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How Messenger pigeons saved thousands of lives

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How Messenger pigeons saved thousands of lives

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During the First World War, Allied birds outperformed their rivals and saved thousands of lives-all thanks to the efforts of one London pigeon fancier

smithsonianmag.com

At midnight on November 12, 1870, two French balloons, inflated with highly flammable coal gas and manned by desperate volunteers, took off from a site in Monmartre, the highest point in Paris. The balloons rose from a city besieged-the Franco-Prussian War had left Paris isolated, and the city had been hastily encircled by the Prussian Army-and they did so on an unlikely mission. They carried with them several dozen pigeons, gathered from lofts across the city, that were part of a last-ditch attempt to establish two-way communication between the capital and the French provisional government in Tours, 130 miles southwest.

Paris had been encircled since mid-September. By early autumn, with the prospects of relief as distant as ever, and the population looking hungrily at the animals in the zoo, the besieged French had scoured the city and located seven balloons, one of which, the Neptune, was patched up sufficiently to make it out of the city over the heads of the astounded Prussians. It landed safely behind French lines with 275 pounds of official messages and mail, and before long there were other flights, and the capital's balloon manufacturers were working flat out on new airships.

The work was dangerous and the flights no less so-2.5 million letters made it out of Paris during the siege, incalculably raising morale, but six balloons were lost to enemy fire and the ones that survived that gauntlet, historian Alastair Horne observes, "were capable of unpredictable motion in all three dimensions, none of which was controllable."

Of the two balloons in the pigeon flight, one, the Daugerre, was shot down by ground fire as it drifted south of Paris in the dawn, but the other, the Niepce, survived by hastily jettisoning ballast and soaring out of range. Its precious pigeon cargo would return to the city bearing messages by the thousand, all photographed using the brand-new technique of microfilming and printed on slivers of collodium, each weighing just a hundredth of an ounce. These letters were limited to a maximum of 20 words and they were carried into Paris at a cost of 5 francs each. In this way, Horne notes, a single pigeon could fly in 40,000 dispatches, equivalent to the contents of a substantial book. The messages were then projected by magic lantern onto a wall, transcribed by clerks, and delivered by regular post.

A total of 302 largely untrained pigeons left Paris in the course of the siege, and 57 returned to the city. The remainder fell prey to Prussian rifles, cold, hunger, or the falcons that the besieging Germans hastily introduced to intercept France's feathered messengers. Still, the general principle that carrier pigeons could make communication possible in the direst of situations was firmly established in 1870, and by 1899, Spain, Russia, Italy, France, Germany, Austria and Romania had established their own pigeon services. The British viewed these developments with some alarm. A call to arms published in the influential journal The Nineteenth Century expressed concern at the development of a worrying divergence in military capability. The Empire, it was suggested, was being rapidly outpaced by foreign military technology.

In this sense, if in no other, the "pigeon gap" of 1900 resembles the alleged "missile gap" that so frightened Americans at the height of the Cold War. Taking worried note of the activities of "Lieutenant Gigot, the eminent Belgian authority on homers," who had devoted "no less than 41 pages to the military uses of pigeons"-and of the activities of the noble Spanish captain of engineers, Don Lorenzo de la Tegera y Magnin, who had devoted his career to the military lofts south of the Pyrenees-the journal lamented that Britain had no equivalent of the coast-to-coast networks developed by her rivals and worried: "How long must we wait until our pigeon system rivals those of the Continental Powers?"

People have known for thousands of years that some species of pigeons have an uncanny ability to find their way home to their roosts from almost any distance, though exactly how the birds manage their feats remains a subject of dispute. Scientists believe that pigeons combine what is termed "compass sense" with "map sense" to perform these feats. Observation suggests that "compass sense" allows the birds to orientate themselves by the sun-pigeons do not navigate well by night or in thick fog-but "map sense" remains very poorly understood. What can be said is that individual birds have been known to home across distances of more than a thousand miles.

Seen from this perspective, The Nineteenth Century had some reason to be concerned. "No animal," contends Andrew Blechman,

has developed as unique and continuous a relationship with humans as the common pigeon.... The fanatical hatred of pigeons is actually a relatively new phenomenon.... Consider this: They've been worshipped as fertility goddesses, representations of the Christian Holy Ghost and symbols of peace; they've been domesticated since the dawn of man and utilized by every major historical superpower from ancient Egypt to the United States of America. It was a pigeon that delivered the results of the first Olympics in 776 BC and a pigeon that brought news of Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo.

From a military point of view, pigeons still had much to recommend them as late as the First World War. They ate little and were easy to transport. More important, they could travel at speeds well in excess 60 m.p.h.-an impressive achievement when the alternative method of communication was sometimes a man on horseback-and unlike the messenger dogs tried by the Germans at the height of the 1914-18 conflict, they could be relied on not to be distracted by the tempting smells of rats and rotting corpses. Captured homing pigeons betrayed nothing of their point of origin or their destination, and those that made it through completed their journeys tirelessly and as rapidly as possible.

Experience of war in the trenches confirmed that the birds would keep trying to home despite life-threatening injuries. The most celebrated of all military pigeons was an American Black Check by the name of Cher Ami, which successfully completed 12 missions. Cher Ami's last flight came on October 4, 1918, when 500 men, forming a battalion of the 77th Infantry and commanded by Major Charles S. Whittlesey, found themselves cut off deep in the Argonne and under bombardment form their own artillery. Two other pigeons were shot down or lost to shell splinters, but Cher Ami successfully brought out a message from the "Lost Battalion" despite suffering appalling wounds.

By the time the bird made it back to its loft 25 miles away, it was blind in one eye, wounded in the breast, and the leg to which Whittlesey had attached his message was dangling from its body by a single tendon. The barrage was lifted, though, and nearly 200 survivors credited Cher Ami with saving their lives. The Americans carefully nursed the bird back to health and even fitted it with a miniature wooden leg before it was awarded the French Croix de Guerre with oak leaf cluster and repatriated. So great was Cher Ami's fame and propaganda value that it was seen off by General John Pershing, the American commander-in-chief; when it died a year later, it was stuffed, mounted and donated to the American Museum of Natural History, where it remains on display.

Credit for the development of a British service that rivaled the best that the continent could offer belongs to the neglected figure of Lieutenant-Colonel Alfred Osman, proprietor of a weekly newspaper called The Racing Pigeon. The Pigeon promoted competitive racing between highly trained homers and contributed to the development of a flourishing market for betting on individual birds. Volunteering in the autumn of 1914 to establish a Voluntary Pigeon War Committee (VPWC), Osman, a proud Londoner, was fully convinced that expert handling and British pluck could produce a vastly better bird than German fanciers possessed. Throughout the war, he insisted, "German birds were distinctly inferior to their British counterparts."

Yet closing the pigeon gap proved to be no simple matter. The little attention devoted to the birds in the first months of the war was largely destructive. Convinced, wrongly, that their country was seething with German spies, the British became concerned over the possibility that information about troop movements might be carried back to the Continent by avian agents of the Imperial German pigeon service, and hundreds of pigeons were killed or had their wings clipped as a result. One "Danish" pigeon fancier with a loft in the center of London was unmasked early on as a German and swiftly disappeared into an English jail.

Osman-who insisted on serving throughout the war without pay-used his high-level contacts in the fancying world to persuade leading breeders to donate birds to the British cause. By the end of 1914 he and a small team of helpers had begun not only to systematically train the birds for operational service, but also to establish a network of lofts for them to fly from. At first, Osman's efforts were restricted to the home front; by the beginning of 1915 he had set up a chain of lofts along the east coast and was supplying birds to the trawlers and seaplanes that patrolled the North Sea. It was vital work, particularly in the first months of the war; the greatest threat that Britain faced was a German naval breakout, either to cover an invasion or to menace merchant shipping, and until wireless telegraphy became commonplace, pigeons were the only way of swiftly getting messages of enemy naval movements home.

Osman trained his birds to cover distances of 70 to 150 miles as rapidly as possible, and though it was a struggle at first to convince the sailors who were issued with pigeons that they could be lifesavers (one bird found in Osman's loft bore a trawler captain's message "All well; having beef pudding for dinner"), early shipping losses quickly drove the message home.

On land, meanwhile, the horrors of trench warfare were making the same point. It was soon found that telegraph wires running from the front back to headquarters were easily cut by artillery bombardment and difficult to restore; signalers burdened with large coils of wire made excellent targets for snipers. Nor, in the years before the development of two-way radios, was it easy for units to remain in touch on the rare occasions that they went "over the top" in a full-scale frontal assault. In desperate circumstances, pigeons were greatly valued as a last-ditch option for sending vital messages.

Allied birds performed great feats in the course of the First World War. Dozens of British airmen fighting the war at sea owed their lives to the pigeons they carried in their seaplanes, which repeatedly returned to their lofts with SOS messages from pilots who had ditched in the North Sea. On land, meanwhile, Christopher Sterling notes,

pigeons turned out to be conveniently immune to tear gas, then so common in trench warfare. An Italian program used 50,000 pigeons, reporting that one pigeon message had helped to save 1,800 Italians and led to the capture of 3,500 Austrians.

For the most part, the work of pigeons was routine. Osman built up an impressively mobile signal service by mounting pigeon lofts on top of converted buses; these could be moved from place to place a mile or two behind the lines and held in reserve for times when normal communications became impossible.

But birds were also carried into battle, and their use in action was often fraught, particularly during the grim Passchendaele offensive, waged in the face of appalling weather in the autumn of 1917. After several weeks of rain, it was not uncommon for soldiers weighed down by heavy packs to slip into waterlogged shell-holes and drown, and for assaults to grind to a halt in the clinging mud.

It was in these awful conditions, recalled Lieutenant Alan Goring, that he and his men found themselves cut off close to the German lines and dependent on their pigeons to get a message calling for an artillery bombardment back to their headquarters. "We had a very busy time," wrote Goring,

for naturally there were snipers all around us and bullets zinging all over the place. I was left with just a handful of men, all that was left out of those three platoons.... We had two pigeons in a basket, but the trouble was that the wretched birds had got soaked when the platoon floundered into the flooded ground. We tried to dry one of them off as best we could, and I wrote a message, attached it to its leg, and sent it off. To our absolute horror, the bird was so wet that it just flapped into the air and then came straight down again, and started actually walking towards the German line. Well, if that message had got into the Germans' hands, they would have known that we were on our own and we'd have been in real trouble. So we had to try to shoot the pigeon before he got there. A revolver was no good. We had to use rifles, and there we were, all of us, rifles trained over the edge of this muddy breastwork trying to shoot this bird scrambling about in the mud. It hardly presented a target at all.

Other birds, on other days, did better; figures compiled by the British pigeon service showed that messages sent during the Battle of the Somme got through in an average of not much more than 25 minutes, vastly faster than would have been possible by runner. Osman's highly trained birds also comfortably outperformed the pigeons of the Franco-Prussian War; 98 percent of messages were delivered safely despite the dangers of shellfire and the massed efforts of German infantrymen to bring the birds down with rifle and machine-gun fire.

By the end of the war, the carrier pigeon service was also supplying birds to that newfangled British invention, the tank-where the pigeons, Osman confessed, "often became stupefied, no doubt due to the fumes of oil"-and they were also used increasingly in intelligence work. Here the VPWC's efforts culminated in a scheme that involved "brave Belgian volunteers" parachuting into enemy-held territory strapped to a large basket full of homing pigeons, which they were to use to send information about enemy troop movements back to one of Osman's lofts.

The scheme worked, the Colonel wrote, "except that at the outset great difficulty was experienced in getting the man to jump from the plane when the time came." Such reluctance was understandable at a time when parachutes were still in the early stages of development, but the ingenious if stern-hearted Osman solved the problem in collaboration with the designers of the two-seater observation planes that had been adapted to carry out the missions: "A special aeroplane was designed in order that when the position was reached the seat upon which the man sat gave way automatically when the pilot let go a lever," he wrote, sending the hapless Belgian spy plummeting earthward with no option but to open his 'chute.
Sources
This sort of versatility ensured that the British pigeon corps remained fully employed until the end of the war despite advances in technology that made radio, telegraphy and telephone communications much more certain. By the end of the war the VPWC employed 350 handlers and Osman and his men had trained and distributed an astonishing 100,000 birds. Nor were their allies found wanting; in November 1918 the equivalent American service, put together in only a fraction of the time, consisted of nine officers, 324 men, 6,000 pigeons and 50 mobile lofts.

