Communications Technology

14 Pages 3381 Words

Communication/ Media Technology


This essay will be based on the life and works of some of the more noted innovators in the field of communication and media technology and will include a discussion around how technological advancement may have a detrimental effect on the lives of individuals and society as a whole.




Early Methods


¡¥Communication¡¦ is the act of transmitting and receiving ideas, messages and information. When considering communication between two people it could be described as a by-product or outgrowth of various different methods of self expression that have developed over thousands of years:

Gestures accompanied by sounds could have been the beginnings of language. Smoke signals as used by Native Americans, cave paintings and engravings from the Palaeolithic period dating as far back as 10,000 ¡V 40,000 BC are all forms of expression and are efforts to communicate thoughts and ideas.

Long before the telephone was developed and became universally available and before the invention of the electric telegraph, communicating over any significant distance would undoubtedly have been protracted and frustrating with letter mail being among the most popular and relied upon method of communication.





Semaphore

It seems that ¡¥fast¡¦ long distance technology began during the French revolution, in the late eighteenth century, when French merchant Claude Chappe used a semaphore telegraph to send messages between the French army at Lille and Paris. This was achieved by using a relay system and by changing the position of the arms which were set upon a mast or tower. A message could be sent considerable distances and it was possible to send a semaphore telegraph the 240 kilometres from Lille to Paris in two minutes.

Semaphore telegraphs continued to be popular until the early 19th century, until the electric telegraph was invented.


Telegraph

The electric telegraph was pioneered...