COMMUNICATION AT DISTANCE

With the growth of civilization and the development of written languages came the need to communicate regularly at longer distances as well, so as to conduct the trade and other affairs of nations and empires.

Paper&Print	Postal Services	Telegraph	Telephone	Radio
Picture Com	Television	Computers	Laser Technology	Satellites

Paper and Printing
The Egyptians discovered that a kind of writing material could be made from strips of the stem of the papyrus plant. A later discovery was parchment, which was made by preparing both sides of a sheet of animal tissue for writing uses. Meanwhile in China, about 105 AD, the method of papermaking was discovered. It took over 1000 years for the technique to travel to Europe, and it came at a time when a great demand for books began to appear.

In the middle of the 15th century the German printer Johann Gutenberg used movable type for the first time in Europe to print the Bible.Johann Gutenberg perfected the first practical printing press using movable type. He had seen playing cards printed by using blocks of wood. Perhaps complete books could be printed this way. By 1440 , Gutenberg was experimenting with movable type that could be rearranged in any order and used again and again. At first he carved letters on separate blocks of wood. He used a wooden hand press like a wine press to push the type against the paper .Later he invented molds for casting metal type. The famous two-volume Gutenberg Bible published in 1456 was his masterpiece. Gutenberg's press signaled the beginning of the age of printing.

This technique expanded the opportunities for learning and led to radical changes in the way people lived. It contributed to the growth of individualism, the Reformation, rationalism, scientific inquiry, and regional literatures that reflected the rise of nationalism. Newssheets called corantos began to appear in Europe in the 17th century. At first devoted to trade and other business news, they eventually developed into the first true newspapers and magazines providing the dissemination of current information to the public at large. Printing techniques and applications developed rapidly in general over the next centuries, especially following the growth of steam power and its use for driving presses in the early 19th century and, somewhat later, the invention of typesetting machines. The first such device, called the Linotype, was patented in 1884 by the German-American Ottmar Mergenthaler; a wide range of increasingly rapid and large-scale printing techniques appeared in succeeding decades.

Before paper was invented, many people wrote on scrolls made out of the papyrus plant. By layering, wetting, and then drying layers of the plant's cellulose together, people could create a fine writing surface. This hieroglyphic scroll is part of the Book of the Dead, from ancient Egypt. Its detailed illustrations demonstrate both the durability and quality of papyrus. THE BETTMANN ARCHIVE "Papyrus Scroll,"

Before the invention of printing , the only way anyone could make several copies of a book was to copy it again and again , each time by hand. Every book was rare , unique and expensive. By the 8th century A.D ,the Chinese knew how to make copies by block printing. Artisans carved pictures or picture words on blocks of wood. They carved them backward (like the page you see if you hold a book up to a mirror) so that they would print the right way on pages. Then they coated the surfaces of the wood with ink , placed sheets of paper over the block , and rubbed it. People do a similar thing today with linoleum blocks. The Chinese printed entire books that way.

Printing revolutionized communication and education. By using movable type and a letterpress system, it became possible to print books in large number. Many people could own copies of the same book. Ideas began to spread more rapidly.

Today newspapers use computers and laser beams in their typesetting and printing processes. In addition to printing , communication in the world of business and government has been improved by the use of copying machines. This process is known as xerography.

 

Postal Services
Among the many kinds of communication services in ancient times, the most notable was the relay system of the Persian empire. Persons on horseback could transfer written messages at one relay station to fresh carriers who could then transport it to another station. From this system the Romans developed their own system of posts (Latin positus, the origin of the term "postal service"). Similar systems were also employed in the Far East. Although the postal services of medieval Europe were largely privately owned, the rise of nationalism that followed the Renaissance also resulted in the growth of government-owned postal systems. Private operations had largely come to an end by the 17th and 18th centuries.