The pigeon gap had been well and truly closed.

Andrew Blechman. Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the World's Most Revered and Reviled Bird. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2006; Hermann Cron. Imperial German Army, 1914-18: Organisation, Structure, Order of Battle. Solihull: Helion & Company, 2006; Richard Van Emden. Tommy's Ark: Soldiers and Their Animals in the Great War. London: Bloomsbury, 2011; Alistair Horne. Seven Ages of Paris: Portrait of a City. London: Macmillan, 2002; John Kistler. Animals in the Military: From Hannibal's Elephants to the Dolphins of the US Navy. Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2011; Hilda Kean. Animal Rights: Political and Social Change in Britain Since 1800. London: Reaktion Books, 1998; George Lamer. "Homing pigeons in wartime." In The Nineteenth Century, vol.45, 1899; Alfred Osman. Pigeons in the Great War: A Complete History of the Carrier Pigeon Service 1914 to 1918. London: Racing Pigeon Publishing Company, 1928; Christopher Sterling. Military Communications: From Ancient Times to the 21st Century. Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2008.

About Mike Dash

Mike Dash is a contributing writer in history for Smithsonian.com. Before Smithsonian.com, Dash authored the award-winning blog A Blast From the Past.

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smithsonianmag.com At midnight on November 12, 1870, two French balloons, inflated with highly flammable coal gas and manned by desperate volunteers, took off from a site in Monmartre, the highest point in Paris. The balloons rose from a city besieged-the Franco-Prussian War had left Paris isolated, and the city had been hastily encircled by the Prussian Army-and they did so on an unlikely mission.

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Table of Contents

How was Morse Code invented?

Is Morse Code still used?

How does Morse Code work?

This article was most recently revised and updated by

Morse Code, either of two systems for representing letters of the alphabet, numerals, and punctuation marks by an arrangement of dots, dashes, and spaces. The codes are transmitted as electrical pulses of varied lengths or analogous mechanical or visual signals, such as flashing lights. One of the systems was invented in the United States by American artist and inventor Samuel F.B. Morse during the 1830s for electrical telegraphy. This version was further improved by American scientist and businessman Alfred Lewis Vail, Morse's assistant and partner. Soon after its introduction in Europe, it became apparent that the original Morse Code was inadequate for the transmission of much non-English text, since it lacked codes for letters with diacritic marks. To remedy this deficiency, a variant called the International Morse Code was devised by a conference of European nations in 1851. This newer code is also called Continental Morse Code.

The two systems are similar, but the International Morse Code is simpler and more precise. For example, the original Morse Code used patterns of dots and spaces to represent a few of the letters, whereas the International Morse uses combinations of dots and short dashes for all letters. In addition, the International Morse Code uses dashes of constant length rather than the variable lengths used in the original Morse Code.

The International Morse Code has, except for some minor changes in 1938, remained the same since its inception. (The American telegraph industry never abandoned the original Morse Code, and so its use continued until the spread of teleprinters in the 1920s and '30s.) International Morse Code was used in World War II and in the Korean and Vietnam wars. It was used heavily by the shipping industry and for the safety of the seas up until the early 1990s. Although amateur radio made up only a small part of Morse Code usage, it did prepare many hundreds of operators for military duty in communications. In the early 2000s most countries had dropped the ability to decipher Morse Code from the requirements for obtaining an amateur radio license.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica John P. Rafferty.

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Morse Code | Invention, History, & Systems

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Morse Code, either of two systems for representing letters of the alphabet, numerals, and punctuation marks by an arrangement of dots, dashes, and spaces. The codes are transmitted as electrical pulses of varied lengths or analogous mechanical or visual signals, such as flashing lights.

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By Sherrill Kushner, Special to The Los AngelesTimes
January 2005

Part 1: 'The Story of Louis Braille'

In 1812, in the small village of Coupvray, France, 3-year-old Louis Braille played in his father's harness shop next to the family's house. His father was one of the best harness makers in the area. Mr. Braille also made reins, saddles and collars for the villagers' horses. He cut strips of leather and punched holes in the leather with sharp tools. Louis had been warned that he was too young to play with the tools in the shop.

That day, Mr. Braille stepped outside the shop to help a customer. Louis thought he would try to punch a hole in a piece of leather just like his father did. He grabbed the tool and tried to push it through the leather. He didn't have the strength of his father. He tried again, pushing harder. The tool slipped from his hand and flew up and into his left eye. Louis screamed with pain. His parents, two sisters and brother ran to help him.

They put a cloth over his eye. There was no hospital in Coupvray. The closest doctor was very far away. They took Louis to a woman in the village who used herbal medicines to treat injuries and sicknesses. She dipped a cloth bandage in a wet herbal solution and placed it on Louis' eye. But his injured eye became infected and the infection spread to his other eye. Within a short time, Louis lost sight in both eyes and was permanently blind.

At that time, most people who were blind were helpless. They had to depend on others. Only the wealthy or those of a high position had any hope of getting an education or earning a decent living. Many ended up becoming beggars.

Tuesday: What would become of Louis?

Part 2: 'The Story of Louis Braille'

The story so far: At age 3, Louis Braille became blind after playing with a tool in his father's harness shop.

Mr. Braille carved a small wooden cane for Louis to help the boy feel things that were ahead of him when he walked. When Louis was 6, a new priest came to town. The priest gave Louis lessons for a year, but Louis wanted to go to the village school with the other children. So a classmate agreed to pick him up each morning and lead him to school. Louis listened to the teacher and memorized what he heard. Even though he couldn't read or write, he was the best student in the class. He studied there for three years.

At times Louis was frustrated because he could not read or write. The priest and the principal thought Louis would do better in a school for blind students. There was only one school like this in France - the Royal Institute for Blind Youth. It was in Paris, 25 miles away. Louis' parents were reluctant to let him go away from home. He was only 10 and the school was very expensive. The priest persuaded his parents to apply. The school accepted Louis and even paid for him to go to class and live there.

The school was in a rundown old building. It was damp and dark, and the students were given very little food. After his classes, Louis learned to play the cello and the piano. He couldn't read music, but he memorized the notes. Louis was looking forward to learning to read. Unfortunately, there were very few books available for blind students. They were printed on heavy, waxed paper. The letters were formed by pressing the paper onto pieces of lead that were shaped like the letters of the alphabet. This process was called embossing. The books were very heavy. One sentence could take up a whole page. Louis learned to run his fingers over the pages so that he could feel each letter. It took a long time to read this way. By the time he got to the end of a sentence, he would forget the words at the beginning.

Wednesday: Was there a better way to make books for blind readers?

'The Story of Louis Braille' Part 3

The story so far: Louis Braille studied at a school for blind students where the few books made for the blind were heavy and hard to read.

A retired French army captain, Charles Barbier, came to visit the Royal Institute for Blind Youth. He had invented a way for soldiers to send messages to each other at night without needing light or having to talk. If they had to use light or make noise, the enemy could spot the soldiers and shoot at them.

With a pointed tool, the captain punched dots and dashes into heavy paper. The dots and dashes represented different sounds. These marks were combined to form words and could be read without light or sound. But the soldiers found it too difficult to use. The captain thought blind students might be able to use it instead.

The students tried to read some of the messages but they also found the system complicated to learn and difficult to use. Many dots were required to represent a single word. Still, it took up less space than the existing process of embossing actual letters from the alphabet.

Louis was excited about this new way to read. He spent most of his free time learning the system. He knew it would have to be made simpler. He also had to find a way to include numbers and punctuation. So in his spare time and late at night, Louis worked hard to improve the captain's system. With a pointed instrument called a stylus and a wooden writing board with paper, Louis continued working on it. After two years of work, when Louis was 15, he finally created a new code. It was easier to learn and quicker to read.

Louis brought it to the new director of the Royal Institute. To test the code, the director read a newspaper article aloud. Louis punched the stylus into the paper to write down what the director said. When the director finished, Louis ran his fingers over the raised dots and repeated back the exact words read by the director. The director was very impressed.

Thursday: Would other students be able to use Louis' new code?

Part 4: 'The Story of Louis Braille'

The story so far: Louis Braille spent his spare time at his school for the blind trying to improve on a night writing system so blind students could learn to read and write.

Louis' classmates at the Royal Institute for Blind Youth tried out his new alphabet system. They were delighted to find how well it worked. Now they could take notes in class. Memorizing long class lectures wasn't necessary any more. They didn't need anyone's help to read or write.

Louis was very happy that his classmates liked his new code, but he wanted other blind people to be able to use it too. The school director wrote to the French government and asked if Louis' dot alphabet could be made the official system of writing for the blind.

In the meantime, Louis became an assistant teacher at the institute. His classes were very popular. He also spent a lot of time copying books into his code. He even added symbols so that blind musicians could read and write music. He eventually had a book published describing his new code.

Louis also learned to play the organ. He played so well, he worked as an organist at a nearby church. He soon became a full-time teacher at the institute. In 1834, Louis demonstrated his dot alphabet at the Exhibition of Industry held in Paris . All sorts of inventions were shown there. He took notes as people spoke and then read back what was said.

The French king was at the exhibition and saw Louis' invention, but he didn't make it the official language for the blind. The king also didn't offer any money to create books in the dot alphabet.

Friday: Would Louis' invention ever be used to help all blind people?

Part 5: 'The Story of Louis Braille'

The story so far: Louis Braille created a new dot alphabet for his blind classmates.

When Louis returned from the Exhibition of Industry in Paris , he was sad that his invention wouldn't be available to other blind people. In the last few years he had occasionally felt tired. He also sometimes had a bad cough and fever. He grew sicker. His doctor told him he had consumption, or what we today call tuberculosis. At that time the only remedy for this disease was fresh air and rest.

Louis taught less and spent time outside. He continued to improve the dot alphabet. He added the letter "w" so that his code could be used to write English. And he worked on creating math textbooks for blind students.

A new director came to the Royal Institute for Blind Youth and wouldn't allow the students to continue using Louis' new alphabet. The director was afraid that the students would become too independent and would no longer need the teachers who could see.

Louis was very disappointed. His health grew worse, and several times he went home to Coupvray to rest. He worked on writing books and music in his dot system. He died in Paris in 1852.

Two years later, the French government approved the dot system. It was called "Braille" after Louis' last name. In 1878, the World Congress for the Blind voted to make Braille the system of reading and writing for all blind people worldwide. With the help of the United Nations, Braille has been adapted to almost every known language.

Many books are available in Braille. Some are created by typing the words on a computer that translates them into Braille. They are then transferred onto paper or metal plates for use on a press.

Louis Braille's house in Coupvray , France, is now a museum. On the wall a plaque says that Louis Braille was born in the house and that he invented the system of writing in raised dots for the blind. It also says, "He opened the doors of knowledge to all those who cannot see."

Additional Resources

To see the Braille alphabet, go to https://www.nbp.org/ic/nbp/about/aboutbraille/alphacard.html.

Braille Bug features an assortment of games and activities for learning Braille that are both fun and educational. The website is for both sighted and visually impaired students in grades two through six. It also includes biographies of Helen Keller and Louis Braille.

Author's note: The first book in braille was published in 1827. Since then millions of people who are blind or have low vision have continued to read, write and communicate through the six-dot system. To promote Braille literacy and recognize its inventor, Louis Braille, January is designated as Braille Literacy Month in honor of his birthday on Jan. 4, 1809 . The author thanks Carolyn Meyer, director of the Louis Braille Center in Edmonds, Washington, for fact checking this story.

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By Sherrill Kushner, Special to The Los AngelesTimes January 2005 In 1812, in the small village of Coupvray, France, 3-year-old Louis Braille played in his father's harness shop next to the family's house. His father was one of the best harness makers in the area.

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Sign languages have been around much longer than most people think. Did you know that they existed in ancient Greece? And even before recorded history? To give you some perspective on just how amazing and prolific sign language really is, let's take a deep dive into the long and colorful history of how signs-and ASL in particular-came to be.

The Earliest Sign Languages

No one knows exactly when sign language first appeared, but many sources agree that using hands to communicate has been around just as long as spoken language. And these early signing systems were the direct result of humans needing a new way to interact. Researchers believe that hunters on the open plains used signs to communicate to each other from great distances. Because of the lack of visual obstruction in a plains environment, sign was the most obvious way to communicate without scaring off the animals they were hunting.

