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History of communications is as long
as that of humans. People learned they could convey a thought to others
via a sound or a hand signal. Progressively, it lead to the discovery of
writing, later to printing, and eventually to the birth of high-tech
electronic Information Age. The path to this point has not been
overnight. It has been marked but countless milestones that shaped this
history.
The invention of the printing press allowed more people access to news and information. The period between the 13th and 16th centuries saw the rise of a print-dominated society due to the invention of the printing press. One that moved away from the Church's monopoly of information that existed during the manuscript book period. This was initially fueled by the reproduction of classic texts of antiquity. It was further fueled by the development of new kinds of books in science. Wide availability of printed documents was perhaps the first forms of an information broadcast media. Radio communication was particularly revolutionary in that it was the first invention to significantly shorten distance and time. It was just over 100 years ago that Marconi succeeded in what is said to be the first radio communication a distance of 2.4 km from the window of his home using Morse code signals in 1895. A big step in shaping today's communication after Marconi was taken by Shannon. In the late 1940s Claude Shannon, a research mathematician at Bell Telephone Laboratories, invented a mathematical theory of communication that gave the first systematic frame work in which to optimally design telephone systems. He showed that if the entropy rate, that amount of information you wish to transmit, exceeds that channel capacity, then there were unavoidable and non-correctable error in the transmission. The main questions motivating this were how to design telephone systems o carry the maximum amount of information and how to correct for distortions on the lines. The modern day television set can be traced back to the discovery of selenium in 1817. Television is based on photoelectric technology. Television's initial developments are linked to pioneering attempts to both improve and send still images down at telegraph wire. In the mid 1800's, sending still images by telegraph wire was an electrochemical process. Yet, the concepts of synchronized scanning and the use photoelectric technology evolved over a fifty year period. By 1970, television had become the primary information and entertainment medium in the Western World. The internet began as the ARPANET during the cold war in 1969. It was developed by the US Department of Defense's (DOD) research department in conjunction with a number of military contractors and universities to explore possibility of a communication network that could survive a nuclear attack. It continued simply because the DOD, it's contractors, and the universities found that it provided a very convenient way to communicate. It has taken some time for today's communication structure. Some of the major events that led to this structure are the invention of printing, Marconi's radio, Shannon's maximum channel capacity theorem, television, and the Internet. Biography
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