Communication

Communication plays a significant role in each aspect of our life. We communicate with people while working, studying at school, having rest. In a word, human existence is impossible without communication. The way of people’s converse depends on how far from each other the mates live and how often they can socialize. Agree that friends, who live in different parts of the city can’t meet very often. That’s why they can use phone to talk a bit. And what about amigos who live in different countries? It is rather expensive to make long distance calls. Nowadays they can use e-mails, online social networks or Skype, for example. But how it used to work many years ago, when such services were not available? Well, let's see the development of means of communication in the course of the time.

What are the similarities between the fire and a mobile phone in your opinion? Do not try to find it out in practice, giving your mobile phone into a flame. Actually, all modern means of communication, which the twenty-first century gave us, are the direct followers of the fire. In ancient times instead of mobile phones and the Internet people used the fire. With the help of fire, the special watchtowers in particular, ancient tribes recognized the coming enemy, which made it impossible to catch the sleeping city by surprise. In the four hundred and fifty BC, two Greek philosophers Kleoksen and Dimokrit created the first telegraph. Scientists divided 25 letters of the Greek alphabet into five rows with five signs in each, so at a fairly solid distance with the help of flaming torches at night, and with flags in the daytime, it was possible to show precisely the sign that the sender wanted to transmit. This device was called "flare-optical telegraph". But this service didn’t gain much attention and didn’t come into use. Then people began to use drums and pipes and when Tesla represented electricity to the world they began to use light. Light is also used as a communication tool nowadays, for example as beacons to help sailors in finding the land.

One of the oldest ways of connection is post. Letters exist the same time as writing system in general. Initially, letters were delivered by special people (couriers/messengers) or animals (pigeon mail). Amazing ability of pigeons to return home from far away to the mother nest was used in ancient times. Scientists believe that the first pigeon-mail was used in ancient Egypt in 1146, and later this practice was adopted by ancient Greeks and Romans, Persians, Jews, Galls and Germans as large written sources about the usage of pigeons for military, commercial and other purposes were found there. Pigeon post has left a very significant mark in the history of civilization, for example, the Greeks reported in various cities the names of the winners at the Olympic Games with the pigeons and the speed of information delivery with the help of doves allowed Nathan Rothschild to make his enormous riches. In the second half of the 20^th century pigeon post was used by an authoritative news agency Reuters. Birds brought mail to publishing office faster than it could make a car stuck on the street during peak hour. Even now in India the results of voting in the election are delivered by doves from inaccessible parts of the country. Pigeon-mail was also widespread during the First and the Second World Wars. Nowadays about 60 countries still use pigeon-mail.

During the Second World War a special tool called the Morse code – the way of sign coding. 26 letters (A-Z) and 10 numbers (0-9) were encoded in "point" and "dash". Samuel Morse created it under the influence of Michael Faraday’s book devoted to the extraction of sparks from the magnet. When he saw this experiment he was brought to mind of creating a system of signal transmission by wire with the usage of transmission the combinations of these "sparks". In 1837 he represented his invention to the audience of the New-York University and transmitted a signal by the wire with length of 1,700 feet. After this the letters and numbers code was created by Morse’s colleague Alfred Weil. Afterwards Morse denied this fact.

The first phone was invented in 1876 by Boston scientist Alexander Bell on the basis of the Morse code.

The first radio was invented on the 7^th of May in 1895. Precisely on that day a Russian scientist Popov introduced the world the action of his radio-set. On that day Popov sent the first radio message in the world consisting of understandable human’s speech to a distance of 200 meters, but only in 1901 this distance was increased to 150 km.

The first mobile phone was released on the 3^rd of April in 1973. In fact, the basic principles of mobile telephony - transfer calls from one "cell" to another - were known at Bell Labs in 1946, but only in the late 1960s, these developments interested AT&T company (owner of Bell Labs) and the competing firm Motorola. AT&T sold the car radio to Americans and decided to develop cell phones too. Their device weighed 12 kg, the tube was in the cabin and needed an additional antenna. Motorola was given $15 million to develop a portable phone. The first prototype was made very quickly. It weighed 1 kilogram and was quite large. There were obvious shortcomings, but it was necessary to hurry because at the same time on the national level there was a question about the frequency and capacity for future communications. Motorola needed to prove the existence of a mobile telephony and that they also have a weight on the market. The task was done, and serial cell phone was released only on the 6^th of March in 1983. It weighed only a pound and cost $3500.

Nowadays the most convenient, easy in usage and efficient facility not only in finding information and working, but also in online communication is the Internet. Tim Berners-Lee, English inventor of the web, closes the long list of people who changed our lives and made the world such as it is now. Actually, he was the first scientist, who made his great invention along, without anybody’s help. In the history of science it is extremely rare that work of one scientist has provided such significant impact on the economy, science and everyday life, as Berners-Lee's invention made ​​by him in 1989. In 1980 he made a program called Enquire for his computer. Its conception is rather simple: he tried to support the exchange of the information on his computer, connected special words in some documents with another documents. The Internet was created before his activity but exactly he made the browser as it looks like now.

Precisely Tim Berners-Lee initiated the online communication. Without the World Wide Web we wouldn’t see these social networks, which we use in our daily life.

On the 4^th of February in 2004 one of the most popular social networks Facebook was released. The founder of the service is Mark Zuckerberg, who mounted a program for choosing the nicest girl in Harvard in the hostel of the university. Because of his joke the network of Harvard fell in one night. His experiment was noticed by two brothers who wanted to make a special site for Harvard students’ connection only and Mark realized their idea in his own social network called Facebook. Due to his site, Mark Zuckerberg became the youngest "paper" millionaire in his 23 years. Many people claim, that he stole this idea, but he made online connection available and made it possible for people, who are far from each other, to connect easier.

Many science fantasts of 19-20^th centuries have predicted that sooner or later mankind will invent a kind of videophone, due to which we will be able not only hear, but even to see each other. Some persons (Tesla, for example) talked about this at a time when the ordinary phone was a kind of wonder. In fact, mankind has coped with the invention of a such tool sooner rather than later. 15 years ago it was difficult to realize that very soon there will compact and powerful mobile phones, from which you can easily make video calls to anywhere in the world. The inventors of such program are Niklas Zennstrom from Sweden and Janus Friis from Denmark. The release of the first version of Skype was in September in 2003. Skype allows you to make international calls to mobiles and stationary phones at a lower price. But if both you and your friend (or business partner, colleague, etc.) have Skype, it is free! You can also converse with many people at the same time or make online conferences, which can help you in work. There is also a chat service and service which allows you to exchange different files.

Communication services are progressing nowadays and it is unknown what will be invented tomorrow, but along with obvious advantages, there are serious shortcomings. Modern social networks and online services made millions of people all over the world sit in front of monitor and communicate even sometimes with those, with whom they meet every day or live not far from. Online communication replaced live contact. We don’t write letters, we don’t call each other, we don’t even walk with each other! I think, this experience leads to secrecy, sociopathy, and inability to communicate in a society. But, for example, the tradition of air post is regaining nowadays, more and more people try to write letters. I think, it happens because it brigs a bit romantic in communication. There is a service, called Postcrossing, which was made to exchange postcards. You are given a random address and then you send a card to this unknown user. And you receive postcards from people, you’ve never known. The most amazing thing is that you never know what and from whom you will receive a letter. And it is always a surprise. So, don’t allow yourself to sit and look in the monitor, meet your friends, call them on the phone, write letters and make your life brighter and full of communication! ;)

Date: 2015-01-12; view: 966