The ancient Great Plains Native Americans also developed a complex signing system. It's unclear what exactly the system was for, but many different theories exist. A popular one is that sign made intertribal trade possible. To overcome language barriers, the natives developed a standardized system of hand gestures to negotiate with tribes that didn't speak their language-including European expeditioners. Multiple accounts of Columbus landing in the Americas claim that the natives communicated with his crew through sign.

The Greek Philosophers

It's impossible to know exactly when and where the first deaf person tried out sign, but we do know that the first written record of sign language came from Ancient Greece. In fifth century B.C., the philosopher Plato wrote the dialogue Cratylus. In it he recorded Socrates saying, "If we had neither voice nor tongue, and yet wished to manifest things to one another, should we not, like those which are at present mute, endeavor to signify our meaning by our hands, head, and other parts of the body?" Apparently ancient Greeks who couldn't speak did indeed have a rudimentary sign language to go about their daily lives.

Later Plato's student Aristotle became the first person ever to record a claim about deaf people -and unfortunately it wasn't a good one. He believed that being able to hear speech was the only way people could learn. So according to Aristotle it was completely impossible to educate deaf people. Even though there wasn't a shred of factual evidence to support his claim, Aristotle's theory caught hold and was widely believed for the next 2000 years throughout the world.

And the results weren't pretty. During this era of history, deaf people were viewed as lesser humans who couldn't legally hold property. They couldn't get married because society was afraid that deafness was a hereditary trait that would be passed on to future generations. Deaf people were often denied citizenship and even religious rights. And though deafness was regarded as a shameful disability, any form of sign was ostracized and discouraged, making it nearly impossible for these people to communicate freely.

Scholars of this period genuinely believed that deaf people couldn't learn, but some teachers still tried. In 685 A.D. the Archbishop of York, John Beverly, famously taught a deaf boy to speak. But instead of seeing this accomplishment as proof that Aristotle was wrong, thinkers of the era deemed this act as divine. The archbishop was later canonized for performing the miracle, but people still believed that the only way deafness could be "overcome" was to speak the same language as the general population.

Teachers in Italy and Spain

In the sixteenth century, philosophers and teachers finally started questioning Aristotle's claim that people who couldn't hear couldn't be educated. An Italian physician and mathematician named Girolamo Cardano (also known as Gerolamo or Geronimo) was the first voice to challenge Aristotle's long-standing assumption.

Cardano claimed that hearing wasn't necessary for a person to understand ideas and even started developing his own code of hand gestures. He believed that one could use written words matched with symbols of what they represented to communicate with deaf students. Although his code was never widely adopted, he did use his methods to teach his own deaf son. And Cardano's theories greatly influenced other leaders and thinkers of the time.

Around the same time as Cardano ( about 1570), a Spanish monk named Pedro Ponce de Leon started educating his own deaf students -the sons of Spanish nobles. Because they were deaf, these young men were ineligible to inherit property. Leon taught them to read, write, and speak so they could claim the family fortunes that rightly belonged to them. And his efforts were successful.

Both Cardano and Leon inspired another Spanish monk named Juan Pablo de Bonet to take the biggest step in early sign language history. After developing his own methods of educating deaf pupils, Bonet published the first book on sign language in 1620. In it he included his own manual alphabet of handshapes representing sounds. This was the first published system of fingerspelling in history.

Even though these early systems were designed to teach deaf people how to speak other languages, Bonet's book was still a revolutionary landmark in the development of sign language as an officially recognized form of communication. His book sparked interest across Europe in educating deaf students, but it wasn't until the mid-1700s that the next groundbreaking achievement in sign language development took place.

The French Sign Language Revolution

Abbe Charles Michel de l'Eppe was a French Catholic priest who studied theology and law. After he was ordained, l'Eppe devoted his life to caring for the impoverished French, and it was during this service in the slums of Paris that he met two twin sisters-both deaf. Another cleric had been tutoring the girls but died very suddenly. L'Eppe stepped in as their new teacher, a decision that started his lifelong mission of serving and educating the deaf population of France.

The French Deaf community already used a common sign language in Paris, one that had developed organically over centuries. L'Eppe added to this Old French Sign Language system by creating a series of hand signals to replace the sounds of the alphabet. As he taught the twins, l'Eppe uncovered a breakthrough in deaf education: that deaf people learn visually all the same things that other people learn by hearing. Deaf and mute people already had a language that was every bit as powerful and expressive as spoken French, and the key to educating them was training them to communicate with their hands instead of their voices.

In 1760 l'Eppe founded the first free public sign language school in the world, funded by his own inheritance. The school was called Institution Nationale des Sourds-Muets à Paris (The Royal Institution of Deaf-Mutes). As the French signing system and l'Eppe's methods of teaching continued to develop, deaf people from all over France flocked to his school. Even officials from other countries started to take notice. The emperor of Austria and the empress of Russia both sent teachers to learn l'Eppe's teaching style, and his influence eventually led to the creation of twenty-one schools total in France and many other countries.

Of course l'Eppe wasn't the only influential sign language teacher of this time period. In England Thomas Braidwood was establishing the Braidwood's Academy for the Deaf and Dumb around the exact same time that l'Eppe's school opened in France. Braidwood taught his pupils using a unique two-handed method of sign language, and he was pivotal in developing the same British Sign Language used today in the United Kingdom.

But not all the teachers of the time were accepting of sign. Samuel Heinicke started the first German school for the deaf in 1778, but unlike l'Eppe, Heinicke was a staunch oralist. He falsely believed that the primary function of education for deaf children should be to develop their spoken language skills so they could fully integrate into hearing society. This is the one area where l'Eppe's influence stood out among the other European teachers.

L'Eppe truly was the first "manualist" teacher, the first leader of deaf education who realized that sign language was the way deaf people should be communicating, and not just as a vehicle to help them speak oral languages. Aside from perpetuating the importance of sign, l'Eppe's unique background in theology and law also made him a valuable ally for deaf rights in both religion and the court room. He was one of the first people in history to publicly assert that deaf people deserved to be treated as fully functioning human beings with something meaningful to contribute to society, even if they spoke a different language. It's little wonder that today l'Eppe is known as the "Father of the Deaf."

Sign Blossoming in the New World

In 1620, the exact same year that Bonet was publishing the first book on sign language, the Mayflower landed at Cape Cod, Massachusetts. This was the first of many waves of colonists sailing to the New World in search of a better life. Among the many immigrants that hopped on ships bound for America was a group of settlers originally from Kent county England. They arrived in Massachusetts in the 1690s, bringing with them unique genetics that cause hereditary deafness. The result was Martha's Vineyard Sign Language.

Martha's Vineyard is an island off the southeastern coast of Massachusetts, and it is a historically significant location for the development of sign. Thanks to the unique genetic makeup of the island's progenitors, Martha's Vineyard was home to the largest deaf population on the continent. These deaf islanders created one of the most highly developed signing systems in history, perhaps based on a language used in Kent. Everyone on Martha's Vineyard knew the signs and used them regularly to communicate with friends, family, and neighbors. Because even hearing members of this community used sign language, Martha's Vineyard was one of the few societies in the world where deaf and hearing individuals were fully integrated together in all social, civic, and religious activities in the mid-1700s.

Aside from the famous Martha's Vineyard sign, other versions of sign language began popping up around America wherever deaf populations existed. By the nineteenth century, church census data reported that approximately 800 deaf children were living in the United States. But sign language was still far from standardized and not even close to being recognized as an official language. It wasn't until decades later that American deaf education would take a large and decisive step forward.

The Great Gallaudet

Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet was a Yale graduate and an ordained clergyman in Hartford, Connecticut. He dreamed of becoming a professional minister, but his path took a different turn in 1814 when he met nine-year-old Alice Cogswell.

She was the deaf daughter of Gallaudet's neighbor Dr. Mason Fitch Cogswell. Gallaudet befriended Alice when he saw that the other children weren't playing with her, and he began teaching her the names of objects by drawing pictures and words in the dirt. Right from the beginning of their friendship, Gallaudet was amazed by Alice's intelligence, personality, and enthusiasm to learn. He didn't realize it at the time, but this relationship with this little girl was going to change Gallaudet's life forever-and the lives of millions of future deaf Americans too.

Dr. Cogswell was delighted to see his daughter's progress and convinced Gallaudet that he should learn more about educating deaf children. Perhaps even start a school. As a prominent member of Connecticut society, Dr. Cogswell used his connections to raise enough money to send Gallaudet to Europe to study established methods of deaf education. The funds were raised in just one afternoon, and soon Gallaudet was on a ship bound for England.

He hoped to be trained at one of the Braidwood schools for the deaf in England and Scotland, but the Braidwoods turned out to be far from welcoming. They weren't in a hurry to give up their family sign and lip-reading methods without compensation. And Gallaudet wasn't convinced their teaching methods were the best option for educating deaf children anyway.

A discouraged Gallaudet parted ways with the Braidwoods, but shortly thereafter he met Abbe Roch-Ambroise Curcurron Sicard, l'Eppe's successor at the Paris school for the deaf. Sicard just happened to be visiting England during Gallaudet's trip and was giving lectures on deaf education along with two of his deaf assistants, Jean Massieu and Laurent Clerc. When Gallaudet introduced himself and explained his vision of establishing a school for the deaf in America, Sicard gladly invited him back to Paris to learn the French method of deaf education.

Gallaudet liked what he saw in Paris. He studied French sign with great enthusiasm, but he was quickly running out of money and needed to return home. Unsure if he could really start an American school all on his own, Gallaudet convinced the young Laurent Clerc to return with him to Hartford so they could start the school together. During the long sea voyage across the Atlantic, Gallaudet taught Clerc English and Clerc taught Gallaudet how to sign. (Related Article: Celebrating 200 Years of American Sign Language)

Spreading Sign Across North America

With Dr. Cogswell's help, Gallaudet and Clerc opened the first American public school for the deaf on April 15, 1817, in Hartford's Bennett's City Hotel. Gallaudet and Clerc's first class had just nine students in it -Alice Cogswell among them-but soon their numbers grew.

As the school's reputation spread, young deaf students from across the country journeyed to Hartford to learn Clerc and Gallaudet's unique mixture of signs. Eventually their signing developed into the American Sign Language (ASL) that the Deaf community uses today. By 1863, twenty-two deaf schools were in operation around the U.S., most founded and run by Clerc and Gallaudet's students.

Gallaudet's youngest son, Edward Miner Gallaudet, continued his father's legacy in deaf education. After teaching at the Hartford school for a number of years, Edward Gallaudet was instrumental in establishing the first college for the deaf in 1864, the Columbia Institution for the Deaf at Washington, D.C. (later renamed Gallaudet College in 1893).

The Rise of the Oralists

Despite the momentum sign was gaining in America, there were still many that didn't view this widespread acceptance of sign language teaching as a positive development. Like the oralists in Europe, many American leaders and teachers falsely thought that sign was holding back deaf students. They believed it only hampered their development and encouraged deaf people to be isolated from the rest of hearing society. For the oralists, the only way to truly teach deaf pupils was to require them to speak English and abandon sign altogether.

By 1867, major schools in America began using oral methods of teaching with no sign language at all. Misguided advocates like Alexander Graham Bell -the same Bell who invented the telephone-were convinced that oral education was the best and only way for deaf children to learn. More and more schools started teaching deaf students orally or trying out combination methods that still used sign language but mainly focused on lip-reading and learning speech.

This ongoing conflict between oral and manual education culminated in the infamous Milan Conference of 1880. Deaf educators from seven different countries all gathered in Milan, Italy, to make decisions about the future of deaf education. The majority of the delegates firmly believed that oral methods were superior to sign language. Edward Miner Gallaudet was among the minority who knew without a doubt that sign language was the primary mode of communication for deaf people and should be the primary means of teaching them. Sadly the oral delegates won the vote, and the Milan Conference decided that sign language would be banned from all schools.

This decision rocked the deaf education world. In the next ten years sign language drastically declined, and by 1920 nearly 80% of all deaf programs were using oral methods. In some classrooms the signing ban was enforced through cruel methods like tying deaf students' hands behind their backs to force them to speak. Perhaps the most regrettable consequence of the Milan Conference was the decline of deaf instructors in deaf classrooms, which dropped from 40% to a mere 15%.

