Communication facts
Bridging the oceans
The world's first undersea cable, linking Britain and France
across the English Channel, was laid in 1851. Europe and the United
States were finally linked after three failed attempts. The first
cable, in 1857, was lost. The second, in 1858 lasted four weeks. A
third snapped while being laid in 1865.
Success came in 1866 when Isambard Kingdom Brunel's ship the
'Great Eastern' was used to lay a new cable across the Atlantic and
to find and repair the 1865 cable. From then on, Europe and the
United States were linked by telegraph, which sent messages at 7
words per minute.
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Samuel Morse
Samuel Morse was born in Boston in the United States. He began
his working life in New York as a portrait painter. He founded the
National College of Design and stood, unsuccessfully, for election
as Mayor.
Morse was interested in electricity and in 1835 began to develop
an electric telegraph, unaware that others were working on the same
idea. Morse patented his telegraph in 1837 and in 1838 produced the
famous code of dots and dashes named after him.
The first telegraph line in America was completed between
Baltimore and Washington in May 1843. Morse's first message was
"What God hath wrought".
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Telegraph operators
The telegraph provided a new respectable employment for
unmarried middle class women. They were seen as "admirable
manipulators of instruments", and were less likely to change jobs
having little alternative employment.
The operators were supervised by a matron. They worked a ten
hour day, six days a week. The night shift operators were men.
In the 1850s a fast operator typing Morse at 27 words a minute
could earn a high salary of 30 shillings a week (£1.50). A
governess might earn 10 shillings (50p). Operators on later
automatic telegraph machines counted as unskilled and were paid a
quarter of the money.
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Alexander Bain
Alexander Bain was born in 1811 near Wick in the far
north of Scotland. He was inspired to become a clockmaker, after
hearing a science lecture. He learnt his new trade in Wick, then
moved to Edinburgh and later to London where he developed several
new communications devices.
In 1841 he invented an electric clock. In 1843 he patented an
early fax machine, 30 years before the telephone. Then he patented
a chemical telegraph, in which electrical pulses made marks on
chemical-soaked paper. It could receive almost 300 words per
minute, so he then invented a sending telegraph to match this
record speed.
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The first telephones
The telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell. Whilst
teaching in Boston he found through experiments that sound waves
could be converted into electrical currents. He made his first
telephone in 1875, but it was not until 10 March 1876 that his
assistant Thomas Watson heard the first telephone message, "Come
here, Mr Watson, I want to see you".
Bell demonstrated his telephone to excited audiences in the
Boston area. The telephones were connected to existing telegraph
wires, and people were able to hear Thomas Watson, reading and
singing from several miles away.
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Inventor Debate
Bell may not have been the first or only person to
invent a telephone.
Antonio Meucci, an Italian living in New York, claimed to have
invented a telephone in 1849. He applied for the right to patent
his invention but never did so. Like Bell, Meucci produced many
inventions relating to explosives, plastics and foodstuffs.
German Johann Philipp Reis developed a telephone in 1860 which
relied on vibrations induced by intermittent electrical contact. He
died without developing the idea.
Elisha Gray submitted his idea only hours after Bell had filed
his patent. Meucci and Gray challenged Bell's patents but a
long-running court case upheld Bell's claims.
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Flag Codes
Sailors have used flag codes for hundreds of years, to
communicate from ship to ship, or back to shore. At night, ships
used coloured light signals instead.
Ships' flags were used in patterns to spell out messages. There
were also single flags with specific meanings. The flag codes are
recorded in a signal book.
By 1800, signalling between ships was vital as battle tactics
became more complicated. In 1803 the captain of a captured British
ship forgot to throw his signal book overboard. Nelson ordered the
codes to be changed. In 1813 British ship flag codes were
standardised. They are still used internationally today.
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The inventor of @
In 1971 Ray Tomlinson sent the first e-mail message using @. He
was using 'SNDMSG' an electronic message system that allowed users
of the same computer to leave messages for each other. He wanted to
use the ARPANET to send messages to different computers. Tomlinson
chose the @ symbol to tell the system that the receiver was 'at' a
separate computer.
What was the first e-mail ever sent? Well no-one actually knows!
Tomlinson says 'most likely the first message was QWERTYUIOP or
something similar'. When he showed this first e-mail to a colleague
he said 'don't tell anyone, this isn't what we're supposed to be
working on'!
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Cyber-doctor
In 2002 Ahmed Samy, a Lincolnshire surgeon operated on a
patient to repair an artery in her arm. Some time later the patient
began bleeding for a second time. Mr. Samy was the only person who
could diagnose which part of her artery was bleeding, but he was on
a train between Edinburgh and Grimsby at the time.
Ahmed Samy had his laptop computer and mobile phone with him.
His colleagues in Lincolnshire e-mailed scans of the patient to
him. Mr. Samy worked out what was wrong, and suggested appropriate
treatment from the train. His colleagues operated and saved the
patient's life.
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Music live and downloaded
Live music webcasts are changing the way you can listen to your
favourite band. In 2000 popstar Madonna gave her first webcast
concert to over 9 million web users. Fans watched the Internet
concert and talked with other fans around the world using the chat
room.
New MP3 technology allows you to download music from the
Internet. Internet company Napster released Madonna's single
'Music' on the Internet months before it was released in the shops.
Her record company promised to sue unless Napster removed 'Music'
from their website. In 2003 Madonna offered her single 'American
Life' to MP3 users from her own website.
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