1600’s
to 1700’s
Businesses
started to use printing techniques all over Europe and the business sheets
later turned into non-business news and the newspapers were born along
with advertising. Printing expanded in the 1700’s and letters increased
as more and more people could read and write and postal services were
created.
In the
late 1700’s a French engineer named Claude Chappe devised a means of
long distance communication. It was a visual telegraph and messages could
be read across European cities. These messages were read from tower to
tower using a telescope.
Telegraph
The
telegraph could send messages only where wires were strung. In 1858, an
underwater telegraph cable was laid across the Atlantic Ocean. But the
cable failed after a few weeks. The first successful transatlantic cable
was laid in 1866, largely due to the efforts of Cyrus W. Field, an
American millionaire, and Lord Kelvin, a British physicist. This
underwater cable made it possible to send a message across the Atlantic in
minutes.