Communication Technology development

Posted on October 13, 2012 by gary.gillespie@northwestu.edu

Kurweil Imagines years future — time line
Kurweil Graph http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:PPTExponentialGrowthof_Computing.jpg

Iron Man Computer Interface
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKyQhriOrD0&NR=1&feature=endscreen

Humanity of robots
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-pS0t27-nM
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Development of Communication
Technology

Tens of Thousands of Years BC:

Human Speech

Thousands of Years BC:
Cave Paintings and Petra Graphs

She Who Watches, Columbia River Petra graph

http://www.spokaneoutdoors.com/horseth.htm

The cave of Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc France.

3300 BC: Pictographic Writing
Egyptian: http://www.library.cornell.edu/africana/Writing_Systems/Hieroglyphics.html

Detail of hieroglyphic and demotic script on the Rosetta Stone — with Egyptian script, Greek and Hieroglyphics carved in 196 BC and found in 1799.

Pictographic is “picture writing” — individual words represented by pictorial symbols that resembled the object represented

1800 BC: Cuneiform:
— wedge shaped writing system

Cuneiform was the system of writing used most extensively in the ancient Middle East. Cuneiform was employed for writing a number of languages from about the end of the 4th millennium BC until about the 1st century BC.

1500 BC:
Alphabetic writing systems

Alphabetic writing systems come in two varieties:

Abjads (consonant alphabets) http://www.omniglot.com/writing/alphabetic.htm#abjads
Alphabets (phonemic alphabets) http://www.omniglot.com/writing/alphabetic.htm

450 BC: Greek Optical Telegraph,
Other primitive Telegraphs Lord of Rings

Acoustic telegraph Lines of shouting men. (4th century BC)
Hydraulic telegraph Glass vases filled with water and a floating stick strategically placed in hills (more water in vase raises the stick – empty out some water lowers the stick).
Optical telegraph Fires at night. Smoke signals and mirrors during day.

65 BC: Roman poet Lucretius Theorizes Motion Pictures.
He discovers the phenomenon of persistence of vision, where the brain “sees” an image for up to a tenth of a second after the image is removed. If a second image is viewed within this tenth of a second, where the second image is very similar to the first image, the brain perceives parts of the first image as having moved — the basis for motion pictures and animation 2000 years later.

29 BC: Video Imagined. Virgil in the Aeneid describes motions pictures on the walls the temple in Carthage and on shield of Achilles.

800 AD: The Chinese carve blocks of wood to print whole pages.

1430: Guttenberg Invents metal printing press with movable type

First Printing Press

1590: Camera obscura Paintings using a mirror optical lens.

Caravaggio’s Bacchus (c.1593)

1835: Photography Invented by Talbot

The idea of photography came to William Talbot (1800-1877) while on holiday at Lake Como in Italy, using the Camera obscura and the Camera Lucida as aids to drawing.

Talbot reflected: ‘It was during these thoughts that the idea occurred to me – how charming it would be if it were possible to cause these natural images to imprint themselves durably and remain fixed upon the paper.’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idVLp3X3wjI

begin at 3 minute end at 5

1844: Telegraph by Samuel Morse

1878: Motion Pictures — Stop Action Photography
Edweard Muybridge captures movement of a horse using stop action photography on glass plates. Done with multiple cameras designed so that a horse’s foot would trip each shutter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYpKZx090UE First film 1898

1876: Telephone, phonograph

United States Patent No. 174,465, issued to Alexander Graham Bell in 1876, became recognized as the “most valuable patent.” First words spoken on a telephone: “Mr. Watson–come here–I want to see you.”

Thomas Edison on December 4, 1877 became the first person to ever record and play back the human voice. “Edison turned the crank and said the following words. “Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow, and everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go.”

1889: Film, Camera
Film developed by Eastman and camera developed by Edison combined to produce the first motion picture system

1894: Wireless Telegraph
Nikola Tesla experiments with sending signaling and audio messages using electromagnetic radiation through the air.

“Wireless telegraph” was first used for point-to-point links where regular telegraph lines were unreliable or impractical.

1895: Silent Movies
The first film shot with the Cinématographe camera is La Sortie de l’usine Lumière a Lyon, France of Workers leaving a factory. Shot in March it is shown in public in Paris that same month.

1906: Radio Broadcasts
In 1906, Reginald Fessenden became the first person to broadcast words and music over radio waves.
By 1900 GUGLIELMO Marconi, the inventor of commercial radio, changed the name of his company from The Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company, (established in 1897), to Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph Company. Wireless telegraphs could now broadcast over large areas – essentially the first radio stations.

The Receiving Room at the Marconi Radio Station (Marconi is on the left) at Glace Bay, Canada.

1921: Home Radios, Radio Stations begin Broadcasting widely
Aeriola Jr. designs the first affordable home radio.
Radio Central, Rocky Point, NY, opened by RCA.

1923: Television
Zworykin patents the Iconoscope pickup tube for television: complete TV system including kinescope, or picture tube, demonstrated.

1927: first long distance use of TV
Bell Telephone makes first nationwide TV broadcast between Washington D.C. and New York City on April 9th. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover commented, “Today we have, in a sense, the transmission of sight for the first time in the world’s history.” Philo Farnsworth files for a patent on the first complete electronic television system, which he called the Image Dissector.

1927: Sound Movies
http://www.vitaphone.org/features.html

1930: Magnetic Recording Tape, full Color Printing.

1935: Color Movies

1938: Packet paperback books

1940: Widespread Black and White TV Broadcasts

1943: Colossus Military Computer

“The first fully functioning electronic digital computer was Colossus (1943), used by the Bletchley Park cryptanalysts from 1944.”

During WWII the British Government successfully deciphered German radio communications encoded by means of the Enigma system, and by early 1942 about 39,000 intercepted messages were decoded each month. “Colossus I contained approximately 1600 vacuum tubes and each of the subsequent machines approximately 2400 vacuum tubes.” — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

1945: Modern Computers
On February 14, 1946 the world’s first large electronic general-purpose digital computer was developed at the University of Pennsylvania, named the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer — ENIAC. ENIAC was designed to calculate tables used in aiming artillery. It had “18,000 vacuum tubes and several miles of wiring.”

J. Presper Eckert poses at the console.

1947: LP – Long-playing – records

1954: Transistor Radios

1960: Color Television Broadcasts, Photocopiers

1962: Satellite Communications, Cassette Voice Recording Tapes

1965: Local Cable TV

1972: BETA VCRs

1973: Fax machines

1975: First Personal Computers

IBM’s first PC

1976: VHS VCRs

1977: Apple II home computers
First successful personal computer

1979: Laser disks, Personal stereos (Walkman)