Portal:Telecommunication
The Telecommunication Portal
Telecommunication, often used in its plural form or abbreviated as telecom, is the transmission of information over a distance using electrical or electronic means, typically through cables, radio waves, or other communication technologies. These means of transmission may be divided into communication channels for multiplexing, allowing for a single medium to transmit several concurrent communication sessions. Long-distance technologies invented during the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries generally use electric power, and include the electrical telegraph, telephone, television, and radio.
Early telecommunication networks used metal wires as the medium for transmitting signals. These networks were used for telegraphy and telephony for many decades. In the first decade of the 20th century, a revolution in wireless communication began with breakthroughs including those made in radio communications by Guglielmo Marconi, who won the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics. Other early pioneers in electrical and electronic telecommunications include co-inventors of the telegraph Charles Wheatstone and Samuel Morse, numerous inventors and developers of the telephone including Antonio Meucci, Philipp Reis, Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell, inventors of radio Edwin Armstrong and Lee de Forest, as well as inventors of television like Vladimir K. Zworykin, John Logie Baird and Philo Farnsworth.
Since the 1960s, the proliferation of digital technologies has meant that voice communications have gradually been supplemented by data. The physical limitations of metallic media prompted the development of optical fibre. The Internet, a technology independent of any given medium, has provided global access to services for individual users and further reduced location and time limitations on communications. (Full article...)
Selected article -
An optical fiber, or optical fibre, is a flexible glass or plastic fiber that can transmit light from one end to the other. Such fibers are widely used in fiber-optic communication, where they permit transmission over longer distances and at higher bandwidths (data transfer rates) than electrical cables. Fibers are used instead of cables because signals travel along them with less loss and are immune to electromagnetic interference.
Fibers are also used for illumination and imaging, and are often wrapped in bundles so they may be used to carry light into, or images out of confined spaces, as in the case of a fiberscope. Specially designed fibers are also used for a variety of other applications, such as fiber optic sensors and fiber lasers. (Full article...)
General images
Screen idol Rudolph Valentino at the microphone of WSB in Atlanta, 1923 (from History of broadcasting)
Innocenzo Manzetti considered the idea of a telephone in 1844 (from History of the telephone)
Receiver schematic, c.1906 (from History of the telephone)
Philo Farnsworth in 1924 (from History of television)
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation logo, first introduced in 1975 and based on the Lissajous curve (from History of broadcasting)
Reis's telephone around 1861, first device called telephone (from History of the telephone)
Charles Logwood broadcasting at New York station 2XG, 1916 (from History of broadcasting)
Private conversation, 1910 (from History of the telephone)
Historical marker commemorating the first telephone central office in New York State (1878) (from History of the telephone)
Swedish Prime Minister Tage Erlander using an Ericsson videophone to speak with Lennart Hyland, a popular TV show host (1969) (from History of videotelephony)
DBS satellite dishes (from History of television)
In the 1920s, the United States government publication, "Construction and Operation of a Simple Homemade Radio Receiving Outfit", showed how almost any person handy with simple tools could build an effective crystal radio receiver. (from History of radio)
Australian radio sets usually had the positions of radio stations marked on their dials. The illustration is a dial from a transistorised, mains-operated Calstan radio, c. 1960s. (Click image for a high resolution view, with readable callsigns.) (from History of broadcasting)
An early experiment demonstrating the refraction of microwaves by a paraffin lens by John Ambrose Fleming in 1897 (from History of radio)
The Kyocera VP-210 Visual Phone was the first commercial mobile videophone. The Personal Handy-phone System (PHS) phone was introduced in Japan (1999). (from History of videotelephony)
Broadcasting pioneer Frank Conrad in a 1921 portrait (from History of broadcasting)
The Nipkow disk. This schematic shows the circular paths traced by the holes, which may also be square for greater precision. The area of the disk outlined in black shows the region scanned. (from History of television)
Code of letters and symbols for Chappe telegraph (Rees's Cyclopaedia) (from History of telecommunication)
1896 telephone (Sweden) (from History of the telephone)
Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1856–1894) proved the existence of electromagnetic radiation. (from History of radio)
Ad for the beginning of experimental television broadcasting in New York City by RCA in 1939 (from History of television)
Elisha Gray, 1876, designed a telephone using a water microphone in Highland Park, Illinois. (from History of the telephone)
The first mass-produced Czechoslovak TV-set Tesla 4001A (1953–57) (from History of television)
A 19th century acoustic tin can or "lovers' telephone" (from History of the telephone)
British Post Office engineers inspect Guglielmo Marconi's wireless telegraphy (radio) equipment in 1897. (from History of radio)
Early pioneers of radio science and technology in the United States, including Charles Steinmetz, David Sarnoff, Irving Langmuir, and Alfred Goldsmith in 1921, photographed next to the antenna feed wires of the New Brunswick Marconi Station, one of the first transatlantic radio links. The photo includes Albert Einstein as a visiting guest. (from History of radio)
Fessenden operating an underwater oscillator in 1915. (from History of radio)
The Philco Predicta, 1958. In the collection of The Children's Museum of Indianapolis (from History of television)
Typical low-cost webcam used with many personal computers (from History of videotelephony)
"Doc" Herrold is shown at the microphone of KQW, c. 1925 (from History of broadcasting)
AT&T magazine advertisement announcing commercial launch of Picturephone service. (from History of videotelephony)
The French Matra videophone (1970) (from History of videotelephony)
Philipp Reis, 1861, constructed the first telephone, today called the Reis telephone. (from History of the telephone)
The master telephone patent, 174465, granted to Bell, March 7, 1876 (from History of telecommunication)
Thomas Edison invented the carbon microphone which produced a strong telephone signal. (from History of the telephone)
RCA 630-TS, the first mass-produced television set, which sold in 1946–1947 (from History of television)
The "Kerbango Internet Radio" was the first stand-alone product that let users listen to Internet radio without a computer. (from History of broadcasting)
Around 1920, radio broadcasting started to get popular. The Brox Sisters, a popular singing group, gathered around the radio at the time. (from History of radio)
1917 wall telephone, open to show magneto and local battery (from History of the telephone)
First television test broadcast transmitted by the NHK Broadcasting Technology Research Institute in May 1939 (from History of television)
Alexander Graham Bell was awarded the first U.S. patent for the invention of the telephone in 1876. (from History of the telephone)
Antonio Meucci, 1849, developing a voice-communication apparatus that several sources credit as the first telephone. (from History of the telephone)
Donald Manson working as an employee of the Marconi Company (England, 1906) (from History of radio)
A replica of one of Claude Chappe's semaphore towers (optical telegraph) in Nalbach, Germany (from History of telecommunication)
Actor portraying Alexander Graham Bell in a 1932 silent film. Shows Bell's second telephone transmitter (microphone), invented 1876 and first displayed at the Centennial Exposition, Philadelphia. (from History of the telephone)
Apple iPhone smartphone (from History of the telephone)
AT&T Picturephone (Mod II) fully enclosed in its housing, control pad at bottom (from History of videotelephony)- The 1969 AT&T Mod II Picturephone, the result of decades long R&D at a cost of over $500M. (from History of telecommunication)
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Selected biography -
Antonio Santi Giuseppe Meucci (/meɪˈuːtʃi/ may-OO-chee, Italian: [anˈtɔːnjo meˈuttʃi]; 13 April 1808 – 18 October 1889) was an Italian inventor and an associate of Giuseppe Garibaldi, a major political figure in the history of Italy. Meucci is best known for developing a voice-communication apparatus that several sources credit as the first telephone.
Meucci set up a form of voice-communication link in his Staten Island, New York, home that connected the second-floor bedroom to his laboratory. He submitted a patent caveat for his telephonic device to the U.S. Patent Office in 1871, but there was no mention of electromagnetic transmission of vocal sound in his caveat. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell was granted a patent for the electromagnetic transmission of vocal sound by undulatory electric current. Despite the longstanding general crediting of Bell with the accomplishment, the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities supported celebrations of Meucci's 200th birthday in 2008 using the title "Inventore del telefono" (Inventor of the telephone). The U.S. House of Representatives in a resolution in 2002 also acknowledged Meucci's work in the invention of the telephone, although the U.S. Senate did not join the resolution and the interpretation of the resolution is disputed. (Full article...)
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