Transformation of Communication

Dimitri F Haacke Loven

Today we use all types of communication, through different types of media, if it is a cell phone, computer, walky-talky, television etc. But have you ever asked yourself where did this all began? What was the first machine or contraption used to communicate? It all began with the first to invent and develop this Gugliemo Marconi. Marconi was an Italian physicist and inventor, succeeding in inventing sending wireless signals over a distance of one and a half miles. He brought the first wireless telegraphy to England where he was granted the world's first patent for a system of wireless telegraphy. He was also later known for bringing about in 1899 he established wireless communication between France and England across the English Channel.

His first work came through merely long and short pulses that through an apparatus could be translated into words like a code. This we can still see now a days, what we also call Morse Code. The Morse Code was devised by Samuel Morse for use in transmitting messages. Letters, numbers, and punctuation are represented by combinations of dots or brief taps of the transmitting keys and also through dashes. Marconi, then later on came to send wireless signals overseas, from Newfoundland, Canada to Cornwall, England. Another known way of communication we still use today and is very effective is the radio. Radio stations transmit information through waves or a frequency what we so call audio frequency signals. These frequencies are emitted at different signals or also known as a carrier frequency, for example having your favorite station be 106.0 Fm, would be 106kHz being emitted. Your antenna receive these signals and turn them into electrical signals an transmit it through your speakers.

One of our biggest entertainments is television, where we can acquire tons of information, and one of the most effective ways of communication to the society. The television is the communication of moving pictures between distant points over wire or by means of electromagnetic waves. The moving pictures on a television screen originates with a television camera which forms an optical image of the scene to be transmitted and then breaks the image down into electrical signals. These signals may be amplified and transmitted directly over a cable or they can even be converted into electromagnetic waves. As we’ve seen before, these electromagnetic waves are transmitted by antennas, like the radio waves, and the y are picked up by receiving antennas and then transmitted to a television that can form the electromagnetic waves into an optical image on our screens.

Through the decades we have seen how our ways of communication have been improving, from single dots or dashes, to just seeing your friend on your laptop! We have innovated many easy ways to communicate ourselves with the use of telephones to wireless use of telephones (cell phones). We can use electromagnetic waves to communicate basically with anything. We have even come to send signals to satellites, to outerspace and beyond. Newer innovations come every day into our modern world of wireless communication, but these are merely modern application of Marconi’s excellent work.