But despite the ban, sign language still lived on. Deaf people were still signing outside of school or under tables, and the language continued to grow, develop, and build relationships. On a more official level, America's National Association of the Deaf was created in response to the Milan Conference. The association stood as a guardian of American Sign Language to make sure sign and Deaf culture would be protected and preserved for future generations. They fought relentlessly to restore sign language in the classroom, but it was nearly a century later before sign made a comeback.

The Truth in the Research

The restoration of sign language happened thanks to William Stokoe, a scholar and hearing professor at Gallaudet University. Stokoe arrived at Gallaudet to teach English to the students, but upon observing ASL up close, he made a shocking realization.

In this era, sign language was viewed as a cheap mimicry of spoken languages, a primitive and insufficient means of communication for those who couldn't hear. But Stokoe's linguistic background revealed so much more to him. As he observed ASL he noticed that it wasn't mimicry at all. In fact it carried all the markers of a unique language with its own syntax and grammar. That meant sign language was a fully formed language just like any spoken one.

Stokoe went on to publish his findings in 1960 and developed the very first sign language dictionary. His work was received with great excitement in the linguistic community and eventually entered the deaf education community as well. Stokoe's research became a springboard for widespread positive change in deaf classrooms as educators finally accepted sign language with open arms and recognized ASL as the official language for deaf Americans.

Eventually Congress issued the Babbidge Report in 1965, acknowledging the failings of oralism-only deaf education and finally recounting the decisions made at the Milan Conference. Now with an official stamp of approval, American Sign Language has spread freely nationwide and become an integral piece of educating deaf children.

Sign Language Today

Sign language is now recognized as the native communication and education method for Deaf people. No one knows exactly how many sign languages exist around the world today, but there are unique signing methods in just about every country on the globe.

Many, many countries still do not have strong support for deaf education, and plenty still haven't recognized sign as an official language. But there's no doubt that sign has developed into a fully fledged and beautiful language of its own right that has connected deaf people all around the world and impacted the lives of individuals everywhere.
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The History of Sign Language - GoReact ASL Blog

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Sign languages have been around much longer than most people think. Did you know that they existed in ancient Greece? And even before recorded history? To give you some perspective on just how amazing and prolific sign language really is, let's take a deep dive into the long and colorful history of how signs-and ASL in particular-came to be.

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Chimps can use sign language: A key to understanding them

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Chimps can use sign language: A key to understanding them

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MSgt John E. Lasky ( This image or file is a work of a U.S. Air Force Airman or employee, taken or made as part of that person's official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image or file is in the public domain in the United States.) The world needs heroes to look up to. We consider those with superhuman abilities to be the level of heroism that is needed to be considered a hero and yet we fail to see the day to day heroism of people just like us. People who just wanted to do the right thing even though it might be hard to sometimes. These type of people are what our society is founded on. People like, say, Gail Halvorsen. He was an average Joe trying his best to serve his country, when he saw an opportunity to do something extraordinary. While serving during World War 2 he supply dropped many areas of the destroyed city of Berlin. When making one of his stops he noticed about 12 kids behind a battered fence. They told Mr. Halvorsen not to give up on them and try his best to help their failing country. He wanted to give something to these kids, so he reached in his pocket and pulled out two sticks of gum and gave it to the children. They didn't fight and instead divided it and those that didn't get any gum where allowed to smell the aroma of the package. It was at this moment he realized what he needed to do. He went back his supply base at the time and asked for his fellow pilots to give him their chocolate. When he had all the chocolate he needed he made parachutes to put on the chocolate. The following morning the kids met at that fence and saw his plane fly in toward Berlin, but he missed the landing pad. He flew his plane directly over the fence and dropped 30 chocolate bars to the kids below, giving the kids one of the few sweets they had ever had. Through his acts of kindness and determination he found ways to spread his hope and cheer in new ways. Gail Halvorsen was one of the most kind and selfless persons in the history of our nation and because of his kindness the starving kids in Berlin, and we today, have something to hope for.

Gail was determined to help us even if he was putting his livelihood on the line. Back in the 30's he could have been fired for what he did and being out of a job after a war would mean terrible things for him. Gail said "Shake your hand and say, 'Thank you, for freedom!' I've been back 35 times in all, three times in 2009"(CANDY BOMBER' DELIVERED). This shows how much he wanted to help people in Berlin. Even after he was done in the air force he was still able to send chocolate from the sky to help feed the hungry. Gail had been flying for over seventy years and was still able to drop candy. Later on in "DELIVERED CHOCOLATE, HOPE TO BERLIN" the author said that, "This was just what the military sought. By framing this story as an act of heroism benefitting innocent children, Americans overcame residual hostilities of the occupation and fostered a new relationship with the former enemy," she writes"(:Eschner). When Gail was threatened by his superiors to stop he kept on pushing the envelope until they eventually allowed him to continue with the project. Even when they threatened to fire him, he continued dropping the candy for the poor children of Berlin. This man careed more about those children then he did about himself.

After that his kindness helped kids during the war to have hope and try to make the best of their terrible situation. Gale was on record to say that "Operation Little Vittles dropped more than 21 tons of candy during the airlift"(CANDY BOMBER' DELIVERED). No one asked him to do this. No one asked him to risk his livelihood for these kids. He did this for them - all the kids who didn't have anything left. In his eyes they needed hope more than anyone. "The small things you do turn into great things," he said"(:Eschner). He takes what he says to heart when trying to help these kids. Without his remarkable kindness, most of the kids would have given up hope a long time ago. Because of him we have something to believe in too.

Gail Halvorsen was a man devoted to the job of bringing hope to people who needed it the most and to help them pass through one of the most traumatic events in history. His kindness helped people go through some of the hardest hardships in history and his determination to his cause ended up giving the children of Berlin something special. Hope. I believe that Gail was a hero because he displays a sort of determination and kindness that is only found in some great leaders. People to this day still gain hope from that faithful event that happened that long ago. Yet he is all but forgotten from history. When I hear of amazing heroes, I hear childhood idols like Taylor Swift and Oprah Winfrey, who aren't bad people, but just don't hold a candle next to Gail. Being a hero doesn't mean you are beloved by everyone and having tons of fame. Being a hero is when you put someone else in front of your own needs. A simple act of kindness could end up changing the course of history. In Gail's case, two sticks of gum and a couple chocolate bars stopped World War 3. That is a hero.

Works Cited

"'CANDY BOMBER' DELIVERED CHOCOLATE, HOPE TO BERLIN." States News Service, 14 Sept. 2018. Biography In Context,

:Eschner, Kat. "The Sweet Story of the Berlin Candy Bomber." Smithsonian.com, Smithsonian Institution, 10 Oct. 2017,

www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/sweet-story-berlin-candy-bomber-180965156/.

"Gail Halvorsen: Berlin's beloved 'candy bomber'." Military History, June-July 2009, p. 14+. Biography In Context,

https://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A199590111/BIC?u=powa9245&sid=BIC&xid=2b0fc79f. Accessed 6 Dec. 2018.
The beliefs, viewpoints and opinions expressed in this hero submission on the website are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the beliefs, viewpoints and opinions of The MY HERO Project and its staff.

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MSgt John E. Lasky ( This image or file is a work of a U.S. Air Force Airman or employee, taken or made as part of that person's official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image or file is in the public domain in the United States.)

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Gail "Hal" Halvorsen, a.k.a. the "Candy Bomber," in his plane in 1948. (Courtesy of Gail "Hal" Halvorsen)

It was the summer of 1948 when U.S. Air Force pilot Gail "Hal" Halvorsen noticed children clustered around a barbed-wire fence watching military planes at Tempelhof airfield in Berlin.

World War II had ended, and Halvorsen was part of an air mission to deliver food and fuel to desperate Berliners after the Soviet Union had blocked land and water access to areas of the country, leaving millions without access to basic goods.

Halvorsen, then 27, decided to park his plane and say hello to the kids at the fence.

"I saw right away that they had nothing and they were hungry," he recalled. "So I reached into my pocket and pulled out all that I had: two sticks of gum."

Halvorsen tore the Wrigley's Spearmint gum into small strips - one for each child, he said. Then he made the kids a promise: He would return the next day to drop a load of chocolate bars from the sky.

"I told them that I'd 'wiggle' my wings so they'd know which pilot had the goods," he said. "Then I went back to the base and asked all the guys to pool their candy rations for the drop."

Following his first sweet mission - hundreds of Hershey chocolate bars were wrapped in parachutes made of handkerchiefs - Halvorsen returned again and again during the 15-month humanitarian airlift.

The children of Berlin soon gave him a nickname: the "Candy Bomber."

And now, some of those kids - now in their 80s and 90s - have sent cards, letters and video messages of thanks to Halvorsen in honor of his 100th birthday on Oct. 10.

The legacy of the retired colonel was celebrated at an outdoor reception on his birthday for about 130 family members and friends. In addition to birthday cake, there was a helicopter flyover to drop chocolate bars and other candy to the guests, said Denise Williams, 67, the second oldest of Halvorsen's five children.

Although it's a few weeks early for Halloween candy, Halvorsen said he was happy to see another candy "bombing" run.

"I've always had a sweet tooth," he said. "But I have to be honest. I'd rather have black licorice than chocolate."

Williams, who now helps care for her dad, said she had initially invited a large contingent of grateful German candy recipients to the party, but then the coronavirus pandemic hit.

"There are hundreds of people who will never forget my dad dropping those candy bars during the Berlin airlift," she said. "He's beloved around the world for his positive attitude and giving heart."

Several of those children from the 1940s now live in the United States and shared tributes to Halvorsen via Zoom at the party, Williams said.

Ingrid Azvedo of Sacramento was among them.

Azvedo, 86, said she was with the group of kids who were handed small strips of gum through the wire fence from Halvorsen that hot July day in 1948.

"There was no food or clean water in Berlin; we were starving to death," recalled Azvedo, who was 14 at the time. "Then along came this tall and skinny pilot, who reached into his pocket to give us all that he had. A kindness like that stays with you for a lifetime."

Azvedo didn't eat her gum, she said, but instead placed it under her pillow.

"I would smell it every night," she said. "And when he came back to drop chocolate instead of bombs, we could hardly believe it. Nobody had tasted chocolate for a very long time."

Christel Jonge Vos, who now lives in Keizer, Ore., said she was never able to catch a chocolate parachute because the teenage boys in Berlin ran ahead of her.

"But that was not important to me or the other kids who did not get one," said Vos, now 86. "We knew there was an American pilot called the Candy Bomber who cared about us. He laid the ground stone to the fact that enemies could become friends in Berlin."

Halvorsen said he grew up on a sugar beet farm in the small city of Garland, Utah, and became a Civil Air Patrol pilot after Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941, launching the United States into World War II.

He later joined the military and was assigned to the South Atlantic Air Transport Command, he said, but when word came after the war that the Soviet Union had blocked West Berlin, he volunteered to fly in supplies on humanitarian missions.

More than 2 million tons of food and fuel were airlifted into the city over nearly 280,000 flights, Halvorsen said. But just weeks into the effort, he saw another need.

"When I dropped those first candy parachutes and saw the kids racing for them, I knew I had to keep going," he said.

Operation Little Vittles, as it was called, ended up delivering more than 23 tons of candy and chocolate to children throughout western Berlin, he added.

More than seven decades on, the lanky C-54 pilot is still in pretty good health, according to his children, and he flew as a co-pilot as recently as last year in North Carolina during a reenactment of one of his candy bomber flights.

"He certainly has his physical challenges, and his short-term memory isn't what it used to be," said son Bob Halvorsen, 63. "But he still has a vivid memory of dropping those chocolate parachutes in Berlin years ago."

After Germans had watched American planes drop bombs during the war, to see a pilot drop candy made a lasting impression, he added.

"My dad helped to create an attitude shift in Berlin about America," he said. "I'm amazed at the number of people who continue to write to him about that airlift. They tell him that it's the one time they finally had hope."

Dagmar Snodgrass, now 86 and living in Springfield, Mo., is among those regular pen pals.

"I was 14 and had seen too much evil to believe in anything good, when the Candy Bomber made a place for himself in the heart of every West Berlin child," she said.

"When a gust of wind carried that little parachute to me, you cannot imagine what it meant," said Snodgrass, who finally met Halvorsen for the first time in 2015. "Because of [Halvorsen], we started to believe that good could come out of bad."