Since their inception, modern postal systems have continued to develop along with the growth of railroads, motor vehicles, airplanes, and other carriers; recent years have also seen the introduction of electronic mail services. Over the centuries, however, people have also sought means for communicating more rapidly over long distances than conventional modes of transportation would allow. Early methods included drumbeats, fire, smoke signals, and instruments such as a ram's horn. In time, bugle calls and drums came to play an important role in communicating military commands. During the Middle Ages, homing pigeons were used to transmit messages. In the early 1790s, Claude Chappe, a French scientist and engineer, began the construction of a system of semaphore stations, a visual telegraph capable of sending a message many kilometers in a few minutes. Some of these tall towers, similar to later railroad semaphore towers, were as far as 32 km (20 miles) apart. The system was copied in Great Britain and the United States. Such semaphore systems, which variously used telescopes and sun-reflecting mirrors, remained slow because each signal had to be repeated at each station to verify the accuracy of transmission.

Years ago people had no way to send messages quickly over vast distances. People in one country could not learn what others thousands of miles away had already known or invented. They had to invent each tool and develop each idea themselves. News knowledge passed slowly from place to place. It did not flash around the world in a few minutes as it does today.

After people learned to tame horses, post-riders were used. Early persians had developed a relay system of postriders. These riders were stationed at certain places. One would pick up the message and ride off with it to the next. Americans used the same system in the west with the pony Express ( 1860-61). Pigeons and postriders were the forerunners of today's mail carries. As long ago as 1000 B.C. , king Solomon and the queen of Sheba exchanged messages by carrier pigeon. This kind of pigeon will find its way home when it is released. Turkish sultans used pigeons in the century A.D. to fly long distances with tiny message capsules attached to their legs. During the French Revolution, pigeons carried war news to outlying districts. Ancient postal service was only for royalty and very rich or important people. The messages had to be important worth the trouble. But in the 1500's ,English rulers began to see that ordinary people needed to send messages , too. By 1683 , the London penny post would deliver a letter anywhere in London for a penny.

Twenty years after the pilgrims landed in the American colonies, the Massachusetts Bay Colony appointed a postmaster. This postmaster, Richard Fairbanks, received a penny for every letter he delivered. Much later, the colonies established regularly mail services between important towns. There was one Postrider a month between New York and Boston, This postrider took two weeks for the trip and traveled only by day.

When Benjamin Franklin became postmaster for all colonies in 1753 , he set up a chain of post stations from Maine to Greogia. Postriders made one trip week between New York and Philadelphia , and had to ride by night as well as by day. This improved communication tied the colonies together. When the colonist began to have trouble with England in 1765 , the Boston patriot Samuel Adams set up committees of correspondence. Leaders in each colony wrote letters telling people in all other colonies what was going on in their region. In this way all the colonies shared news and views.

However , when the American colonies began to quarrel with England in the 1760's, it took weeks or months for each side to know how the other side answered the latest argument. Slow, poor communication across the Atlantic was one of the reasons that the English and Americans could not understand each other's point of view.

After the Revolutionary War, American leaders realized the vital importance of communication. Separate states and scattered frontier settlements had to be tied together into a single country. George Washington said: " Open all the communication which nature has afforded between the Atlantic States and the western territories, and encourage the use of them to the utmost…. Sure I am there is no other tied by which they will long form a link in the chain of Federal Union."

At first the pioneers in Kentucky or Ohio had very little contact with settled areas in the east. Travelers, peddlers, and circuit riders brought news occasionally to the isolated Western villages. For some time, rivers were the best highways. Towns sprang up along rivers , and riverboats carried letters and newspapers. But a pioneer in Kentucky probably knew less about what was going on in Washington ,D.C. , than today's schoolchild knows about Asia or Africa.

In 1860, pony Express riders carried ,messages across the continent. They used a relay system not unlike that of the Persians 2,400 years earlier. Starting at St. Joseph, Missouri (the western end of the telegraph line), they could carry a message from New York and California in 9 to 12 days. But the Pony Express lasted only 18 month. In 1861.,telegraph wires connected New York to California. As a result, a message could flash across the country in seconds , so the Pony Express riders went out of business. One of the newest methods of communication displaced postal service. People still write letters. Thanks to airmail, a letter can reach Europe from the United States in hours instead of weeks or months.

