Since the beginning of time, people have always been looking for means of communication, but a way to communicate in a fast and easy way. In earlier times, Egyptians carved on rocks, leaving records for the next civilization. The Incans of South America knotted several colored pieces of string in a specific pattern and had a messenger run to the next village to deliver it. Many wrote messages on paper to be delivered by a messenger and some simply sent a messenger to deliver the message orally. Of course, there were many problems with these means of communication. If one just sent a messenger, it was easy for the messenger to lose communication in the traveling process, or one could misplace a written message. And of course these messages relied heavily on the swiftness of the messenger, especially in long distances. Clearly, the need for fast and easy communication was getting higher what with different civilizations being more and more spread out. The answer to this demand first came with the invention of the telegraph, then the telephone, and eventually the cellular phone. And although the invention of the telephone was a great one, there were, of course, downsides.
Samuel B. Morse (for whom Morse code is named) patented the telegraph around 1837. A series of dots and dashes sounded on a special transmitter and sent over electrical wires to the person receiving the message. This was a way to communicate almost instantaneously through American cities. In 1843, Congress funded Morse $30,000 to do an experimental telegraph line from Washington to Baltimore, a 40-mile distance. Six years later, the national convention of the Whig party held its national convention in Baltimore and nominated Henry Clay. Alfred Vail, Morse’s partner...
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...elephone, people mostly communicated long distances through some type of letter or other document. And although the telegraph made this process a great deal easier and faster, it was ultimately the telephone that pushed the communication process through the roof and eventually to the cell phone. The telephone and its many different technologies morphed into something completely different than the first invention of the telegraph. Today, these technologies have become essential to everyday life of Americans. Without these inventions, life today would not be as we now know it. We rely so much on instantaneous news and information, the cell phone, e-mail, the Internet, GPS technology, and so much more. These communications are central to most civilizations today, and it would be near impossible to get through life as we do without these services, mostly the telephone.
The urgency of communication was never much felt until the beginning and use of telegraphy. It was much easier to transmit and receive messages over long distances that no longer needed physical transport of letters.
The tools of communication have long served a single purpose, that of transmitting information from people to people. Direct communication was long ago realised with sign language and speech, but when people spread out, a kind indirect communication was needed. Thus we created (or rather, hired) the messenger. (Necessity is the mother of invention.) This evolved later into a postal service, connected around the world by a network of synchronised offices of a similar nature. For a long time, indirect communication was the only way to communicate over long distances. Once the telegraph came along, however, people were able to instantly communicate information over long distances. This evolved somewhat into the telephone, which spawned the radio and television. As these were developed, the efficiency and clarity of these transmissions improved, and this allowed the world to know what was happening anywhere else in the world at any given time.
Morse code was a grand new technology and was first demonstrated in the grandest of locations, the Supreme Court chamber of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C. In 1844, the first data communications was sent from our nation's capitol to Baltimore, Maryland. This concept was so huge and so widely accepted that within seven years there were fifty telegraph companies operating in the U.S. (Bruno).
Samuel Morse contributed many things to American society. In 1832 when returning from Europe from a period of art study on the ship Sully, Samuel overheard a conversation about the newly discovered electromagnets and came up with the idea of an electric telegraph. By 1835 he had his first telegraph model working in the New York University building. In 1837, he acquired two partners to help him develop his telegraph. Leonard Gale and Alfred Vail were the two men that he chose. They applied for a patent in 1837 for the telegraph, which included the dot and dash code.
Morse was a very friendly guy. Being a natural leader, he was a founder and the first president of the National Academy of Design, but was lost his campaigns to become mayor of New York or a Congressman. In 1832, while returning on the ship from another period of studying art in Europe, Morse heard a conversation about the newly discovered electromagnet and got the idea of an electric telegraph. He mistakenly thought that the idea of such a telegraph was new, helping to give him the go ahead and push the idea forward. By 1835 he probably had his first telegraph model working in the New York University building where he taught art. Being poor, Morse used materials like an old artist's canvas stretcher to hold his invention, a home-made battery and an old clock-work to move the paper on which dots and dashes were to be recorded.
In 1809, a crude telegraph was invented in Bavaria by Samuel Soemmering. He used 35 wires with gold electrodes in water and at the receiving end 2000 feet the message was read by the amount of gas caused by electrolysis. In 1828, the first telegraph in the USA. was invented by Harrison Dyar who sent electrical sparks through chemically treated paper tape to burn dots and dashes.