Halvorsen said that's exactly the lesson he had hoped people would take away from his sweet humanitarian missions.

"My advice to people is the same today: Don't hate and don't be mad at your next-door neighbor," he said. "If you want to get the best out of life, you have to forgive."

And sharing a bit of chocolate with someone now and then can't hurt either, he said.

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World War II-era 'Candy Bomber' turns 100. Those who caught his candy - now in their 80s - say thanks.

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It was the summer of 1948 when U.S. Air Force pilot Gail "Hal" Halvorsen noticed children clustered around a barbed-wire fence watching military planes at Tempelhof airfield in Berlin.

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Who says you can't change the world? History has repeatedly shown that whatever isn't possible today can be possible tomorrow.

For one, each day leads to opportunity; a chance to learn something new. Not to mention that technology is a space that is forever evolving, so that opportunity to do something earth-shattering might be just around the corner.

If you're a coder - or coder-in-training - you're well on your way to putting yourself in position to seize such opportunity. And to quote Walt Disney, "It's fun to do the impossible."

Here are 10 stories and real-life examples of people who put their coding in action...to quite literally change the world.

1. Conquering Space

Margaret Hamilton was a young, plucky, 33-year old woman with glasses who liked math. She was one of the few women at MIT's Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, which in the early 1960's, was developing something important for NASA.

The Apollo and Skylab programs would mark a new era in space exploration. Hamilton led the team that developed the in-flight software used to control the Apollo command module, lunar lander, and eventually, the world's first space station, Skylab.

At a time when there were no computer science courses or software engineers, Hamilton was self-taught. Developing her skills with hands-on experience, she designed and developed recovery systems and error detection software. Her amazing efforts left fellow team-members dumbfounded.

Without her contributions to the space program, there's no telling where it might be today. Margaret Hamilton used code to change the world and conquer space.

2. A Window to the World

William Henry Gates III - better known to the world as Bill - was born in October of 1955. By the time he was 13, he was fascinated by computers and took advantage of programs at his school to get access to the school's computer systems.

He wrote games likes tic-tac-toe in BASIC and later, when he demonstrated his expertise in programming, was enlisted to help a contractor for his school develop payroll programs and class scheduling software.

In his words, it was "hard to tear myself away from a machine at which I could so unambiguously demonstrate success."

Eventually, he would take his programming knowledge and use it to capitalize on a new technology that was quickly spreading across the globe-personal computers.

His idea was simple: Don't make the machines, but make the software that runs them.
He went on to form Microsoft. The company would release Microsoft Windows, a graphical interface for MS-DOS on November 20, 1985.

3. From Dungeons and Demons to Steve

Of the many types of video games created over the years, you're bound to see a few that are a little off-center.

The 1997 Electronic Arts classic Dungeon Keeper is an odd one. An interesting switch on the classic dungeon crawler, the game puts you in the role of a dungeon master - of sorts - placing obstacles and building dungeons to protect your precious creation from invading heroes.

Then there is Dwarf Fortress, a freeware game, with three game modes, all of which take place in worlds created by the player. The game's Fortress mode is a construction and management sim, while Adventure mode is a turn-based adventure game. The Legends mode showcases player achievements.

Finally, Infiniminer was is a 3D isometric building game, which feels a lot like a familiar block-building game that many kids know and love today.

All three of these titles and their unique gameplay inspired a young programmer named Markus "Notch" Persson to create what is perhaps the most popular block-building game of all time-a title called Minecraft. The game has become a cultural and global phenomenon. And from a coding perspective, it has many educational benefits, and has become a catalyst to help introduce and teach kids programming.

"Notch," didn't set out to change the world, but he did in an unexpected way.

4. A Wolf in Search Clothing

"Siri, is Puerto Rico part of the United States?"

If you've ever asked a personal assistant a question, you may not have known that its search engine isn't powered by vast databases from Apple or Google. Instead, the search query is driven by Wolfram Alpha, a powerful "computational knowledge engine" that at its core, is a Wolfram Mathematica code.

Developed by British-American computer scientist Stephen Wolfram, Wolfram Mathematica is a cross platform computational powerhouse that can be used to extract data from almost anything. It also powers Wolfram Alpha, which in turn helps you find out what time your favorite movie is playing at your local cinema, through your favorite personal assistant.

Wolfram Mathematica has helped jumpstart the development of machine learning, neural networks, image processors, data science, and more. It's used prolifically in computing fields that touch scientific research, engineering, and mathematics.

When Stephen Wolfram created the language, he probably didn't think it would impact the world as it has, but Wolfram and his code have dramatically changed how we live our lives and the world we live in.

5 & 6. Painting with Pixels

It's rare that a product becomes so much of a "thing" that it becomes a verb. "Google it" for example, or maybe you've had a picture that needed to be "Photoshopped?"

When you reach such a level, you can assure that you have made a significant impact in the world. Thomas and John Knoll (who also developed the story for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story) did just that.

As the creators of Photoshop, the two sought to recreate the same experience they had working in their father's darkroom. At the time of Photoshop's launch in 1990, bitmap image editing was already a crowded field. Products like PCPaint, PixelPaint, and PC Paintbrush dominated the space. But what made Photoshop different was it's amazing ability to embrace computer-based photography and imagery.

Editing high-resolution images takes up at lot of processing power and Photoshop excelled because of the low-level graphics routines the program used. Thomas Knoll developed the code while getting his PhD in image processing.

With the foundation laid, Photoshop went on to become the go-to software for artists, designers, and photographers. The software evolved as technology did, adopting CMYK support, and introducing Photoshop to PC's and the Windows market with version 2.5. In 1994, Photoshop introduced - wait for it - layer-based image manipulation.

The program now has countless freeware clones online, but still remains the standard in image manipulation-and all because a programmer wanted to make his photos more vibrant.

7. The Revolution Known as WordStar

Early computers were extremely unfriendly. Unlike today, they had no mouse or touchpad control. There were no on-screen fonts or proper spacing of characters, and in fact, none of the interaction we're familiar with today existed then. Instead, users utilized ASCII characters to create graphics-data input was clunky, at best.

At the time, IBM ruled business operations-with a typewriter. In fact, it was the office standard and of course, it didn't interface well, or at all, with computers.

Enter Wordstar.

Written by Rob Barnaby, the program allowed secretaries to input data directly into the computer using a suitcase-sized, old-school "desktop" machine that featured a tiny green screen and floppy disk drives.

Wordstar introduced real document editing to the blossoming 8-bit CPM computer marketplace, and swept through the business sector like a tornado. It changed how business got done, and how humans would interact with machines. In fact, it changed everything, and still has an impact even today: it's because of Wordstar that you are reading this or any article on the internet.

8. The Queen of Code

Like most Americans during the time, Grace Hopper wanted to give her all for her country and fight in the big one-World War II. So at 34 years old she tried to enlist in the Navy, but was turned away because she was told that her job as a mathematician and mathematics professor at Vassar College was far more valuable to the war effort.

Undeterred, Grace Hopper did what any young lady with moxie would have done at the time: she got a leave of absence from Vassar and volunteered for the United States Navy Reserve.

After training at the Naval Reserve Midshipmen's School, Hopper graduated first in her class in 1944. She went on to work for the Navy at Harvard University and served on the Mark I computer programming project. She liked the work so much, she remained at the Harvard Computation Lab until 1949, turning down a full professorship at Vassar to work as a research fellow under Navy contract.

Known for her persistence, she spent the 1960's surrounded by computers. One day, Grace recalls, "I decided data processors ought to be able to write their programs in English, and the computers would translate them into machine code. That was the beginning of COBOL, a computer language for data processors. I could say "Subtract income tax from pay" instead of trying to write that in octal code or using all kinds of symbols."

It was a watershed event: making computer programming accessible with a programming language that was written in English. It took years for her ideas to be accepted by her peers. But when it was finally adopted, COBOL was the first computer language that used words, not numbers, to run computers. Today COBOL is, as Grace put it, "The major language used today in data processing." (Learn more about kids coding languages.)

9. The Blip That Birthed an Industry

After his success with the arcade game Computer Space, Nolan Bushnell and partner Ted Dabney started a company called Atari. Shortly after founding the company, Bushnell hired Allan Alcorn, a former UC Berkeley Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences student that now worked at Ampex. Because of his experience in electrical engineering and computer science (and that Bushnell and Dabney had worked with him at Ampex) they thought Alcorn to be a perfect programmer for Bushnell's next project-a game called PONG.

The first game developed by Atari - a simple two-player electronic version of tennis - PONG became a cultural phenomenon and kicked off the video game industry you know today. (Get your fill of other cool video game facts.)

10. Mashing Faces

In his sophomore year at Harvard, a relatively quiet student worked diligently on a program called "Facemash." As he nestled into the corner of his dorm room and chipped away at his code, he developed a program that would not only change the world but would change people's perception of data collection and how people think of personal privacy.

Mark Zuckerberg's Facemash drew 450 visitors and 22,000 photo views in its first four hours online. The site was soon shut down by Harvard faculty, claiming the site violated copyrights, individual privacy, and security. Ultimately, Harvard dismissed the claims and Zuckerberg was confident he was onto something. He continued the development of the social media platform (the "face book" directory was unlike any online directory that came before it). Eventually the program would be known to the world simply as Facebook.

More recently, Facebook has become a tool for political activism-and controversy. But it still touts millions and millions of users and has set the standard for social media engagement online. Facebook created the roadmap for how social data is captured, and shared, and how it can build a multi-million dollar organization with a global influence.

Writing Code That Can Change the World

You can write code that can change the world, too. It doesn't have to be the next great social media platform, or best-selling video game...the point is that the opportunity is endless. Computer code is an amazing tool, and code can entertain, educate, inform, or just create something fun and cool.

Right now, kids and teens can attend an iD Tech online summer camp for a life-changing-potentially even world-changing-experience. ( View all coding classes for kids.)

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How Coding Can Change the World | 10 Impactful Programming Examples

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Who says you can't change the world? History has repeatedly shown that whatever isn't possible today can be possible tomorrow. For one, each day leads to opportunity; a chance to learn something new. Not to mention that technology is a space that is forever evolving, so that opportunity to do something earth-shattering might be just around the corner.

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International Mediation and Conciliation

Quakers have mediated, and worked for reconciliation, in several violent international conflicts. Often working on the ground in the midst of hostilities, these Friends have used their good offices to bring together those who regard each other as "enemies". There are many conflicts, and few Quakers, so there has always had to be some convincing evidence that they could and should intervene, often based on personal knowledge of the circumstances.

In his history of such work, Mike Yarrow described the Quaker approach as 'balanced partiality' - they do not take sides, but care about both parties, and believe that increasing mutual understanding will help those in conflict to find ways forward on which both can agree.

Adam Curle, an experienced mediator, defined the conciliator/ mediator role as one who is in the middle between protagonists in a conflict, who is wholly concerned to make peace and diminish suffering, and who has no agenda of their own. Their task, he says, is to 'reassure, unravel, explain and interpret,' but not to advise. The core of the work is to change protagonists' perception in three respects - how they see their opponent, how they see themselves, and how they see the conflict.

Joseph Elder, another experienced mediator, spoke of "the power of the powerless." He argued that although Quakers have no power in such situations, they can nevertheless do something that others cannot do.

Often mediation has been carried out under the conditions that (a) nothing about the Quaker role should be revealed publicly, and (b) that if either party felt their role was no longer useful, they should withdraw. These conditions emphasise that the Quaker mediators have no overriding interests in the conflict and that control of the negotiations remains in the hands of the disputing parties.

One of the earliest examples of Quaker mediation dates from 1774, before the American War of Independence, when David Barclay and John Fothergill attempted to mediate between the British Cabinet and Benjamin Franklin. In 1850, Joseph Sturge tried to mediate between Denmark and the duchies of Schleswig-Holstein. None of these were successful.

However, the Quaker role as mediators of international conflicts really began after the Second World War.

In India in 1945, Horace Alexander and Agatha Harrison supported the negotiations between Gandhi and the British Government over Indian Independence.

Later, Adam Curle and Joseph Elder, with other Quakers, were involved in reconciliation efforts following the 1965 war in Kashmir between India and Pakistan. They put 'balanced partiality' into practice - their mission report included sections on `the Pakistan viewpoint' and `the Indian viewpoint'. In each, they expressed the historical facts and judgments from an insider's, rather than an observer's, standpoint. Readers on both sides later expressed satisfaction with the way their views had been portrayed, although they had grave doubts about the accuracy of the presentation of the other side's views!