Telegraph
With the beginnings of modern understanding of the phenomenon of electricity in the 18th century, inventors started to search for ways in which electrical signals might be employed for the rapid relay of messages over long distances. The first practical telegraph system, however, was not produced until the 19th century, when two such inventions were announced in the same year of 1837: one, in Great Britain, by Sir Charles Wheatstone and Sir William F. Cooke, and the other, in the U.S., by Samuel F. B. Morse. Morse also developed the code system of dots and dashes that was universally adopted for the new medium. Various refinements appeared in later decades. For example, in 1874 Thomas Edison developed quadruplex telegraphy, by which two messages could be transmitted simultaneously in two directions. Modern offshoots of telegraphy are seen in teletype, telex, and facsimile transmission.

Electrical impulses move almost as fast as light waves and travel as far as power and equipment permit.

The age of electrical communication began when Samuel Morse telegraph code with a system of long and short buzzer signals(dots and dashes) arranged to spell out the letters of the alphabet. In 1837 ,Morse demonstrated that he could make a wire carry a series and so spell out message.

The first successful telegraph line was built from Baltimore , Maryland, to Washington , D.C. Morse sent the first message on May 24, 1844. It has become one of the most famous messages in history: " what hath god wrought!"

In 1858, Cyrus W. Field and other engineers tried to lay an underwater telegraph cable between America and Europe. Worked for about three weeks and then went dead. During 1865 and 1866, Field chartered a stemship, the Great Eastern , and tried again to lay a transatlantic cable. There were already underwater cables tying Newfoundland to the mainland of North America and Ireland to England. Finally ,after many heartbreaking setbacks, Field's company laid an underwater cable between Newfoundland and Valentia, |Ireland - 3,140 kilometres (1,950 miles) long, Telegraph wires liked the two continents.

Telephone
Although telegraphy marked a great advance in rapid long-distance communication, early telegraph systems could convey messages only letter by letter. The search was therefore also on for some means of voice communication by electricity as well. Early devices that appeared in the 1850s and 1860s were capable of transmitting sound vibrations but not true human speech. The first person to patent an electric telephone in the modern sense was the American inventor Alexander Graham Bell, in 1876. At the same time, Edison was also in the process of finding a way to record and then reproduce sound waves .

The next step was to make the human voice travel by electricity along a wire. Alexander Graham Bell and an electrician friend, Thomas Watson experimented to see if a telegraph wire could transit the sound of the human voice. Bell patented his telephone design in 1876. He sent the first telephone message by accident. Just as he was about to try out his transmitter he spilled acid on his clothes. He cried out, " Mr. Watson, come here. I want you." Through the receiver in another room, Watson heard Bell's voice come over the wire. The telephone worked.

Now most homes in the united states and Canada have telephones. People can pick up the telephone and dial directly. Almost at once they can be speaking to someone thousands of kilometers away.

The telephone connects people in many countries with other parts of the world. But not until 1956 did a successful underwater telephone wires. Long before that, in 1927, another invention- the radiotelephone- had started voices speaking across the sea. But storms often interfered with radio waves. Today a worldwide network of cables has greatly improved intercontinental telephone communication.

Technological developments in laser light beams have made it possible to transmit thousands of telephone massages, at the same time, to various parts of the world through optical fibre. Television programs can also transmitted in this way.

Books:Cavanagh , Mary. Telephone Power. Enrich,1980
Math , Irvin. Morse , Marconi and You: Understanding and Building Telegraph ,Telephone and Radio Sets. Scribner 1979.

Radio
Early telegraph and telephone systems depended on the physical medium of wires for message transmission, but scientific developments indicated other possibilities. The theory of the electromagnetic nature of light was advanced by the British physicist James Clerk Maxwell in 1873 in his Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism. The theories of Maxwell were validated by the German physicist Heinrich Rudolf Hertz. In 1887 Hertz discovered electromagnetic waves, thus laying the technical foundation for wireless telegraphy. During the following decade, much experimentation was conducted with the sending of wireless signals. In 1901 the Italian inventor Marchese Guglielmo Marconi sent a wireless signal across the Atlantic Ocean. The vacuum tube with two elements was invented by the British physicist Sir John Ambrose Fleming in 1904. A valuable improvement was made a few years later by the American inventor Lee De Forest, who invented a three-element vacuum tube that provided the basis for many electronic devices. In the U.S. the first radio broadcast was made in 1906. The first broadcast of opera singers from the Metropolitan Opera House was transmitted by De Forest in 1910. The same year Congress passed a law requiring passenger ships flying the U.S. flag to carry radio equipment. By 1920 several radio stations began transmitting, and in 1926 the first radio network, the National Broadcasting Company, was formed.

