Media and communications
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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 tower with great mechanical arms fixed on top of it. The arms could be moved into different positions, each standing for a different word or number. Series of towers were built within sight of one another between two places, their operators relaying a message from one tower to the next. This system, invented by French inventor Claude Chappe (1763–1805), was called a semaphore telegraph and it first appeared in France in 1792.
Invention of the telegraph
The first telecommunications device was the telegraph. Messages travelled along wires from a sending device to a receiving device as pulses of electricity, using some sort of code that both the sender and receiver understood. Practical telegraph systems were developed in the first half of the 19th century and were first used for railway signalling. The most successful system was the Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph that came into operation on the Great Western Railway in England in 1839.
Single-line telegraphs
Early systems needed several connecting wires, but the system that eventually became standard, developed in the USA by US inventor Samuel Morse (1791–1872) in 1837, needed just one wire. Along with his assistant Alfred Vail, Morse developed a code to send messages along it. A network of telegraph lines, including undersea cables across the Atlantic, was quickly established all around the world.
The first wireless telegraph made use of the radio transmitter invented by Marconi in 1896. A signal carrying the message "ARE YOU READY" in Morse code was successfully transmitted over two points in Wales in 1897. The first transatlantic wireless message, simply the letter "S", was sent in 1901.
Printed messages
In the early 1900s the telegraph was automated so that machines turned the message into code and back again. The sender could type messages on a keyboard and they would be printed out at the receiver’s end. To send a telegraph message, people had to visit a telegraph office. The message arrived at another office and was delivered by hand to the recipient.
Invention of the telephone
In March 1876, Scottish-American inventor Alexander Graham Bell (1847–1922) made the world’s first telephone call. His assistant, Tom Watson, in the next room, heard the words “Mr Watson, come here, I want to see you.” Bell had invented the first telephone receiver (the part that you talk into and listen to). This device both turned the sound of the user’s voice into an electrical signal, and an incoming signal into sound—which meant that the user could not talk and listen at the same time.
In Bell’s telephone, there was a steel strip that vibrated when someone spoke close to it. These vibrations could be sent along a wire with an electric current and make another strip vibrate, reproducing the original sounds. These were not clear: users had to shout to make themselves heard. The telephone was improved in 1878 by another American inventor, Thomas Alva Edison (1847–1931). He found that by adding carbon grains between two metal plates in the microphone reproduced the sound much better. This enabled the phone to be used over long distances.
Telephone exchanges
To begin with, there was no network to link telephones in different places, but one soon grew up. All the telephone lines in an area meet at an exchange where they can be connected to one another, or to a line linked to another exchange. The first exchange, invented by Hungarian engineer Timadar Puskas, opened in 1878 in Connecticut, USA, with just 21 lines. It was operated by hand: callers had to tell the operator which line they wanted to be connected to.
The automatic exchange, which allowed people to dial numbers, was invented in the USA by Almon Strowger (1839–1902), and started working in 1897. Meanwhile, complex telephone networks grew in large cities. It took a long time for different cities and countries to be linked, and until the middle of the 20th century, the telegraph was still used for long-distance communication.
Consultant: Chris Oxlade
Timeline
1792
A semaphore telegraph system is invented.
1837
The electric telegraph is developed.
1876
The telephone receiver is patented.
1878
The first telephone exchange opens.
1892
The autmatic telephone exchange goes into operation.
1926
The first transatlantic telephone call, from London to New York, is made.
1927
The first videophone call is made.