History of Communications

1. History of Communications

2. The First Written Language (3350 BC) • Sumerian is the ancient language of Sumer spoken in Southern Mesopotamia it was the first language to be written it was written in Cuneiform script.

3. Cuneiform script • The type of writing this language used was known as Cuneiform script. Cuneiform script consists of a wedges on a clay tablet cut by a blunt reed in place of a stylus. • This type of writing was used for more than 3 millennia's. Around 2nd century AD all knowledge of reading and writing it was lost. It has only began to be translated in the 19th century.

4. Proto-literate Period • The Cuneiform script had developed from the pictographic writing. • The first documents written in the Sumerian language date to the 31st century, found at Jemdet Nasr.

5. Usage • Between half a million and two million Cuneiform tablets have been recovered during modern times. Of these there are only about 100,000 that have been published.

6. The Adding Machine(1642) • The adding machine was originally invented by Blaise Pascal. • It could add, subtract, multiply and do division through repetitions

7. Operations • To add a new list of numbers and arrive at a total, the user was first required to "ZERO" the machine. Then, to add sets of numbers, the user was required to press numbered keys on a keyboard, which would remain depressed (rather than immediately rebound like the keys of a computer keyboard or typewriter or the buttons of a typical modern machine). The user would then pull the crank, which caused the numbers to be shown on the rotary wheels, and the keys to be released (i.e. to pop back up) in preparation for the next input. To add, for example, the amounts of 30.72 and 4.49 (which, in adding machine terms, on a decimal adding machine is 3,072 plus 449 "decimal units"), the following process took place: Press the 3 key in the column fourth from the right (multiples of one thousand), the 7 key in the column 2nd from right (multiples of ten) and the 2 key in the rightmost column (multiples of 1).

8. Why It Was a Success • It was a success due to it being the only functional mechanical calculator in the 17th century. He was the only person to shrink and adapt for his purpose a lantern gear, used in turret clocks and water wheels, which was capable of resisting the strength of any operator input with very little added friction.

9. Achievements • Not only was Pascal's calculator the first mechanical. • It was the first calculator to have a controlled carry mechanism which allowed for an effective propagation of multiple carries. • The first calculator used in an office. • The fist calculator to be commercialized. • The first calculator to be patented. • The first calculator to be described in an encyclopaedia.

10. Morse Code(1843) • Morse code is a method of transmitting text information as a series of on-off tones, lights, or clicks that can be directly understood by a skilled listener or observer without special equipment.

11. How It Works • Each character is represented by a unique sequence of dots and dashes. The duration of a dash is three times the duration of a dot. Each dot or dash is followed by a short silence, equal the dot duration. For efficiency, the length of each character in Morse is approximately inversely proportional to its frequency of occurrence in English. The most common letter in the English alphabet is E so it has the shortest code, a single dot.

12. Morse Code Today • Morse code is still used to day among amateur radio operators, although it is no longer required for licensing in most countries. Pilots and air traffic controllers need only a cursory understanding.

13. Common Code • There is one code everyone should know and that is SOS its representation is 3 dots followed by 3 dashes then 3 more dots.

14. Unusual Variants • During early World War I (1914-1916) Germany briefly experimented with 'dotty' and 'dashy' Morse, in essence adding a dot or a dash at the end of each Morse symbol. Each one was quickly broken by Allied SIGINT, and standard Morse was restored by Spring 1916. Only a small percent of Western Front (and Mediterranean Sea) traffic ever was in 'dotty' or 'dashy' Morse during the entire War. In popular culture, this is mostly remembered in the book "The Code Breakers" by Kahn and in the national archives of the UK and Australia (whose SIGINT operators copied most of this Morse variant). • Other forms of 'Fractional Morse' or 'Fractionated Morse' have emerged.

15. Television • In 1926 John Logie Baird created the first television.

16. History • In its early stages of development, television employed a combination of optical, mechanical and electronic technologies to capture, transmit and display a visual image. By the late 1920s, however, those employing only optical and electronic technologies were being explored. All modern television systems relied on the latter, although the knowledge gained from the work on electromechanical systems was crucial in the development of fully electronic television.

17. First images transmitted • The first images transmitted electrically were sent by early mechanical fax machines, including the pantelegraph, developed in the late nineteenth century. The concept of electrically powered transmission of television images in motion was first sketched in 1878 as the telephonoscope, shortly after the invention of the telephone. At the time, it was imagined by early science fiction authors, that someday that light could be transmitted over copper wires, as sounds were.

18. First electric television • In 1884, Paul Gottlieb Nipkow, a 23-year-old university student in Germany, patented the first electromechanical television system which employed a scanning disk, a spinning disk with a series of holes spiraling toward the center, for rasterization. The holes were spaced at equal angular intervals such that, in a single rotation, the disk would allow light to pass through each hole and onto a light-sensitive selenium sensor which produced the electrical pulses. As an image was focused on the rotating disk, each hole captured a horizontal "slice" of the whole image.

19. Making it practical • Nipkow's design would not be practical until advances in amplifier tube technology became available. Later designs would use a rotating mirror-drum scanner to capture the image and a cathode ray tube (CRT) as a display device, but moving images were still not possible, due to the poor sensitivity of the selenium sensors. In 1907, Russian scientist Boris Rosing became the first inventor to use a CRT in the receiver of an experimental television system. He used mirror-drum scanning to transmit simple geometric shapes to the CRT.

20. Y2K the millennium virus(1999) • By 1999 most things that were of extreme importance were stored on computers. Money records on banks, Criminal records, and a bundle of important things. Y2k was believed to be a virus that would erase all data and reset all computers.

21. Y2K Happened • Y2k actually happened but due to most people being so naive about the new technology they thought it would be a lot more destructive and would cause world wide panic and money lost. There are multiple conspiracy theories around Y2k but the most of them got it wrong.

22. What It Was • Most individuals if not all got it wrong it was neither the “end times” or would cause all computers to be wiped but in fact it was the fault of computer developers that didn’t account for the year 2000 happening. The computers in 1999 had a certain date format DD-MM-YY there was only 2 values for the year so when year 2000 hit it was expected to reset the computer due to the computers date value to be “0,0”.

23. It will happen again. • A similar event to Y2k will happen again in 2038 due to a because 2^31 -1 is the highest value that a 32bit integer can exceed. It most likely wont cause mass panic like Y2k did but however will cause errors in programs and operating systems lets hope before this happens they account for year 2038.