A Brief History of Long-Distance Communications
Mon, 14 Oct 2024
Continuing with my previous telephone piece that began with Number Planning Area last month, here's a brief history of long-distance communications.
Being able to communicate instantly with anyone else in the world sounded entirely alien to those of generations ago. Still, modern communications can trace their history to centuries before the first telephone existed. From the signal fires of the ancient world to the cellular phone, humanity has long pondered the possibility of communicating with those far afield without actually having to be there in person.
It's hard to imagine a world where the fastest way to get a message across the world was to send a physical letter on a journey that would take at least four months in ideal conditions by clipper ship. Nonetheless, history has seen many impressive breakthroughs in communications technology, some of which occurred much longer ago than you might think.
Light the Signal Fires
Before the advent of telegraphy and the telephone in the nineteenth century, our ancestors displayed remarkable ingenuity in long-distance communication. They had to rely either on sending a physical message in the form of a letter or, in cases where it was practical, using visual telegraphy methods. Signal fires or smoke signals, the oldest forms of long-distance communication, became widespread in the ancient world. In Ancient China and Greece, it was already possible under certain circumstances to send messages across hundreds of miles in a matter of hours using nothing but signal fires. Indigenous peoples of North America and Australia have also communicated using such methods since the dawn of recorded history.
Sending smoke signals across large distances was quickly rendered obsolete in much of the world when the first optical telegraph system emerged in 1792. Known as the semaphore line, this visual communication system was the first to allow the sending of messages in the form of visual codes. A semaphore tower, typically perched in an elevated location for maximum visibility, featured a complex system of arms that, in certain positions, would spell out messages in the form of a code. By the early nineteenth century, semaphore lines had become the standard for long-distance communication, and they proved an advantage in Napoleon's many battles for control of Europe.
Electrical Telegraphy Changes the World
Since semaphore lines were relatively slow, and useless in poor weather conditions, somethign more reliable was needed. Thought experiments conducted as early as the late seventeenth century first proposed using electricity as a medium for communication across large distances without worrying about range limitations or weather conditions. Although the first suggestion of an electrostatic telegraph was made by an anonymous writer in 1753, it was not until 1816 that English inventor Francis Ronalds constructed the first functioning system.
Unfortunately, there was little public enthusiasm at the time of Ronald's experiments with electrical telegraphy, and it was when American polymath Samuel Morse, after whom Morse code is named, that telegraphy started to make it into the limelight in 1837. In the same year, the telegraph began to transform the world in the most profound of ways. That year saw the first commercial telegraph enter operation, and only 21 years later, the first transatlantic cable was laid between the US and Europe. This early system needed to be more efficient and reliable. Still, it allowed Queen Victoria to send the first-ever telegraph message across the Atlantic Ocean to the then-president of the US, James Buchanan, in 1858. At the time, all messages were sent in Morse code. Within two more decades, much of the world was connected, with Australia being linked to the outside world as early as 1872, even when it still took almost two months to get there in person after the opening of the Suez Canal, a significant development that reduced travel time between Europe and Asia.
Enter the Telephone
Telegraphy has enjoyed a long and storied history, owing mainly to its exceptional reliability and cost-effectiveness. It wasn't until 2013 that the world's last telegraph system finally closed its doors in India. However, the invention of the telephone was a game-changer, allowing people to communicate by voice in real-time, a previously unimaginable feat.
The predecessor to the telephone was the acoustic string telephone, invented in 1667 by English polymath Robert Hooke. Long before the potential of electricity became known, this type of telephone worked by conveying sound over short distances across a taut wire. A similar concept, the speaking tube, was widely used throughout the nineteenth century in large residences, office buildings, and ships, where it is still used today as a reliable backup.
Scotsman Alexander Graham Bell patented the first practical telephone in 1876. However, the invention of the phone can be attributed to many individuals whose work culminated in the device that people take for granted today. The first commercial telephone company opened in Germany only one year later, and many more quickly followed suit. By the very end of the nineteenth century, many wealthy households owned telephones, and by 1904, there were more than three million phones in use in the US. The telephone revolutionized communication, allowing people to connect in real time over long distances, and had a significant role in shaping modern society by facilitating business, personal relationships, and emergency services.
The earliest telephones available barely resembled anything around today. The candlestick design, consisting of a separate mouthpiece connected to the microphone holder by a cable, was popular until the early 1930s. It was eventually superseded by the rotary dial phone when direct distance dialing became available, which allowed users to dial numbers directly rather than through an operator, a significant advancement in user convenience. This design lasted until the 1970s when push-button phones, which allowed for faster dialing, began to replace them.
Radio Brings Wireless Freedom
Insofar as its primary purpose, cellular phones still use much the same technology as that invented in 1895 by Italian Guglielmo Marconi. In a presentation published in 1865, Scottish scientist James Clerk Maxwell first proposed the nature of electromagnetic waves moving through free space. This concept was proven in an experiment by German physicist Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (hence the measurement hertz) in 1886. Marconi was the first to put this knowledge to practical use for communication when he patented the first working wireless telegraphy system (radio) in 1896, which could send messages over two miles. At the time, messages were exclusively sent using Morse code due to system limitations. Sixteen years later, in 1912, Marconi's invention helped save lives during the Titanic tragedy.
It was not until 1900 that the first true ancestor of the radio came into being, and Canadian inventor Reginald Fessenden became the first person to transmit voice and music over the airwaves. However, the first clear transmission of speech wasn't until 1919, and a year later, commercial broadcasting took off, experiencing unprecedented popularity. Public radio broadcasts featuring the news and music were commonplace in the interwar period. By the 1920s, experiments were being conducted using airwaves to transmit moving images, thus giving birth to the era of television.
To this day, a lot of modern communications remain heavily reliant on two primary concepts: Electrical signals sent over cables or information sent over the airwaves in the form of radio. Whether using a cellular phone in the middle of nowhere or a conventional landline, long-distance communications use the same basic principles, save for numerous refinements, since its invention well over a century ago.