During the war between Nigeria and Biafra (1963-67), Curle and two other Quakers attempted to set up negotiations between Nigeria's General Gowon and the Biafran rebel leaders. Despite significant danger, they were able to move between the two sides and give a picture unblurred by prejudice. Although they were never successful in negotiating a ceasefire, their efforts were believed to have significantly reduced post-war acts of reprisals.

When the Berlin Wall was built in 1961, it eliminated all contacts between East and West Germany. Quakers were respected and trusted throughout Germany, due to their wartime work and were able to build a dialogue that eased some of the tensions.

During the violent lead-up to independence in Zimbabwe in the 1970s, a small number of British Quakers maintained close relationships with leaders within Rhodesia (as it was then) and in neighbouring states. This enabled them to bring parties together for informal talks, support formal negotiations and advocate policies and actions in support of reconciliation.

In the 1980s, during the civil war in Sri Lanka, Joseph Elder and others met repeatedly with both separatist (Tamil) leaders and government representatives, carrying messages between them in an effort to de-escalate the conflict.

Since 1999, in Nagaland in northeast India, where the Naga people have been fighting a war of independence, Quakers have been assisting the ongoing reconciliation efforts undertaken by the Forum for Naga Reconciliation.

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Quakers have mediated, and worked for reconciliation, in several violent international conflicts. Often working on the ground in the midst of hostilities, these Friends have used their good offices to bring together those who regard each other as "enemies".

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A team of ten and eleven year olds will be among the prize winners at the National Mediation Awards 2018, being held tonight (Tuesday 9 October) in London's prestigious Queen Elizabeth II Centre in Westminster.

The winning school is Hay-on-Wye Primary School in Wales. The children explain what mediation means to them.

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The awards are hosted by the College of Mediators and the Civil Mediation Council to recognise excellence, but this is not confined to adults. This year there is an exciting new category: peer mediation. Peer mediation is conflict resolution for young people by young people, and used in schools around the UK- and the world- to resolve conflict peacefully and creatively.

Evidence from OFSTED, from teachers and children themselves shows that peer mediation can make schools safer and can build life skills. With the help of the Peer Mediation Network, (PMN the umbrella body for peer mediation trainers) nominations were invited from schools.

[QUOTE-START]

Why wouldn't we support peer mediation in every school?
- Ellis Brooks, Quakers in Britain

[QUOTE-END]

Ellis Brooks, Peace Education Coordinator for Quakers in Britain, who support the PMN, said, "Conflict is part of life. Children are fantastic at finding creative nonviolent solutions. The mediation process is about really listening and being fair, and young people really get that. Peer mediation means children learn to deal with conflict themselves instead of waiting for an adult."

Children say: "it has helped because children don't have to get shouted at by the teacher" ...."it has helped people be friends and not be nasty"...."it is a more friendly school and we see less arguments".

Teachers observed the "children gain confidence and develop their speaking and negotiating skills".

However, peer mediation is still fitfully applied around the United Kingdom. Organisations like Scottish Mediation, Peacemakers, CRESST or Wye Valley Mediation provide schools with fantastic training, but there are swathes of the country where that does not happen. The PMN has been working closely with the College of Mediators to develop training standards in peer mediation that are being rolled out nationwide.

"Conflict resolution is something we can all learn," says Ellis Brooks. "But often we wait until people are in crisis to help. Why wouldn't we support peer mediation in every school?"

On 9 November as part of the INSPIRE project, thousands of young people will mark the centenary of the Armistice that ended World War I, with acts of Remembrance for Peace. This award shows young people can be at the heart of building that peace.

Read how children can build peace

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Children show they can resolve conflicts

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A team of ten and eleven year olds will be among the prize winners at the National Mediation Awards 2018, being held tonight (Tuesday 9 October) in London's prestigious Queen Elizabeth II Centre in Westminster. The winning school is Hay-on-Wye Primary School in Wales. The children explain what mediation means to them.

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Invented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876, today we carry telephones at all times and use it for many purposes apart from communicating.

While the inventions of some inventors get lost in the mists of time without making a mark on history, inventions made by some inventors are powerful enough to change every aspect of our everyday life. The invention of telephone also brought about such a transformation. Today, we are glued to our telephones with which we can easily run many errands, and our telephones are with us at every moment and every aspect of our lives.

Alexander Graham Bell's invention of the telephone in 1876, was a world-changing event which was also a breakthrough in communication. Before Bell's invention, the fastest method to send a message was by using the Morse code through telegraph lines. However, there was no way to transmit a person's voice through a telegram. Before telegraph, which was considered an innovative method in its own period, urgent messages had to be sent with dispatch riders, pigeons, ships or through smoke signs.
FIRST TELEPHONE CALL
Scottish scientist Bell dedicated all his life to education of the deaf. On the other hand, he worked on developing telegraph to make money. During his experiments, he heard sound vibrations reflected on the wire he stretched between two rooms. Thanks to his extensive knowledge of the human ear, on how it amplifies the vibrations and wires, Bell realized that it was possible to transmit human voice. His studies and efforts yielded results and he applied for the patent of telephone as a new means of communication. Bell was granted the patent he applied for, on March 7 th, 1876. Three days later, the first telephone call was made. As Graham Bell, the inventor of this new invention, was on one end, electrical engineer Thomas Watson who assisted Bell to invent telephone was on the other. The first conversation on the phone was as follows: "Mr. Watson! Come here. I want to see you."

In 1892, Alexander Graham Bell made an attempt to make the first long-distance telephone call and his sound reached from New York to Chicago. So the telephone network rapidly expanded soon after it emerged. It initially spread to America and later to the whole world within a period of ten years.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF TELEPHONE
March 7th 1876 Alexander Graham Bell was granted the patent of telephone, he had been working on for a long time.

March 10th 1876 Graham Bell made the first successful telephone call with his assistant Thomas Watson.

October 18th 1892 The first successful long-distance telephone call was made between New York and Chicago.

May 23rd 1909 The first manual telephone central of Turkey started providing services in Istanbul.

March 6th 1983 Motorola launched the first mobile cellphone DynaTAC 8000X for consumer use.

July 1st 1992 Finnish Prime Minister Harri Holkeri made the first GSM call of the world.

August 15th 1996 The first smartphone in the history Nokia 900 Communicator was launched.

January 9th 2007 Apple introduced "iPhone" with three major features (touchscreen, music player and internet)

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Graham Bell's World-Changing Invention - TR Dergisi

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Invented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876, today we carry telephones at all times and use it for many purposes apart from communicating. While the inventions of some inventors get lost in the mists of time without making a mark on history, inventions made by some inventors are powerful enough to change every aspect of our everyday life.

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Printing Press - Invented, Gutenberg, Significance | HISTORY

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The printing press, which allows for the mass production of printed matter, originated in China before Johannes Guten…

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History of the Printed Newspaper

Keep reading to learn more about the history of the newspaper and its impact on modern society.

1 The first newspaper (when were newspapers invented?)

People have long circulated news via word-of-mouth, and as language evolved into writing and literacy - and governments played larger roles in people's lives - sharing information became a necessity. However, disseminating news and information on paper presented significant challenges. When each copy had to be handwritten, mass distribution was impossible.

2 Ancient news media

Still, early civilizations did distribute news. In China, one of the earliest forms of news media was known as the tipao. Created as early as 202 BC, these were "palace reports or imperial bulletins" distributed by the government and intended for bureaucrats. Any news for public consumption might have been distributed via posted announcements - basically, the forerunners of modern-day posters.

In ancient Rome, Acta diurna were published prior to 59 BC (as early as 131 BC). These were daily gazettes, or news sheets, created by the government that contained information for the public: political news, military campaigns, trials, and executions. They were first chiseled in stone or metal; later, they were handwritten and distributed in public forums or read from scrolls by town criers. Acta diurna are often considered precursors to the modern newspaper.

Though both ancient Romans and Chinese - as well as other ancient civilizations - had early forms of news media, they do not qualify as newspapers because they could not be mass-distributed.

The invention of the printing press paved the way for "true" newspapers

The first true newspapers arrived after Johannes Gutenberg introduced his movable type printing press to the European world around 1440. Though printing presses with movable type had existed in eastern Asia for around two centuries, they never made it to Europe; furthermore, Gutenberg's version made it significantly faster to mass produce documents. By 1500, the printing press had made its way throughout Europe, and news sheets (or news books) were mass-distributed.

The first weekly newspaper was published in Germany by Johann Carolus in 1604. Called Relation aller Fürnemmen und gedenckwürdigen Historien, the publication satisfied the four tenets of a "true" newspaper:

Accessibility by the public

Published at a regular interval (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.)

Information is current

Covers a variety of topics (politics, events, entertainment, sports, etc.)

Despite meeting the requirements for a newspaper, there is some debate as to whether The Relation qualifies as the world's first newspaper since it was printed in quarto, not folio, size. It's worth noting the World Association of Newspapers considers The Relation the first true newspaper.

Other German newspapers followed, and in 1618 the world's first broadsheet newspaper printed in folio size was published in Amsterdam, called Courante uyt Italien, Duytslandt, &c. The newspaper format soon spread throughout Europe, with newspapers published in Spain, France, and Sweden.

The first English newspaper was published in 1665 in Oxford, England. Known as the Oxford Gazette, the newspaper moved to London in 1666 and was renamed the London Gazette. It's still being published today.

Soon after, the newspaper became a staple in all major European countries. It then made its way to the New World.

3 The history of newspapers in America

Like their European counterparts, but to a lesser extent, early European colonies in American printed news sheets. The first American news sheet was printed in Mexico in 1541, and described an earthquake in Guatemala.

The first true American newspaper wasn't introduced until 1690, when Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick was published in Boston. The publisher, Benjamin Harris, was arrested for including political criticisms and his newspaper was suppressed - all known copies were destroyed.

In 1704, postmaster John Campbell published the Boston News-Letter, and it became the first successful newspaper in America. Unlike Harris, Campbell did not engage in political discussion to avoid upsetting colonial authority. The same cannot be said for James Franklin, who was jailed after criticizing the colonial government.

Soon after, Franklin was forbidden to publish anything without government approval, and he turned the paper over to his brother, Benjamin Franklin, who became one of the most influential printers, publishers, statesmen, and revolutionists in American history.

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS

Throughout history, governments strived to oppress newspaper publishers and journalists who used their platforms for political criticism. In England, John Milton's 1644 treatise Areopagatica promoted the idea of freedom of the press, which was ultimately granted by British Parliament.

One landmark case paved the way for freedom of the press in America, when Britain still had colonial control. In 1734, New York governor William Cosby had John Peter Zenger arrested for political criticism lobbied in Zenger's New York Weekly Journal. Despite the judge's wishes, the jury returned with a "not guilty" verdict. The verdict was monumental because it demonstrated papers could publish political criticism without fear of retribution, and because it caused the British to fear no American jury would convict an American journalist.

Later, freedom of the press was guaranteed in the United States by the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights in 1791; however, the Sedition Act of 1798 forbid "writing, printing, uttering, or publishing any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States." Two years later, freedom of the press was preserved when one of Benjamin Franklin's compatriots, Thomas Jefferson, allowed the Sedition Act to lapse.

Other newspapers followed, and around two dozen newspapers were published in American by the start of the Revolutionary War. By the end of the war in 1783, there were 43 newspapers published in the colonies; and by 1814 that number expanded to 346.

At first, newspapers were only available to wealthy Americans, those who were literate and could afford to pay for subscriptions in advance. The subscriptions typically cost what a general laborer would make in an entire week of work, so most could not afford them.

That all changed in the 1830s, when advances in printing and papermaking made it possible to sell newspapers for one cent per copy. Increased literacy as well as technological advancements such as the telegraph - which made it possible to quickly share news over great distances - and the rotary press contributed to newspaper growth. The "Penny Press" made newspapers affordable to the entire public and spurred an explosion of newspaper publishing across the United States.

4 Newspapers flourished in the Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution spawned giant presses capable of printing 10,000 papers per hour, and contributing to massive growth in the newspaper industry - from 2,526 newspapers in 1850 to more than 11,000 newspapers by 1880. By 1890, some papers boasted circulations in excess of one million copies.

