Communications

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​​ =Communications Industry = = = // by: Paige Knapp //

Birth of Industry
**Many** people believe that the first telegraph was designed and made by Samuel F.B. Morse, but in reality, that is not true. The telegraph that Morse made in America around the mid-1830's was really an idea that had been around for half a century before his time. Back in 1791, a Frenchman named Claude Chappe made the first real 'telegraph' in France using a system of synchronizing clocks. Originally, he called it the 'tachygraphe', which is Greek for 'fast writer.' However, it is said that a friend persuaded him to change it to 'télégraphe', a French word meaning 'far writer', instead.

Chappe's machine was destroyed in the French Revolution when some of the Revolutionaries suspected that he might be using it to spy on people without their consent. However, he recovered from the experience and developed a new and better system to send messages back and forth. Other people tried to copy off of Chappe's ideas, and he eventually became overly paranoid and depressed, and committed suicide in 1805. After Chappe, more people wanted to devise a better system for sending their messages, although no one could find a way to make it work. It was not until the mid-1830's when an American (Samuel F.B. Morse) and an Englishman (William Fothergill Cooke) started working on their own versions of a telegraph. They were having troubles with the technical issues with the machines, so they also formed some alliances with local scientists.

By 1845, the telegraph system was up and running, and it was the fastest way to send a message from the East to the West coasts. Before, it would take weeks to deliver a message from the Pony Express, but now it took only an instant.

In England, the first working telegraph was made with the work of both William Cooke and one of his friends, Professor Charles Wheatstone. The system of it was made of an assortment of electromagnetic needles which combined to point at letters on a grid. In America, the telegraph was made differently. Samuel Morse and his friend, Alfred Vail, made their system work by a code of long and short bursts of electricity that caused a stylus to emboss or draw dots and dashes on a strip of paper. The first telegraph sent in the US is pictured below.

As expected, the code that the two men made up was named 'Morse Code' and is still in some use today. It is the made up series of dots and dashes that were most commonly used with the first original telegraphs.



There were a lot of telegraph industries in the US in those early years, including the New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company, which started in 1851. After a few years, however, the company took over some of its other competitors, and responded by changing the name to the Western Union Telegraph Company. It was named the premier telegraph operator in 1911.

In 1914, the teletypewriter was invented, allowing the electronic signal to be automatically decoded and typed onto a strip of ticker tape, which clerks glued to a blank form for delivery purposes. After awhile, machines were developed to type straight onto the blank forms, and then finally (through multiplexing) the machines could do up to 8 telegrams and receive, decode, and print simultaneously. The number jumped up to 72 telegrams at once after the development of 'varioplexing' in 1936.

The cost to send a telegram depended on three things; the distance the message had to travel, how urgent it was, and the length of the message. If you were sending the message across town, it was generally only about twenty cents. If you wanted to go a great distance, however, the cost went up. Because the cost also depended on the length of the message, most of the messages sent were short and to the point. To help with this, people made up codes that could be used for long phrases in the English language. There was a code for just about everything, even though codes were mostly discouraged by the telegraph operators themselves. (They probably just wanted to make more money off of the people.) Some companies even went as far as to forbid the use of the code in any message except the ones where the full rate was already being paid.


 * The ** other main invention that added even more to communication was the telephone. The telephone was invented in the year 1876 in Boston, Massachusetts, and was designed by Alexander Graham Bell, but the original machine itself was put together by Thomas Watson. The original telephone looked nothing like the ones we have today: It was made up of a wooden stand, a funnel, a cup of acid, and some copper wire.

Just using those simple parts, the two men were able to make a phone call and utter the words, "Mr. Watson, come here, I want you!" In doing that, they revolutionized the communication industry.

Bell and Watson were not the only two working on the idea of a 'telephone' at the time. Their competitor, Elisha Gray, was also trying to make one, and the group only filed for a patent just hours before Gray was planning to. Because Bell now had the patent, he used some of Gray's work in his final design--work that he did not propose in the original patent.

The word 'telephone' comes from the Greek 'tele', meaning 'from afar', and 'phone', meaning 'voice or voiced sound'. The telephone was always something that humans wanted to be able to develop, even though it took them awhile to make it work. When the telephone was finally invented, it quickly spread into an industry. The longest phonecall that Bell and Watson ever made was on October 9, 1876, and it was made over a distance of only two miles.