The start of a world full of communication devices arose with the invention of the Telephone. Alexander Gram Bell was the inventor of the telephone in 1876 and later the same year the first long distance phone call was made, around seventy miles long. This began a new era, which created the first phone booth in 1883 by Thomas Watson to enable noises to be blocked out (Futterman 3). In addition to the phone booth many new technology came after the telephone such as the invention of the light bulb in 1878 and the car in 1886 (“How” 4). Meanwhile Bell’s telephone was faint in long distance calls, so Thom...
And a rough form of a telegraphic device was already in use in France by 1798 (Coincidentally, the word “infrastructure” itself is also borrowed from the French.) But it wasn’t until 1838 that New York University professor Samuel Morse presented his version of the telegraph and its revolutionary means of communication, Morse Code, to the U.S. government. At the time, 62 other people were claiming to have invented the telegraph, but Morse was the only one who received political backing, thus he and his business model are largely credited for the invention. With a $30,000 grant from Congress, Morse built a telegraph line from Washington D.C. to Baltimore. In 1844, surrounded by politicians, Morse dispatched the first instant message over a commercial communication line – “What hath God wrought?” the first telegram read. Indeed. The impact that this new form of electro-telecommunication would have on humanity and the world was surely
First of all, what was the telegraph? With the first prototype being created in 1837 by Samuel Morse and his assistant Joseph Henry, The telegraph was the first successful means of a long distance communication that did not rely on
Samuel F. B. Morse – Samuel Morse was born on April 27, 1791 and was an American painter and inventor. Although he illustrated a plethora of paintings, he is worldly-renowned for improving the electro-magnetic telegraph and inventing the unified model language Morse code. The electro-magnetic telegraph was the machine used to telecommunicate by tapping on the tapper to where two people are able to send and receive messages through the rhythm of the tapping and using the Morse code language to translate. Morse died on April 2, 1872.
The way that the author forms his article is by first giving a rather exhaustive history of the telegraph, and reviews the impact that it had when it became a major form of fast communication. He then goes over some factors that are essential to understanding the evolution of society. One, that technology is of the nature of a "joint stock of knowledge for humankind"; two, the role institutions and organizations (like the government) play in the development of the technology; three, a so-called ceremonial encapsulation and path dependency; and four, the unpredictability of technological change and it’s impact on society.
“What hath God wrought!” was what he sent. (“Morse Code and the Telegraph). As time went by, more and more improvements were made. In 1850, Ezra Cornell invented good insulation for telegraph wires. (“Morse Code and the Telegraph”). Thomas Alva Edison invented the Quadruplex system in 1874 that allowed four messages to be transmitted simultaneously using the same wire (“Morse Code and the Telegraph”).
The telephone allowed two or more people to speak to each other through a receiver, rather than meeting each other or writing a letter. Instead of writing a letter and waiting days for another to come back, two people could pick up a receiver and communicate quickly and clearly. The telephone allowed peopl...
Cell phones have immensely changed the way people communicate today. A cell phone can be all a person need for interaction. From a cell phone, a person can make calls, send text messages, emails, and send and also receive directions, buy things online, do online banking, listen to music and much more. Since someone can do everything with one device, there is no longer a need to go around with multiple devices about. Greek hydraulic semaphore systems were used as early as the 4th century. The hydraulic semaphores, which functioned with water filled containers and visual signals, functioned as optical telegraphs. However, they could only apply a very limited range of pre-determined messages, and as with all such visual telegraphs could only be deployed during good visibility conditions. Experiments on communication using electricity was carried out in 1729 but was not successful. The experiment was proposed by William Fothergill Cooke. In 1837, William invented a practical electric telegraph which entered commercial use in 1838 (J. B. Calvert, May 2004). The first telephone was invented in 1878 by Alexander Graham Bell. He experimented with a ‘phonautograph’, it is a machine shaped like a pen that can draw shapes of sound waves on smoked glass by tracing vibrations.
Most innovations have are two sides, the good side and the bad side and the cell phone is no exception. Many people find it difficult to believe that there was a time that cell phones did not exist. Letters back then were used to pass messages across before the telephones were introduced. Initially, telephones were used only to call people, who would receive the call only if they were near the receiver. Then the cell phones were introduced. They could receive or make calls and text messages to most parts of the world. With the cell phones, it was easier to write a text message than to hand write a note as it was before (). With time, the level of use of cell phones has gone up with more features being introduced. The cell phone technology is a double-edged innovation that inevitably changed as both positively and negatively socially.