Telecommunications

Telecommunications is the sending and receiving of information using electricity, radio waves or light. The information can be data, sound or TV pictures. Data can represent text...

Early history of telecommunications

The telephone, so important to our daily lives today, did not even exist until less than 150 years ago. The very first machine for sending messages was not electrical at all, but a...

Broadcasting

Broadcasting is the transmission of radio and television programmes via cables, ground-based transmitters, satellites and the internet. There are thousands of different TV channels...

Fibre optics

Fibre-optic communication is a way of sending information—data, telephone calls and television signals—with pulses of light through an optical fibre. The light forms a wave...

Lasers

The first working laser was built by American physicist Theodore Maiman in 1960. A laser is a device that creates an intense beam of light called a laser beam. A laser beam is...

Microphones

A microphone (often shortened to mic) is a device that turns sound waves into electric signals. There are two main types: dynamic and condenser. In both, sound waves strike a...

Mobile phones

Mobile phones are radio telephones in which calls are routed through a network of radio aerials, or masts, linked to the main public telephone network. (Landline phones, which...

Printing

Printing is the process of making many copies of a document or a picture. Printing is normally done on paper or card, but it can also be done on fabrics, and sheets of plastic or...

Radio

The word “radio” means communicating with radio waves, which move through the air at the speed of light. These are part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Radio has a huge range...

Sound recording

Sound recording and reproduction is the electrical storage and re-creation of sound waves. In a digital recording, sound signals picked up by a microphone are converted to a...

Television

The first fully electronic television system was developed in the 1920s and 30s in the USA by Russian-American inventor Vladimir Zworykin (1888–1982). Television first became...

Undersea communications cables

Undersea (or submarine) cables today make up the "nervous system" of the global telecommunications network. There are about 475 of these cables, together extending for...

Lasers and recording A-Z

Radio and television A-Z

Telecommunications A-Z