The development of mankind has never occurred evenly; there have been periods of stagnation and technological breakthroughs. In the same way, the history of the means of transmitting information developed . Interesting facts and discoveries of this sphere in historical sequence are presented in this article. Incredibly, but without which modern society does not today exist, humanity at the beginning of the twentieth century considered impossible and fantastic, and often absurd.
At the dawn of development
Since the most ancient times and before our era, mankind has actively used sound and light as the main means of transmitting information, the history of their use dates back thousands of years. In addition to the various sounds with which our ancient ancestors warned their fellow tribesmen about the danger or called them to hunt, the light also became an opportunity to deliver important messages over long distances. For this, signal fires, torches, burning spears, arrows and other devices were used. Around the villages, guard posts were built with flashing lights so that the danger would not catch people by surprise. The variety of information that needed to be transmitted led to the use of a kind of codes and auxiliary technical sound elements, such as drums, whistles, gongs, animal horns and others.
Using codes at sea as a prototype of a telegraph
The encoding received special development when moving through water. When a man first went to sea, the first lighthouses appeared. The ancient Greeks, using certain combinations of torches, spelled messages. Also in the sea, signal flags of various shapes and colors were used. Thus, a concept such as a semaphore appeared, when using special provisions of flags or lights it was possible to transmit different messages. These were the first attempts at wiring. Missiles later appeared. Despite the fact that the history of the development of information transmission media does not stand still, and an incredible evolution has occurred from primitive times, these communication tools in many countries and areas of life have not yet lost their significance.
The first ways to store information
However, mankind was concerned not only with the means of transmitting information. The history of its storage also dates back to the beginning of time. An example of this is cave paintings in various ancient caves, because it is thanks to them that one can judge some aspects of people's life in ancient times. The methods of memorizing, recording and storing information developed, and cuneiform writing replaced the drawings in the caves, followed by hieroglyphs, and finally writing. We can say that from this moment begins the history of the creation of means of transmitting information on a global scale.
The invention of writing was the first information revolution in the history of mankind, because it became possible to accumulate, disseminate and transmit knowledge to future generations. Writing gave a powerful impetus to the cultural and economic development of those civilizations that mastered it before others. In the 16th century, 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 widespread. This is a very important moment in the history of human 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 delivered oral messages. However, with the advent of the opportunity to write a message, this type of communication has become even more popular. The messengers were initially foot, and later horseback. In developed ancient civilizations, there was a well-established postal service according to the relay principle. 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 carrier pigeons. Subsequently, mail began to spread to other civilizations.
Telegraph Development
The history of the development of communications quite naturally begins with a telegraph. The first wiring option, which was invented by Democritus and Cleoxen (ancient Greek philosophers), was the torchlight, which was mentioned above. However, he did not take root, and various scientists from the beginning of the 17th century attempted to invent fundamentally new types of telegraphy.
In 1793, the optical telegraph was invented , which was a fundamentally new concept that worked not on the basis of light. However, he needed new ways to transmit large amounts of information. And only thanks to the discovery of electromagnetic waves did such a form of long-distance communication appear as an electric telegraph. Later, electrostatic and electrochemical devices were invented.
The arrow type electromagnetic telegraph appeared in 1832 thanks to the work of the Russian scientist P. L. Schilling, and the electromechanical one was patented in 1840 by Samuel Morse, who invented a special telegraph code. In 1939, B. S. 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 emergence of the phone as a new means of transmitting information. Its history begins in 1837, when C. Page, an American scientist, constructed the "grumbling wire" - a prototype of the future telephone. A more approximate version was created in 1860 by a school physics teacher from Germany, Philip Reis. But his device could transmit only distorted individual sounds. In the homeland of Reis, the invention was not appreciated, and he left for the States, where he was arrested on charges of quackery, because the Americans were convinced of the impossibility of transmitting voice over wires. But the future creator of the first real telephone A.G. Bell, a teacher at a school for the deaf, got acquainted with the work of Reis. He wanted to create an apparatus on its basis that would turn sounds into light signals in order to teach deaf children to speak. As a result, he accidentally created a telephone and patented it on February 14, 1876. According to Bell himself, he was able to create such a device only because he did not know the laws of electrical engineering. The Bell Tube, a prototype of the apparatus we are used to, was created in 1878.
Creating a radio as a means of transmitting information. History of Wireless Basics
American Mahlon Lumis in 1868 introduced the first prototype of a wireless communication line, its length was about 22 km. It was he who considered the possibility of creating international wireless communications real, provided that mankind could learn how to use electricity from the atmosphere. Loomis spoke of radio waves, the existence of which was confirmed by Heinrich Hertz only after 19 years.
The ideas of Lumis were embodied in the life of A.S. Popov, who developed the first radio in the world presented to the scientific minds of St. Petersburg University on April 25, 1895 (according to the old style, May 7). And on May 24, 1896, the transmission of the world's first text radiogram, consisting of two words “Henry Hertz,” took place. This was Popov’s tribute to the great discovery of a German scientist. By the way, it was Popov who proposed the idea of ​​using wireless communications on ships to transmit operational messages and distress signals.
The end of the 19th century became the third powerful wave of the information revolution, because it became possible to transmit information at any distance thanks to telegraph, telephone and radio.
Television and satellites
On May 9, 1911, the Russian scientist B. L. Rosing for the first time demonstrated to the public the image of simple immovable figures presented on the screen of a kinescope. American Charles Jackins in 1923 carried out the transfer of a moving image. But these were examples of mechanical television. However, it was not until 1928 that the inventors I.F. Belyansky and B.P. Grabovsky conducted the experiment of transmitting a moving image using a cathode ray tube, which is considered to be the moment of the emergence of modern television. The invention of the iconoscope in 1931 was a breakthrough in achieving image clarity. Since 1934, the German television channel DRF was the first in history to broadcast electronic television regularly. Since 1936, a high-definition television channel appeared in the UK, and in 1938 regular television broadcasting began in the USSR.
Since the mid-twentieth century, the history of the means of storage, transmission and processing of information has received a new giant round. The idea of ​​satellite communications was put forward as early as 1945 by the Englishman Arthur Clark, and already on October 4, 1957, the first artificial Earth satellite was launched in the USSR using a launch vehicle. From this moment began the space age of the development of society. The satellite became the first space object from which information was received on Earth. The first satellite was a little over half a meter in diameter and weighed only 83 kg. Subsequently, the satellite system received tremendous development and began to be used for various areas of human activity: relaying, television, radio navigation, and more.
The latest history of data communications
Paging, cellular, fiber optic communication lines - all these are steps towards creating a global communications network. The creation of computers was an important, but an intermediate stage. It was microprocessor systems that revolutionized the way information is transmitted. Digital communication has made the changes that make information a key element in modern society. The network has conquered the world and has become an integral part of all its spheres: politics, education, art, industry. The geographic boundaries were blurred, because the network instantly connects people at the opposite poles of the planet in seconds. This is a giant step in the development of data communications.