Telecommunication – Selected Historical Milestones And Benefits

The word “telecommunication” is a compound of the Greek prefix ‘tele’, meaning distant, far off, or afar, and the Latin ‘communicare’, meaning to share. So in the most literal sense of the word, telecommunication is a means of sharing information across distance—be it a few feet or thousands of miles. According to Wikipedia – The history of telecommunication began with smoke signals and drums in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. In the 1790s, the first fixed semaphore systems emerged in Europe. However, it was not until the 1830s that electrical telecommunication systems started to appear. In the 1830s and 1840s, Samuel Morse and others invented the telegraph, revolutionising technology and making long-distance communication possible. It worked by transmitting electrical signals over a wire laid between stations.

The telephone

The telephone was developed in the mid-1800s, leading to the development of a worldwide radio and satellite communication network. On March 7, 1876, Bell was granted his telephone patent. A few days later, he made the first-ever telephone call to Watson, allegedly uttering the now-famous phrase, “Mr Watson, come here. I want you.”

“On February 12, 1877, Bell made the first long-distance phone call from the Lyceum in Salem to Watson at the Boston Globe in Boston. The phone Bell was using in his demonstration was what he called his ‘Long Distance’ telephone. It was a wooden box about ten inches-by-ten-by-eight with a hole in the front.

The first transatlantic radio message

The first transatlantic radio message was sent in 1901. Guglielmo Marconi sent the message from Cornwall, England, to Newfoundland, Canada. He did this with the help of his assistant Charles Samuel Franklin and two assistants from Newfoundland. This achievement, the first reception of transatlantic radio signals, led to considerable scientific and technological advances.

Radio has advanced a lot since then!

The Apollo transponder

In 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins were the first three people to walk on the moon in 1969. They were part of NASA’s Apollo 11 mission. The Apollo Unified S-Band Transponder, designed and built by General Dynamics, was the only communications link the Apollo 11 Astronauts had to NASA’s mission control and millions of people watching on Earth, approximately 30,000 miles away.

The first mobile phones

The first mobile phones were called car phones because they were large enough to mount in the back seat of a car. They were also expensive, with monthly rates exceeding $100 per month in 1973 dollars (more than $650 today). Most people used them only for talking to others in the same car (or at least within earshot), so it’s safe to say that most weren’t using our cell phones for long-distance communication.

The GPS

The global positioning system, a network of satellites used for navigation and locating things on earth, was launched by the U.S. Department of Defense in 1989.

As documented by WIRED, the first of 24 satellites that will make up the global positioning system was put into orbit by the U.S. Department of Defense in 1989. GPS revolutionised navigation at sea and land by providing position reports with unprecedented, pinpoint accuracy. Each satellite is placed in a specific orbit at a particular altitude to ensure that four or five satellites are always within range from any point on the planet. A GPS receiver picks up satellite signals and trilaterates the data to fix the position. Besides navigation, GPS has applications in mapmaking, land-surveying and the accurate telling of time. The U.S. Department of Defense has maintained the GPS and has been available since 1993 without charge to anyone, anywhere on Earth.

Internet usage explodes

As reported by Encyclopedia.com, by 1996, the Internet had exploded, with more than 10 million hosts online worldwide. Approximately 40 million people were “surfing the net,” and e-commerce (the transaction of business over the Web) was booming, with more than $1 billion being spent annually on Internet shopping.

But even with all of these concerns, the Internet continued to grow. Each year brought innovations and new ways of navigating and using the Net. All over the world, people realised the potential of the Internet. Many employees no longer had to drive to work; telecommuting allowed them direct access to the office while working from home. Students and researchers could access vast quantities of information from universities, libraries, and scientific institutions with the click of a mouse.

By 1998 the two-millionth domain name had been registered. The Internet had become a multibillion-dollar industry, with consumers gaining the confidence to shop for everything from books to boats online. Projections at the end of 1999 predicted sales to jump into the trillions of dollars in the twenty-first century.

The power of the Internet and the World Wide Web cannot be ignored. No other technology has made information accessible and changed the scope of business, entertainment, and society. It has absorbed print, moving images, and sound to create a multimedia explosion that stretches around the globe.

More benefits

Advances in telecommunication led to some pretty cool things, like GPS and being able to get a pizza delivered to space!

Since telecommunication is a broad term describing the transmission of information over long distances by electronic means, it’s not surprising that it has led to many advances in technology and business. Before telecommunication, you couldn’t order a pizza from space or find out where your friends were at any given moment. These days, there are even more uses for telecommunication than ever before: you can use your phone to talk to people who aren’t nearby; you can call up an auto mechanic and ask them how much they charge per hour; you could get directions from Google Maps; you can check the weather forecast for tomorrow…and so on! It’s safe to say that these things wouldn’t be possible without advancements in telecommunication.

Telecommunications also led directly (or indirectly) to many businesses being created, making money through their services or products related to telecommunications. For example, cell phone companies like Verizon Wireless provide services like voice calls over wireless channels using cellular networks; internet service providers such as Comcast Cable Communications offer broadband connections via cable television lines; satellite TV providers Dish Network Corp., DirecTV Group Inc., AT&T Inc.’s U-verse service all broadcast television programming via satellite dishes connected directly into users’ homes; companies like Amazon Web Services provide cloud computing platforms on which anyone online may rent virtual servers.

So tell me this: Would our lives be any different if we hadn’t made those giant leaps forward regarding how quickly we could communicate with each other over long distances via electronic means (i.e., telecommunication)?

Conclusion

Advances in telecommunication have made our world smaller, allowing us to communicate with people on other continents and even reach out into space. The future of telecommunication looks bright; with more innovations like cloud computing, virtual reality and augmented reality, the 5G network and WiFi 6 will boost data transfer speed and range and connect more devices. AI technology will provide new ways to enhance network maintenance and predictive maintenance. Internet of Things is enabling communication between people and devices. And many more.

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