In addition to mass production, the technologies of the Industrial Revolution made it possible to feature detailed illustrations, published as pictorial weeklies. These illustrations were printed from woodcut engravings made from reporters' sketches or another new, revolutionary technology: photographs.

The Civil War likewise contributed to the popularity of newspapers, as battlefield reporters commanded national attention with their accounts of the war. By the time the Civil War ended, newspapers had become engrained in American culture.

THE INFLUENCE OF NEWSPAPERS

Why did governments want to suppress early newspapers? The pen is mightier than the sword, and newspapers carried enormous influence over the populace. Pioneering newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst allegedly used the power of the press to manufacture the Spanish-American War. By pushing for U.S. involvement, Hearst was able to influence public opinion; once the war began, he was then able to sell more papers covering it.

Hearst also used newspapers to attack President William McKinley, who was assassinated. Though it can't be said Hearst's actions caused the assassination, it's undeniable his newspapers influenced public sentiment.

Another famous example is the "Join, or Die" snake editorial cartoon published by Benjamin Franklin in his Pennsylvania Gazette in 1754. The cartoon was reprinted in newspapers throughout the colonies and promoted the idea of strength in unity as colonists resisted French expansion. Ultimately, those same ideals were incorporated when the colonists revolted and won their independence from England.

5 Newspapers over the past century

By the early 20th century, newspapers included the features we recognize in modern newspapers today: banner headlines, photos and illustrations, comics, and sports coverage, in addition to the political and event news that have always been newspaper staples.

Color photographs and other color elements changed the look of the newspaper; and though color printing seems a modern advancement, the first color comic in an American newspaper made its appearance in 1894. It wasn't the first use of color in newspapers - the Milwaukee Journal used blue and red to commemorate an election in 1891 - but color printing is expensive, and newspapers didn't adopt it as mainstream until the 1990s - after USA Today stirred controversy with its color coverage in 1982. According to the New York Times, the number of North American newspapers that incorporated color increased from 12 percent in 1979 to 97 percent by 1993. Newspaper design has evolved with the addition of color.

Although still at the top of the information food chain, newspapers began to face serious competition with the mass production of the radio beginning in the 1920s and television beginning in the 1940s. They were also threatened by huge conglomerates, which purchased smaller publications for large chains that, in addition to earning increased advertising dollars, could push political and other agendas.

Today, the newspaper industry continues to face challenges as the Digital Age threatens the survival of the newspaper as we know it.

6 The future of newspapers in the Digital Age

The number of daily newspapers in the U.S. has decreased from 1,730 in 1981 to 1,331 in 2014, the latest year figures were available. That trend is likely to continue as consumer consumption of news has shifted toward digital delivery, which is cheaper from a production standpoint. As print newspapers decrease, the number of unique visitors to newspaper websites increases - the average monthly number of unique visitors for the top 50 newspapers increased from 8.2 million in 2014 to 11.7 million in 2016.

Perhaps a more telling trend: from 2014 to 2015, newspaper ad revenues fell by seven percent; during that same period, digital ad revenues for online newspapers increased by 20 percent.

In 2015, digital audiences for online newspapers peaked at nearly 180 million readers; that same year, paid circulation for U.S. newspapers was just 37.7 million (down from 53.3 million in 2005).

Still, there's something to be said for printed newspapers. Of the estimated five billion newspaper readers in the world, three billion read print newspapers. Moreover, millennials have been documented to enjoy receiving print mailers - the tangible nature of print is perhaps more meaningful, and this could lend itself to continued print newspaper production. In addition, certain niches and industries might prefer print over digital; particularly demographically-targeted industries that focus on senior citizens and others who might be reticent to adapt to an online world.

Ultimately, however, the almighty dollar is likely to prevail: if it's cheaper to produce an online newspaper, yet possible to achieve greater ad revenues, business-minded publishers will increasingly focus on delivering digital content and drop print production altogether.

7 Additional resources

The Printing Press - A look at the invention which helped change the newspaper industry.

History of Printing - Historical perspective on how the printing press changed the way the world communicated.

Printing Timeline - Educational look at a timeline of various types of printing dating back several thousand years B.C.

Journalism Timeline - Useful page which covers many important moments in American journalism due to the printing press.

Printing Yesterday and Today - Informative site which discusses how newspapers were printed in the past and today.

History of the Printing Press - Helpful information on the invention of the printing press and its developments in time.

Advancements in Newspaper Printing

Online and Future of Newspapers

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History of the Printed Newspaper Keep reading to learn more about the history of the newspaper and its impact on modern society. People have long circulated news via word-of-mouth, and as language evolved into writing and literacy - and governments played larger roles in people's lives - sharing information became a necessity.

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Introduction

Published 1997

Barry M. Leiner, Vinton G. Cerf, David D. Clark, Robert E. Kahn, Leonard Kleinrock, Daniel C. Lynch, Jon Postel, Larry G. Roberts, Stephen Wolff

The Internet has revolutionized the computer and communications world like nothing before. The invention of the telegraph, telephone, radio, and computer set the stage for this unprecedented integration of capabilities. The Internet is at once a world-wide broadcasting capability, a mechanism for information dissemination, and a medium for collaboration and interaction between individuals and their computers without regard for geographic location. The Internet represents one of the most successful examples of the benefits of sustained investment and commitment to research and development of information infrastructure. Beginning with the early research in packet switching, the government, industry and academia have been partners in evolving and deploying this exciting new technology. Today, terms like "[email protected] " and " http://www.acm.org" trip lightly off the tongue of the random person on the street. 1

This is intended to be a brief, necessarily cursory and incomplete history. Much material currently exists about the Internet, covering history, technology, and usage. A trip to almost any bookstore will find shelves of material written about the Internet. 2

In this paper,3 several of us involved in the development and evolution of the Internet share our views of its origins and history. This history revolves around four distinct aspects. There is the technological evolution that began with early research on packet switching and the ARPANET (and related technologies), and where current research continues to expand the horizons of the infrastructure along several dimensions, such as scale, performance, and higher-level functionality. There is the operations and management aspect of a global and complex operational infrastructure. There is the social aspect, which resulted in a broad community of Internauts working together to create and evolve the technology. And there is the commercialization aspect, resulting in an extremely effective transition of research results into a broadly deployed and available information infrastructure.

The Internet today is a widespread information infrastructure, the initial prototype of what is often called the National (or Global or Galactic) Information Infrastructure. Its history is complex and involves many aspects - technological, organizational, and community. And its influence reaches not only to the technical fields of computer communications but throughout society as we move toward increasing use of online tools to accomplish electronic commerce, information acquisition, and community operations.

Did you find this resource helpful? By donating any amount, you help fund more research and content like this.

Footnotes

1 Perhaps this is an exaggeration based on the lead author's residence in Silicon Valley.
2 On a recent trip to a Tokyo bookstore, one of the authors counted 14 English language magazines devoted to the Internet.
3 An abbreviated version of this article appears in the 50th anniversary issue of the CACM, Feb. 97. The authors would like to express their appreciation to Andy Rosenbloom, CACM Senior Editor, for both instigating the writing of this article and his invaluable assistance in editing both this and the abbreviated version.
4 The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) changed its name to Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 1971, then back to ARPA in 1993, and back to DARPA in 1996. We refer throughout to DARPA, the current name.
5 It was from the RAND study that the false rumor started claiming that the ARPANET was somehow related to building a network resistant to nuclear war. This was never true of the ARPANET, only the unrelated RAND study on secure voice considered nuclear war. However, the later work on Internetting did emphasize robustness and survivability, including the capability to withstand losses of large portions of the underlying networks.
6 Including amongst others Vint Cerf, Steve Crocker, and Jon Postel. Joining them later were David Crocker who was to play an important role in documentation of electronic mail protocols, and Robert Braden, who developed the first NCP and then TCP for IBM mainframes and also was to play a long term role in the ICCB and IAB.
7 This was subsequently published as V. G. Cerf and R. E. Kahn, "A protocol for packet network intercommunication", IEEE Trans. Comm. Tech., vol. COM-22, V 5, pp. 627-641, May 1974.
8 The desirability of email interchange, however, led to one of the first "Internet books": !%@:: A Directory of Electronic Mail Addressing and Networks, by Frey and Adams, on email address translation and forwarding.
9 Originally named Federal Research Internet Coordinating Committee, FRICC. The FRICC was originally formed to coordinate U.S. research network activities in support of the international coordination provided by the CCIRN.
10 The decommissioning of the ARPANET was commemorated on its 20th anniversary by a UCLA symposium in 1989.

References

P. Baran, "On Distributed Communications Networks", IEEE Trans. Comm. Systems, March 1964.
V. G. Cerf and R. E. Kahn, "A protocol for packet network interconnection", IEEE Trans. Comm. Tech., vol. COM-22, V 5, pp. 627-641, May 1974.
S. Crocker, RFC001 Host software, Apr-07-1969.
R. Kahn, Communications Principles for Operating Systems. Internal BBN memorandum, Jan. 1972.
Proceedings of the IEEE, Special Issue on Packet Communication Networks, Volume 66, No. 11, November 1978. (Guest editor: Robert Kahn, associate guest editors: Keith Uncapher and Harry van Trees)
L. Kleinrock, "Information Flow in Large Communication Nets", RLE Quarterly Progress Report, July 1961.
L. Kleinrock, Communication Nets: Stochastic Message Flow and Delay, Mcgraw-Hill (New York), 1964.
L. Kleinrock, Queueing Systems: Vol II, Computer Applications, John Wiley and Sons (New York), 1976
J.C.R. Licklider & W. Clark, "On-Line Man Computer Communication", August 1962.
L. Roberts & T. Merrill, "Toward a Cooperative Network of Time-Shared Computers", Fall AFIPS Conf., Oct. 1966.
L. Roberts, "Multiple Computer Networks and Intercomputer Communication", ACM Gatlinburg Conf., October 1967.

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A Brief History of the Internet - Internet Society

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Read a brief history of the Internet-from those who made it. Learn about its origins, concepts, documentation, and more.

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Date:

1976 - present

...(Show more)

Apple Inc., formerly Apple Computer, Inc., American manufacturer of personal computers, smartphones, tablet computers, computer peripherals, and computer software and one of the most recognizable brands in the world. It was the first successful personal computer company and the popularizer of the graphical user interface. Headquarters are located in Cupertino, California.

Garage start-up

Apple Inc. had its genesis in the lifelong dream of Stephen G. Wozniak to build his own computer-a dream that was made suddenly feasible with the arrival in 1975 of the first commercially successful microcomputer, the Altair 8800, which came as a kit and used the recently invented microprocessor chip. Encouraged by his friends at the Homebrew Computer Club, a San Francisco Bay area group centred around the Altair, Wozniak quickly came up with a plan for his own microcomputer. In 1976, when the Hewlett-Packard Company, where Wozniak was an engineering intern, expressed no interest in his design, Wozniak, then 26 years old, together with a former high-school classmate, 21-year-old Steve Jobs, moved production operations to the Jobs family garage. Jobs and Wozniak named their company Apple. For working capital, Jobs sold his Volkswagen minibus and Wozniak his programmable calculator. Their first model was simply a working circuit board, but at Jobs's insistence the 1977 version was a stand-alone machine in a custom-molded plastic case, in contrast to the forbidding steel boxes of other early machines. This Apple II also offered a colour display and other features that made Wozniak's creation the first microcomputer that appealed to the average person.

Commercial success

Though he was a brash business novice whose appearance still bore traces of his hippie past, Jobs understood that in order for the company to grow, it would require professional management and substantial funding. He convinced Regis McKenna, a well-known public relations specialist for the semiconductor industry, to represent the company; he also secured an investment from Michael Markkula, a wealthy veteran of the Intel Corporation who became Apple's largest shareholder and an influential member of Apple's board of directors. The company became an instant success, particularly after Wozniak invented a disk controller that allowed the addition of a low-cost floppy disk drive that made information storage and retrieval fast and reliable. With room to store and manipulate data, the Apple II became the computer of choice for legions of amateur programmers. Most notably, in 1979 two Bostonians-Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston-introduced the first personal computer spreadsheet, VisiCalc, creating what would later be known as a "killer app" (application): a software program so useful that it propels hardware sales.

While VisiCalc opened up the small-business and consumer market for the Apple II, another important early market was primary educational institutions. By a combination of aggressive discounts and donations (and an absence of any early competition), Apple established a commanding presence among educational institutions, contributing to its platform's dominance of primary-school software well into the 1990s.

