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The history of telecommunication began with the use of smoke signals and drums in Africa, the Americas and parts of Asia. In the 1790s, the first fixed semaphore systems emerged in Europe; however it was not until the 1830s that electrical telecommunicationsystems started to appear. This article details the history of telecommunication and the individuals who helped make telecommunication systems what they are today. The history of telecommunication is an important part of the larger history of communication.

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A brief overview of Telecommunication History

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A brief overview of major miles stones in the development of the communication infrastructure. From the early days of the Bell system to fiber optics and digital communication.

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Uploaded by Agung Goldhiva on 2015-05-28.

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Since the end of the 19th century, the way people communicate has been completely transformed. No longer beholden to pen and parchment, people can now deliver massive amounts of data with the push of a button. New communication technologies have connected not only people but also businesses, changing the way people interact on a daily basis.

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Telephone

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Alexander Graham Bell revolutionized the way people communicate with his patent on the telephone in 1876. Over the past century, advances in technology have replaced the heavy hardware and metal wiring of the original design with lightweight microcircuitry. These advancements have also allowed for the transition from landlines to wireless, freeing people to communicate from remote locations. All over the world, millions of people can talk to each other, expanding businesses and improving relationships that might not otherwise have survived across long distances. Telephones also allow for instant communication, and new technology integrates video and Internet.

The first telephones, as well as their modern counterparts, consist of a ringer, transmitter, dialer, switch hook, power source and anti-sidetone circuit, all of which have been advanced by new technology.

Radio

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In 1906, Reginald Fessenden, creator of the first sophisticated radio transmitter, expanding on the ideas of Guglielmo Marconi, sent music and speech across the airwaves. This invention of the radio allowed sound and information to be broadcast to an extremely wide audience. Radio reached its golden age during the 1920s, and companies advertised their products to consumers around the world. During the 1930s radio expanded further into news, politics, vaudeville routines and sporting events, broadcasting into millions of homes every day.

Television

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Television was introduced to the public in 1946, even though it had been experimented with since the late 1920s. Television exploded in homes around the world, going from 940,000 households in the beginning to 20 million by 1953. Corporations suddenly had the opportunity to show their products, not just describe them. Over the following decades, television became the predominant source of communication to a wide audience, and it changed the political and cultural landscape forever. People were suddenly able to witness iconic events, such as the first moon landing and the progression of the civil rights movement.

A major criticism was that television reduced complex events into simple entertainment, but television was here to stay, changing the way people received their news.

Internet

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The creation of the Internet allowed computer networks from around the globe to network with each other, giving individuals access to an incredible wealth of information. In 2010, about half of the world's population has access to the Internet, growing from only 6 percent of the population in 2000.

Email, social networks, newsgroups and video transmission have connected the world like never before. Privacy concerns have arisen with the proliferation of the Internet, especially with government monitoring and certain social networking sites, but the Internet has woven itself into the fabric of society and business. High-speed connections allow for an immense amount of information to be transferred in seconds.

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Types of Communication Technology | Techwalla.com

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Since the end of the 19th century, the way people communicate has been completely transformed. No longer beholden to pen and parchment, people can now deliver massive amounts of data with the push of a button. New communication technologies have connected not only people but also businesses, changing the way people interact on a daily basis.

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A telecommunications network is a collection of terminal nodes, links are connected so as to enable telecommunication between the terminals. The transmission links connect the nodes together.

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Telecommunication Systems

Consider for a moment all the different communications that take place in an organization. Some communications are face to face, but others use some type of technology. Think of email, phone calls, text messaging, viewing pages on the Internet, downloading files. All of these communications make use of a telecommunications system. A telecommunications system is a collection of nodes and links to enable telecommunication. Telecommunication is communication at a distance using electrical signals or electromagnetic waves.

Examples of telecommunications systems are the telephone network, the radio broadcasting system, computer networks and the Internet. The nodes in the system are the devices we use to communicate with, such as a telephone or a computer.

Components of a Telecommunication System

In its most fundamental form, a telecommunication system includes a transmitter to take information and convert it to a signal, a transmission medium to carry the signal and a receiver to take the signal and convert it back into usable information. This applies to any communication system, whether it uses computers or not.

Most modern day telecommunications systems are best described in terms of a network. This includes the basic elements listed above but also the infrastructure and controls needed to support the system. There are six basic components to a telecommunications network.

1. Input and output devices, also referred to as 'terminals'

These provide the starting and stopping points of all communication. A telephone is an example of a terminal. In computer networks, these devices are commonly referred to as 'nodes' and consist of computer and peripheral devices.

2. Telecommunication channels, which transmit and receive data

This includes various types of cables and wireless radio frequencies.

3. Telecommunication processors, which provide a number of control and support functions

For example, in many systems, data needs to be converted from analog to digital and back.

4. Control software, which is responsible for controlling the functionality and activities of the network

5. Messages represent the actual data that is being transmitted

In the case of a telephone network, the messages would consist of audio as well as data.

6. Protocols specify how each type of telecommunication systems handle the messages

For example, GSM and 3G are protocols for mobile phone communications, and TCP/IP is a protocol for communications over the Internet.

While early telecommunication systems were built without computers, almost all systems we use today are computerized in some way.

Computer Network

A computer network is a system of computers and peripheral devices that are connected electronically. These connected computers can communicate with each other, which means that they can share information. Each computer has its own network address, so it can be uniquely identified among all the computers in a network. Computer networks are able to carry different types of data and support different applications.

Computers are connected using a number of different types of communication channels. These include both wired and wireless connections. Wired connections consist of an actual physical cable, such as copper wire or fiber optics. Wireless connections do not use a physical cable but transfer data using waves at a particular part of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Why do we need a computer network? Transferring files between individual computers can be accomplished using physical media, such as DVDs or external hard drives, but a computer network makes it possible to transfer data between computers without having to use physical media.

Some of the advantages of computer networks are:

File sharing

Internet connection sharing

Sharing of peripheral devices

Improved cost efficiency

Increased storage capacity

The network itself can also carry out tasks that are difficult for any single computer to do. These network services have become increasingly important as many different types of devices are connected to each other.

Different Types of Networks

There are a number of different ways to describe computer networks, including network size, transmission media, management method and network topology. Network size relates to the geographic area occupied by the computers and the network and the behavior of the computers when data is shared. For example, a local area network, or LAN, consists of a computer network at a single site, typically an individual building. A wide area network, or WAN, occupies a very large area, such as an entire country or the entire world. The Internet is the best-known example of a WAN.

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the components of a telecommunications system - video & lesson transcript | study.com

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The Components of a Telecommunications System - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com

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Consider for a moment all the different communications that take place in an organization. Some communications are face to face, but others use some type of technology. Think of email, phone calls, text messaging, viewing pages on the Internet, downloading files. All of these communications make use of a telecommunications system.

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This website shows the basic types of technology in the 80s.

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80's Technology, a timeline made with Timetoast's free interactive timeline making software.