Radio waves travel at the speed of light. Since they go through the atmosphere, they need no wires. Radio communication can be used in airplanes and ships or automobiles.Radio waves can carry speech or electric signals

Because radio needs no wires, it is of tremendous help to ships and planes. All ships now keep in contact by voice radio. Radios in control towers of airfields "talks the pilot in"- that is ,people on the ground direct them to trouble spots. Many doctors and business people also have two-way car radios.

Citizens band(CB)radio communication has made it possible for motorist to exchange messages as they are driving in the same area. For the driver on a lonely road, this means company.Those who need assistance can ask for help over their two-way radios.

Public radio broadcasting began in November, 1920, when station KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsyvania,broadcast the presidential election returns: "handing elected president". Radio rapidly became a favorite form of entertainment.

Book:Carter , Alden R.Radio : From Marconi To the Space Age. Watts, 1987.

 

 

Picture Communication
Early manuscripts were illuminated with intricately drawn pictures. In the late 15th century woodcuts for illustrations came into use in printed books. At the end of the 18th century lithography was invented, permitting the mass reproduction of artwork. In 1826, using sensitized metal plates exposed for eight hours, the French physicist Joseph Nicéphore Niepce produced the world's first photograph. Building on Niepce's work, the French painter and inventor Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre discovered a chemical developing process that permitted a greatly reduced exposure time, producing the photograph known as the daguerreotype. As the 19th century progressed, various methods were devised to give photographs the illusion of motion. In 1891 Edison patented the kinetoscope, a machine for projecting moving pictures that he had first demonstrated in 1889. In 1895 the French chemist and industrialist Louis Jean Lumière and his brother Auguste Marie Lumière, also a chemist, demonstrated and patented the cinematograph that successfully projected moving pictures. In the late 1920s sound was added to motion pictures.

Pictures communicate some ideas better than words do. Since the days of the cave people , artists have been drawing pictures. But early in the 19th century , people tried to invent a mechanical way of picturing an objet just as it really was.

A French painter , Daguerre , first developed a camera in the 1830's. Pictures (daguerreotypes) were taken on glass plates coated with chemicals. The photographer had to carry a huge , heavy camera. A wagonload of equipment was needed to take these pictures and process them. In 1889, George Eastman produced roll film and a simple , lightweight camera. Photographs could be taken and reproduced in minutes. It became possible to see pictures of people and places all over the world, as well as pictures taken from satellites showing how the earth looks. Rare old manuscripts and paintings could also be photographed so many people could study and enjoy them.

During the 1890's, Thomas A. Edison and others invented a fascinating new communications tool- the motion picture camera. Photographers could take pictures of events and people in action. They could photograph plays, and so entertain and inform an audience. From this invention the movie industry was born. During the 2Oth century, movies have become a main source of amusement everywhere. News photograph record an important event people everywhere can see exactly what happened.

The laser light beam has made possible three-dimensional photography. This development, known as holography has opened the door to imaginative uses of the camera in the 198O's.

Television
The system of transmitting moving images has many roots. One is the invention of a scanning disk by the German television pioneer Paul Gottlieb Nipkow in 1884. A landmark in the development of television was the invention in 1923 by the Russian-American electronics engineer Vladimir Kosma Zworykin of the iconoscope for transmitting and the kinescope for receiving images over a distance. At the World's Fair of 1939-40 in New York City, a television receiver was one of the most exciting attractions. World War II interrupted the mass production of receiving sets, but at the end of the war television captured the popular imagination, and the number of television stations in the U.S. increased from 6 in 1946 to 1362 in 1988. By the late 1980s, 98 percent of all U.S. households had at least one television receiver. Television has expanded worldwide, with Japan, Great Britain, and Germany approaching the level of the United States. Communications satellites make possible the transmitting of programs between continents; events can be shown simultaneously as they happen in most parts of the world. Closed-circuit television is being used by banks to identify checks, by airlines to present flight information, by physicians to study techniques used in operations, and in numerous other ways. The development of video recording has also considerably expanded the ability to store, retrieve, and transmit information.

