic systems, the varying technical standards for TV began to stabilize with two eventual standards in use.