History Of Communication Essay, Research Paper

Since the beginning of time, people have

had the need to communicate with one

and other. The most common type

of communication is speech, but you could not talk to

someone who lived 20 miles away.

Then written language was developed, people marked

symbols on paper, stone, or whatever was

available. Then hundreds of years passed, and

people who wanted to share their ideas

with people had to do allot of writing, until

someone thought to make a writing machine.

This machine is called the printing press.

Gutenberg’s invention of the printing

press is widely thought of as the origin of

mass communication– it marked Western

culture’s first viable method of disseminating

ideas and infomation from a single source

to a large and far-ranging audience. The story of

print is a long and complax one. It may

be too much to claim that print was the single

cause of the massive social, political

and psychological changes it is associated with.

However, print did wield enormous influence

on every aspect of European culture. Some

historians suggest that print was instrumental

in bringing about all the major shifts in

science, religion, politics and the modes

of thought that are commonly associated with

modern Western culture.

Gutenberg foresaw enormous profit-making

potential for a printing press that used

movable metal type. Despite their rapid

growth in numbers, secular scribes simply could

not keep up with the commercial demand

for books. Gutenberg also saw strong maket

potential in selling indulgences, the

slips of paper offering written dispensation from sin

that the Church sold to fund crusades,

new buildings and other projects devoted to

expanding its dominance. In fact, press

runs of 200,000 indulgences at a time were

common soon after the handwritten versions

became obsolete.

There were many different innovations

since the first hand operated printing press.

The Stanhope press, which was widely used

for many years, still used a hand-operated

screw to press print and paper, but it

could print up to 250 sheets an hour. A considerable

improvement was the Colombian press.

In this press, the typical screw method was

eliminated, and replaced with powerful

hand levers.

All of there presses, and variants

of them, had two features in common: they were

manually operated, and the flat surfaces

of print and paper were pressed together by a

screw or lever. A man names Fredric

Koenig invinted the steam press, this press has a

cylinder which rolled the paper over the

inked type. This press was much more efficient,

and could print up to 1000 sheets per

hour. Since then the printing press has progressed

greatly, the fastest printing press in

the world can print up to 110,000 sheets an hour.

The Morse system of telegraphy was

invented by Samuel Morse in the 1840s in the

United Strates. “Morse Code” is essentially

a simple way to represent the letters of the

alphabet using patterns of dots and dashes.

A unique pattern is assigned to each character

of the alphabet, as well as to the ten

numerals. These long and short pulses are translated

into electrical signals by an operator

using a telegraph key, and the electrical signals are

translated back into the alphabetic characters

by a skilled operator at the distant receiving

instrument.

morse telegraphy became the standard

method of electrical communication in both

the United States and Europe due to its

simplicity and ability to work on inferior quality

wires. In 1851, countries in Europe adopted

a new code known as “continental” or

“international” code. This new code was

a modification of the original Morse. The new

code eliminated the characters using spaced

dots which were found to cause errors in

transmission on undersea cables. The new

code became the standard for all telegraph work

except in north america where the original

Morse was used on all landline circuits (except

for undersea cable).

The applications of the Morse telegraph

were many. Tha most well known of these

to the general public was the commercial

telegram service. The railroads were an early and

enthusiastic user of the Morse system

which improved the efficiency and safety of railroad

operations. The Associated Press was originally

an alliance of Morse telegraph services

and operators dedicated to news dispatches.

Industry found the telegraph indispensible for

the transmission of business related communication

including information on stocks and

commodities. The American civil war was

the one of the first demonstrations of the

military value of the telegraph in the

control of troop deployment and intelligence. Even

the flow of oil through pipelines was

controlled by Morse telegraph.

In the 1920?s automated teleprinter

technology had become reliable enough to

begin to replace the Morse operator. Manual

landline telegraphy was slowly phased out

until the 1960?s when Western Union and

the railroads discontinued use of their last

Morse circuits. Morse continued to be

used in Canada until the mid 1970?s, and railroads

in Mexico were still using the wire at

least until 1990.

A pioneer in the field of telecommunications,

Alexander Graham Bell was born in

1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He moved

to the United States, settling in Boston, before

beginning his career as an inventor. Throughout

his life, Bell had been interested in the

education of deaf people. This interest

lead him to invent the microphone and, in 1876, his

“electrical speech machine,” which we

now call a telephone. News of his invention quickly

spread throughout the country, even throughout

Europe. By 1878, Bell had set up the first

telephone exchange in New Haven, Connecticut.

By 1884, long distance connections were

made between Boston, Massachusetts and

New York City.

Telephones are actually very simple

devices. A diaphram or reed is vibrated from

the voice of the caller. The vibrations

are send through a wire as a fluctuating electrical

current. This current is connected

to a diaphram or reed on the other end, that vibrates in

step with the callers voice. Alexander

Bell lodged his key patent om March 10th 1876,

only several hours before Elisha Gray

lodged a similar one. A 10 year legal battle ensued,

and bell eventuly won, and founded the

famous Bell Telephone Company, which made

him a very wealthy man.

By January, 1878, the first telephone

extange, with only 21 custimers, opened in

New Haven Connecticut. Then in 1884

boston was linked up with new york, a distance of

about 300 miles, it cost about $75,000.

By 19000, there were over a million telephones in

the U.S. alone. And now about 99%

of of american households have a telephone.

The impact of the telephone has been

described as both positive and negative. On

the negative side, wars are waged more

easily, the scope of human conflict has been

extended along telephone lines, the multi-generational

household has been broken-up as

living alone is no longer an experiment

in isolation, and the time-space continuum seems

to be compressed faster than previously

thought possible (Brooks, 1976). On the other

hand, the invention of the telephone has

resulted in the rapid and diffuse dissemination of

technical and scientific information,

saved lives through links to emergency services, made

possible the modern city through telephonic

connections, increased the speed and ease

with which information changes place,

and accelerated the rate of scientific and

technological change and growth in industry

(Brooks, 1976).

Since the invention of the printing

press, communication over distances has

become much more feasable. The invention

of the the telephone, computer, and the

internet has made such an impact on our

society. Now we are able to view tremendous

multitudes of information from our own

living room. The history of modern

communication is still ongoing, and will

continue to progress far into the future.