Once television became practical, people could sit in their living rooms and see as well as could hear a play or news broadcast. As far back as 1927 radio engineers had known that pictures, as well as sounds, could be sent by radio waves. But technical problems slowed their progress. TV broadcasting did not begin on large scale until the late 1940's . Then it quickly became one of the world's most popular forms of communication and entertainment.

Television reaches millions of people. By a flick of the switch, viewers can enjoy a concert, a lecture,a play, or a comedy skit. News events can be seen as they happen. Television has become one of the most important mass communication tools.

Cable television has increased channels for programming. New and varied programs are being designed for people of all ages and interests. Twenty- five million of the nation's 85 million homes with television now receive cable TV. In the near future ,cable television will make it possible to have two-way communication systems. In this way, citizens will be able to communicate with their government will be able to poll the people. This can be accomplished by placing a microphone and television camera on top of the television

Books:Beale , Griffin. TV and Video. EDC , 1983
Fields , Alice. Television. Watts, 1981.

 

Computers
One of the most dramatic advances in communication potential is found in the field of computer technology. Since the first development of the modern electronic digital computers in the 1940s, computerization has infiltrated almost every area of society in nations with advanced technology. Computers are available in many formats for use in industries, schools, and individual homes, and computer networks and auxiliary devices provide a means for the rapid transmission of a wide range of data. Computer systems can tap in on a variety of information databanks, and home owners of personal computers can gain access to this information using telephone lines; it can be displayed on computer screens or properly modified television sets.

Computers are machines that are storehouse for all kind of information. In recent years, small and large computes have kept many records relating to the lives and activities of citizens. Among such records , insurance policies, health and hospital treatments , bank deposits and loans , arrests and convictions, and memberships in organisation.

These records can be easily retrieved and reproduced. They are helpful in crime detection , as well as in national security matters. But such records in centralized places may deprive people of the right to privacy and may encourage surveillance of private individuals who have done no wrong.

Computers networks have been established over telephone lines. A central computer can send and receive information by telephone to or from a distant computer terminal. The terminal may be a typewriter-like device that can print out the central computer's information , or the terminal may have a ' video screen that displays the information.

Laser Technology
The laser is also of great potential importance for the future of communications. Modulated beams of the coherent light produced by lasers can transmit a much larger number of messages at a time than can ordinary telephone systems. Prototype laser communications networks are already in operation, and they may eventually replace to a large degree the use of radio waves in telephony. Laser beams are also ideal for use in space for satellite communications systems.

Satellites
Astronauts have journeyed off the planet earth and out space. Ventures into space have led to the latest tool in long-distance communication satellite. The satellite is equipped with radio receivers and transmitters. Rockets boost it into orbit, and the force of gravity keeps it from flying off into space. The satellite acts as a television relay station. Engineers on the earth bounce television signals off it at an angle to receivers on another continent. Television signals are blocked by mountains, by the earth's curvature, or sometimes even by buildings. Therefore, they have to be relayed from one transmitter to another in order to travel long distances.

In 1962 , the first important United States communication satellite, Telstar I, was placed in orbit. Television engineers in Europe bounced a picture off Telstar , and viewers in the United States saw it. For the first time people sat at home in New York city and watched something happening in London or Paris at the moment it took place.

In the 1980's satellites launched by the United States, the Soviet Union, and other nations have been used for a variety of purposes. Some collect scientific information about space. Others assist in predicting the weather. There are also satellite that are used for military installations , troop movements, or the testing of nuclear weapons by other nations.

 

Books: Berger, Melvin. SpaceShots , Shuttles , and Satellites. Putman, 1983.
Furniss, Tim . Space Rocket. Gloucester, distributed by Watts, 1988.
Irvine, Mat. Satellites and Computers. Watts, 1984.
Petty, Kate. Satellites. Watts, 1984
Saunders, Mike ,illus. Satellites. Watts, 1984.
White , Jack R. Satellites of Today and Tomorrow. Dodd, 1985.

 

Reference

"Communication," Microsoft(R) Encarta(R) 96 Encyclopedia. (c) 1993-1995 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. (c) Funk & Wagnalls Corporation. All rights reserved.

The New Book of Knowledge (c) 1994
All rights reserved.