Competition from IBM

Apple's profits and size grew at a historic rate: by 1980 the company netted over $100 million and had more than 1,000 employees. Its public offering in December was the biggest since 1956, when the Ford Motor Company had gone public. (Indeed, by the end of 1980, Apple's valuation of nearly $2 billion was greater than Ford's.) However, Apple would soon face competition from the computer industry's leading player, International Business Machines Corporation. IBM had waited for the personal computer market to grow before introducing its own line of personal computers, the IBM PC, in 1981. IBM broke with its tradition of using only proprietary hardware components and software and built a machine from readily available components, including the Intel microprocessor, and used DOS (disk operating system) from the Microsoft Corporation. Because other manufacturers could use the same hardware components that IBM used, as well as license DOS from Microsoft, new software developers could count on a wide IBM PC-compatible market for their software. Soon the new system had its own killer app: the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet, which won an instant constituency in the business community-a market that the Apple II had failed to penetrate.

Macintosh and the first affordable GUI

Apple had its own plan to regain leadership: a sophisticated new generation of computers that would be dramatically easier to use. In 1979 Jobs had led a team of engineers to see the innovations created at the Xerox Corporation's Palo Alto (California) Research Center ( PARC). There they were shown the first functional graphical user interface (GUI), featuring on-screen windows, a pointing device known as a mouse, and the use of icons, or pictures, to replace the awkward protocols required by all other computers. Apple immediately incorporated these ideas into two new computers: Lisa, released in 1983, and the lower-cost Macintosh, released in 1984. Jobs himself took over the latter project, insisting that the computer should be not merely great but "insanely great." The result was a revelation-perfectly in tune with the unconventional, science-fiction-esque television commercial that introduced the Macintosh during the broadcast of the 1984 Super Bowl-a $2,500 computer unlike any that preceded it.

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Apple Inc. | History, Products, Headquarters, & Facts

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American manufacturer of personal computers, smartphones, and tablet computers. It was the first successful personal computer company and the popularizer of the graphical user interface. Such products as the iPod, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch became hugely popular products in the 21st century.

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The system of international maritime signal flags is a way of representing individual letters of the alphabet in signals to or from ships. It is a component of the International Code of Signals. Nautical signal flags can be used in various methods:

Each flag spells out a letter of an alphabetic message.

Individual signal flags have specific and standard meanings; for example, diving support vessels raise the "A flag" indicating their inability to move from their current location because they have a diver underwater.

One or more flags form a code word whose meaning can be looked up in a code book held by both parties. An example is the Popham numeric code used at the Battle of Trafalgar.

In yacht racing and dinghy racing, nautical signal flags have other meanings; for example, the P flag is used as the "preparatory" flag to indicate an imminent start, and the S flag means "shortened course".

Note: NATO uses an extra set of flags to communicate specific types of messages.

See the gallery by type:

Click here for the gallery on Maritime Flags. Decorate your home and boat with our selection of Nautical Flags, Banners, Pennants and Decorations.

Brush up on your boating knowledge with our handy Boating Flag Traditions and Etiquette guide.

International Code Signal Letters

Letter

Flag

Meaning

Buy Flags

The Blue Peter. In harbor: All persons should report on board as the vessel is about to proceed to sea. At sea: It may be used by fishing vessels to mean: "My nets have come fast upon an obstruction".

* N and C together (No and Yes) is used as a distress signal.

International Code Numbers

NATO Signal Flags

Storm Warning Flags

Purchase the complete Storm Warning Flag set here. For Beach Warning Flags click here.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.

It uses material from the Wikipedia article "International Maritime Signal Flags".

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The system of international maritime signal flags is a way of representing individual letters of the alphabet in signals to or from ships. It is a component of the International Code of Signals. Nautical signal flags can be used in various methods.

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Wild Weather Jobs: SARSAT Search and Rescue Specialist

Picture this: you and three of your good friends take a brand-new, homemade sailboat for a maiden voyage off the coast of Florida. You find out that the boat is not as seaworthy as you had hoped. As night falls, you make it 20 miles off shore before the unthinkable happens-it sinks.

You and your buddies are stuck in the middle of the ocean with nothing but the pitch-black darkness and the cool ocean waters around you. You drift aimlessly as the currents and winds take you even further off course.

Yet somehow, in that total darkness, an aircraft above sees your bobbing heads floating above the water. Help is on the way!

This isn't some far-fetched story. It actually happened, according to Coast Guard search and rescue specialist Christopher Eddy.

Satellites to the rescue!

Eddy is one of the folks who receive distress signals from people in need of a speedy rescue. He organizes and oversees the search and rescue attempt.

But finding the people in distress can be like "looking for coconuts in the water at night," Eddy says. And, people are constantly moving because of currents and winds. In fact, our wayward sailors were 30 miles away from where their boat sank when they were found.

A SARSAT beacon (SARSAT stands for Search and Rescue Satellite Aided Tracking) is what saved them that day. When the sailors' boat sank, they turned on their beacon, which sent a distress signal to a satellite.

That satellite then relayed the signal to the SARSAT Mission Control Center based at NOAA's Satellite Operations Facility in Suitland, Md, which then relayed it to Miami, the closest rescue coordination center, where Eddy received it.

He immediately sent out a plane capable of tracking the radio signal from the beacon. This plane located the sailors and directed rescue crews right toward them.

Eddy is often the first person that receives the data from these beacons-computers run the system automatically before the information reaches him. He must immediately assess whether or not the information is reliable, and then figure out the best way to send help.

Eddy's job is an important one. "It's not like you can just push a button," he says, "you have to do a lot of work." He is part mission coordinator and part detective. After setting up the rescue effort, he must learn as much as he can about the owner of the beacon, and about any boat or plane involved.

How did he get such a cool job?

Eddy knows a lot about every aspect of the search and rescue process. As an active duty Coast Guardsman, Eddy participated in lots of rescues-often finding himself piloting tiny boats many miles off shore to locate and rescue victims, gaining valuable experience along the way. And now, due to the popularity of the warm Florida waters, he oversees rescues at one of the largest and most complex search and rescue coordination centers in the country as a civilian.

Without skilled leaders like Eddy, it's possible that our sailors' scary story could have had a bad ending. Instead, experience, satellites, and a tiny SARSAT beacon combined to create a happy ending for a very unfortunate situation.

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Wild Weather Jobs: SARSAT Search and Rescue Specialist Picture this: you and three of your good friends take a brand-new, homemade sailboat for a maiden voyage off the coast of Florida. You find out that the boat is not as seaworthy as you had hoped.

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Deganawida was instrumental in founding the League of the Iroquois.

Deganawida is best known as the great leader who, with Hiawatha, founded the League of the Iroquois. Although the story of Deganawida's life is based primarily on legend, all accounts of the league's formation credit Deganawida for his efforts. In addition to his persuasive vision of unified Iroquois tribes, Deganawida was instrumental in defining and establishing the structure and code of the Iroquois league.

It is believed that Deganawida was born around the 1550s in the Kingston, Ontario, area and was one of seven brothers born to Huron parents. According to legend, Deganawida's birth was marked by a vision his mother had that her newborn son would be indirectly responsible for the destruction of the Hurons. She, along with Deganawida's grandmother, tried to protect the Hurons by attempting three times to drown him in a river. Each morning after the attempts, Deganawida was found unharmed in his mother's arms. After the third unsuccessful attempt, Deganawida's mother resigned herself to her son's existence.

Creates the League of the Iroquois

When Deganawida was grown, he journeyed south to carry out his mission of peace among the Iroquois. He met Hiawatha (not the Hiawatha of Longfellow's poem), a Mohawk, who joined him in his efforts to create an alliance of the Oneidas, Cayugas, Onondagas, Senacas, and Mohawks. Deganawida acted as the visionary and, because Deganawida had a speech impediment, Hiawatha served as his spokesman. Deganawida's message to the Iroquois was that all men are brothers; therefore, they should cease their practices of killing, scalping, and cannibalism. Together, Deganawida and Hiawatha convinced the five tribes to make peace and join together in an alliance of friendship, rather than persist with their attempts to destroy each other. The powerful Onondaga chief, Thadodaho (also known as Atotarho, Adario), who initially had been strongly opposed to the union of the five tribes, marked the beginning of the alliance when he made the decision to join. Deganawida also tried, without success, to encourage the Erie and neutral tribes to join the alliance. Their refusal resulted in their eventual dispersal by the Iroquois in the 1650s. Deganawida's effort to persuade them to join may have been prompted by their friendly disposition toward the Hurons, unlike the other Iroquois. Sometime after Deganawida's death, his mother's earlier vision was realized when the Huron nation was destroyed by the Iroquois.

The alliance of the five tribes was referred to as the League of the Iroquois (also known as The Iroquois Five Nation Confederacy; after the Tuscaroras joined in the early eighteenth century, it was known as the Six Nations). The exact date of the founding of the league is unknown. The purposes of the league were to bring peace, to build strength, and to create goodwill among the five nations in order for them to become invulnerable to attack from external enemies and to division from within. The code of the league summarized the intent of Deganawida and the confederate chiefs to establish "The Great Peace." Out of this code was created the Pine Tree Chiefs. Deganawida served as one of those chiefs, who were chosen by merit rather than by heredity.

A grand council of all the chiefs of the five tribes gathered at Onondaga, the most centrally located of the five tribes, to establish the laws and customs of the league. Each tribe had an equal voice in the council despite the fact that the number of chiefs representing each tribe varied. As the council developed over the years, it became immersed in matters of diplomacy, including war and peace, associations with other tribes, and treaties with the European settlers on their borders. Deganawida is credited with the development of the advanced political system of the league, which was primarily democratic and also allowed women a major role. Many of the principles, laws, and regulations of the league are attributed to Deganawida.

By 1677, the league had developed into the most powerful of all the North American Indian confederations and consisted of approximately 16,000 people. The successful union begun by Deganawida flourished into the nineteenth century. After its peak of influence, the league began its collapse as a result of many contributing factors, including the influence of outsiders, the supply of trade goods, the control of military posts, the old covenants with the whites, the rivalry between warriors and chiefs, and structural weaknesses. However, the league owed the several centuries of influence it enjoyed to the prominent leadership of Deganawida, as evidenced by his astuteness in negotiations and by his wisdom in framing the laws and principles that served as the basis for the entire structure of the league.

Further Reading on Deganawida

Dockstader, Frederick J., Great North American Indians, New York, Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1977; 71-72.

Graymont, Barbara, The Iroquois in the American Revolution, New York, Syracuse University Press, 1972; 14, 47, 128, 296.

Handbook of American Indians, edited by Frederick Webb Hodge, New York, Rowman and Littlefield, 1971; 383-384.

Leitch, Barbara A., Chronology of the American Indian, St. Clair Shores, Michigan, Scholarly Press, Inc., 1975; 82.

Tooker, Elisabeth, "The League of the Iroquois: Its History, Politics, and Rituals," in Handbook of North American Indians, edited by William C. Sturtevant, Smithsonian Institution, 1978; 422-424.

Waldman, Carl, Who Was Who in Native American History, New York, Facts on File, 1990; 96-97.

Wallace, Anthony F. C., The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca, New York, Knopf, 1969; 42, 44, 97-98.

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Deganawida was instrumental in founding the League of the Iroquois. Deganawida is best known as the great leader who, with Hiawatha, founded the League of the Iroquois. Although the story of Deganawida's life is based primarily on legend, all accounts of the league's formation credit Deganawida for his efforts.

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Dekanahwideh: The Great Peacemaker - Huron

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A future for South Africa... moving towards democracy

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Led to signing a Declaration of Peace

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She studied chimpanzees in Tanzania and she learned their language, and she learned how to speak their language.

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She studied chimpanzees in Tanzania and she learned their language, and she learned how to speak their language.

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She learned how to communicate with the chimpanzees.

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She learned how to communicate with the chimpanzees.

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A diary, a witness who made a voice recording or a video, a newspaper report, an interview with the person. 

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A diary, a witness who made a voice recording or a video, a newspaper report, an interview with the person. 

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A work of art, a photograph, a drawing of that person that was drawn in person, artifact: like paper with writing, archeological sources.

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website, encyclopedia, YouTube, everything that is not Primary is Secondary. 

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website, encyclopedia, YouTube, everything that is not Primary is Secondary. 