Means of communication: history, facts

The development of mankind has never happened evenly, there have been periods of stagnation and technological breakthroughs. Similarly, the history of the means of information transfer has evolved . Interesting facts and discoveries of this field in historical sequence are presented in this article. Incredibly, but without which modern society does not present its existence today, humanity at the beginning of the 20th century considered it impossible and fantastic, and often absurd.

At the dawn of development

Since the earliest times and before our era, mankind has actively used sound and light as the main means of transmitting information, the history of their use is thousands of years old. In addition to the varied sounds with which our ancient ancestors warned fellow tribesmen of danger or called them to hunt, the light also became an opportunity to deliver important messages over long distances. Signal fires, torches, burning spears, arrows and other devices were used for this. Around the villages, sentry posts were built with signal fire, so that the danger did not catch people unawares. The variety of information that needed to be conveyed led to the use of some kind of codes and auxiliary technical sound elements, such as drums, whistles, gongs, animal horns and others.

Using codes in the sea as a prototype of a telegraph

A special development is the encoding when moving on water. When a man first went out into the sea, the first lighthouses appeared. The ancient Greeks, by means of certain combinations of torches, transmitted messages by letters. Also in the sea were applied various in form and color signal flags. Thus, there was such a thing as a semaphore, when by means of special positions of flags or lanterns it was possible to transmit different messages. These were the first attempts at telegraphy. Later, rockets appeared. Despite the fact that the history of the development of the means of information transfer does not stand still, and from the primitive times there has been an incredible evolution, these means of communication in many countries and spheres of life have not lost their significance.

The first ways of storing information

However, mankind was not only concerned with the means of transmitting information. The history of its storage also dates back to the beginning of time. An example is rock carvings in various ancient caves, because it is thanks to them that one can judge certain aspects of people's life in ancient times. Ways of memorizing, recording and storing information evolved, and cuneiforms replaced cave paintings, followed by hieroglyphics, and finally writing. We can say that from this moment the history of the creation of means of information transmission on a global scale begins.

The invention of writing became the first information revolution in the history of mankind, because there was an opportunity to accumulate, disseminate and transfer knowledge to the next generations. Writing gave a powerful impetus to the cultural and economic development of those civilizations that had mastered it before others. In the 16th century book printing was invented, which became a new wave of the information revolution. There was an opportunity to store information in large volumes, and it became more accessible, as a result of which the concept of "literacy" became more massive. This is a very important moment in the history of universal civilization, because books became the property of not only one country, but the whole world.

Mail message

Mail as a means of communication began to be used even before the invention of writing. The messengers initially transmitted oral messages. However, with the advent of the opportunity to write a message, this type of communication has become even more in demand. The chasers were originally pedestrian, later - mounted. In the developed ancient civilizations there was a well-established postal service on the principle of relay race. The first postal services arose in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. They were mainly used for military purposes. The Egyptian postal system was one of the first and highly developed, it was the Egyptians who first began to use postal pigeons. Later the mail began to spread to other civilizations.

Telegraph development

The history of the development of communications is quite naturally begins with a telegraph. The first variant of telegraphy, which was invented by Democritus and Cleoxenus (ancient Greek philosophers), was the torch, which was mentioned above. However, it did not take root, and various scientists made attempts to invent fundamentally new types of telegraphy from the beginning of the 17th century.

In 1793, an optical telegraph was invented, which was a fundamentally new concept, operating not on the basis of light. However, he needed new ways of transferring large amounts of information. And only because of the discovery of electromagnetic waves has appeared such a kind of long-distance connection, as an electric telegraph. Later, electrostatic and electrochemical devices were invented.

Electromagnetic telegraph switch type appeared in 1832 thanks to the works of the Russian scientist P. P. Schilling, and electromechanical was patented in 1840 by Samuel Morse, who invented a special telegraph code. In 1939 BS Jacobi invented the first writer, and in 1850 - the first direct-printing telegraph apparatus.

Phone as a result of an unusual experiment

Next comes the appearance of the phone as a new means of communication. His story begins in 1837, when C. Paige, an American scientist, constructed a "grumbling wire" - the prototype of the future phone. A more approximate version was created in 1860 by a school physics teacher from Germany Philippe Reis. But his apparatus could transmit only distorted individual sounds. In the homeland of the Flight, the invention was not appreciated, and he went to the States where he was arrested on charges of quackery, because the Americans were sure that it was impossible to transmit voice over wires. But the future creator of the first real phone, AG Bell, a teacher at the deaf-mute school, got acquainted with the work of Reis. He wanted on its basis to create an apparatus that would turn sounds into light signals to teach deaf children to speak. As a result, he accidentally created a phone and patented it on February 14, 1876. According to Bell himself, he was able to create such a device only because he absolutely did not know the laws of electrical engineering. "The Bell's Tube" - the prototype of the device that was used to us - was created in 1878.

Creation of radio as a means of communication. History of Wireless Basics

American Makhlon Loomis in 1868 introduced the first prototype of the wireless communication line, its length was about 22 km. It was he who considered the possibility of creating an international wireless connection real, provided that mankind can learn how to use electricity from the atmosphere. Loomis spoke of radio waves, the existence of which was confirmed by Heinrich Hertz only 19 years later.

Loomis's ideas were put into practice by AS Popov, who also developed the world's first radio, presented to the scientists of St. Petersburg University on April 25, 1895 (in the old style on May 7). And on May 24, 1896, the world's first text radiogram, consisting of two words "Henry Hertz", was transmitted. It was Popov's tribute to the great discovery of the German scientist. By the way, the idea of using wireless communication on ships for the transmission of operational messages and distress signals was suggested by Popov.

The end of the XIX century became the third powerful wave of the information revolution, because it became possible to transmit information to any distance thanks to telegraph, telephone and radio.

Television and Satellites

May 9, 1911 the Russian scientist BL Rosing first demonstrated to the public the image of simple immovable figures, presented on the screen of a kinescope. American Charles Jakins in 1923 carried out the transfer of a moving image. But these were examples of mechanical television. However, it was only in 1928 that the inventors IF Belyanskii and BP Grabovskii conducted the experience of transferring a moving image using an electron-beam tube, which is considered to be the moment of the birth of modern television. The invention of the iconoscope in 1931 was a breakthrough in achieving clarity of the image. Since 1934 the German television channel DRF became the first in the history, broadcasting regularly electronic television. Since 1936, the UK has a high-definition television channel, and in 1938 regular television broadcasting began in the USSR.

Since the middle of the twentieth century, the history of the means of storage, transmission and processing of information has received a new giant turn. The idea of satellite communication was put forward in 1945 by Englishman Arthur Clarke, and already on October 4, 1957 in the USSR with the help of a launch vehicle launched the first artificial Earth satellite. From that moment the cosmic era of the development of society began. The satellite became the first space object, the information from which was accepted on the Earth. The first satellite was slightly more than half a meter in diameter and weighed only 83 kg. Subsequently, the satellite system received a colossal development and began to be used for various areas of human activity: retransmission, television, radio navigation and other.

The newest history of means of data transmission

Paging, cellular, fiber-optic communication lines are all steps in the way of creating a global communications network. The creation of computers was an important, but an intermediate step. It is microprocessor systems that have revolutionized the way information is transmitted. Digital communication has made those changes, through which information has become a key element of modern society. The network has conquered the world and has become an integral part of all its spheres: politics, education, art, industry. The geographic scope was blurred, because the network instantly connects people on opposite poles of the planet in a matter of seconds. This is a giant step in the development of data transmission media.