These two inventions were the birth of the Communication revolution.

Labor Relations
In ** the beginning of this industry, telegram workers were very common. During the 1920's and the 1930's, telegram runners would be all over the country, delivering the 'letters'. The Western Union sent out a fleet of 14,000 messenger boys and even more clerks, copyers and operators. They were paid pretty well for their professions. To help expand the industry even more, the telegram industry introduced different colorful telegrams, even starting something called the 'singing telegram'. George Oslin is credited with coming up with this idea, where the message would be delivered in song.

Telegram workers were usually treated well, even though they had to deliver sometimes horrible news. Western Union was the agency that sent out the telegrams that told families about their loved ones who had died in the war.

However, the telegram industry ended shortly after the second World War, when telephone calls became cheap and inexpensive. Telegrams were then considered obsolete. Even though the industry was dying, the last telegram was not delivered until January 27th, 2006.

Telephones, however, started to boom. Back before the war, telegrams were used a lot more often than the telephone was, simply because it was a cheaper way to do things. After the war, telephones started to pick up, especially after the new designs were made.

Telephones were a lot more complecated back in the 1900's than they are now. Back then, there had to be an operator to a certain amount of lines, and when you would make a call, you would tell the operator where to connect you. These operators were generally treated with respect, but I am sure that at some point, they would get a rude or hurried customer that they had to connect.

Today, communication is at its best. However, there are still many strikes and courts that come around pretty frequently. If you want to read up on them, head over here to a page that will show you all of the most recent Communication strikes, globally.

--- Growth of Industry

 * The ** telephone is now the easiest and fastest way to communicate with people around the globe, but it was not always like that. Back in the olden days, telephones were bulky, oversized, and hard to use.

In the beginning, telephones were made fixed to a wall, presenting a problem to anyone who was not of average height. Children would have to stand on stools or chairs if they wished to talk to anyone, and if you were tall, you would have to lean over to be able to talk. Next came the candle-stick telephone. Now, instead of standing next to the wall, you would have to hold the main part of the phone--containing the mouthpiece--in one hand and the earpiece in the other. Because of this design, people could not write down notes during calls, or do anything else, for that matter.

Then came the rotary dial telephone. This is probably the most popular 'older' telephone, and people still use them today. The mouth and earpiece were on the same bar, making it convienent to hold and not as bulky as previous telephones. You could dial a number by spinning the little dial on the base of the phone, although for some, this was hard to figure out.

Because of freedom of speech, the Communication industry is only dictated by the government. There are a few well known companies now, including Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, and T-Mobile, but there are also some landline companies that you might not have heard of, like Big River Telephone Company, mainly located in the mid-western US.

Now, the telephone as they knew it back then is a thing of the past. We now have more modern 'cell phones' which can be used to go onto the Internet, for calls, or for text messages. Some phones can do even more than that and can use other applications as well as the ones listed above.


 * Today **, the communication industry is at its best. Some of the biggest name companies nowadays are the cell phone companies, because cell phones are being used increasingly. AT&T, Apple, and many others lead the charts.

Phones are now not the only way that you can communicate across the globe. The internet is another big provider of communication between people. In fact, you are using it to view this page right now! Using the internet, you can set up forums, use Instant Messaging (IM), and e-mail to communicate. The internet is probably the most useful resource you can have, but you have to be careful, because everyone can post something to the internet, so it is not necessarily true.

Getting a job in communications is pretty easy. There are many different jobs you could have, from selling the phones and computers all the way up to being a mechanic to go and fix the phone or landlines. Telephone operators are still in existance, and if you ever need help to find a number, just dial the helpful '0'.

Communication can only go up from here, and it already is. Different techies are always working on the newest and most improved ways to communicate, although at the moment, the internet and cellular phones are the best two to choose from. Apple's iPhone was released a while ago, and is probably the best to shoot for if you want a phone and the internet, packaged into one. Back in history, nobody would have thought that we could have come anywhere near we are now with communications.

**Questions to Think About:** ---Who was the first one to come up with the telegraph? (explicit)

---Now, people don't think much of how we rely on communicational devices. What do you think life would be like without them? (experience)

---What kind of telephones were there throughout the ages? List them. (implicit)

---When was the last telegram delivered? (explicit)

---What was the problem with the original wall telephones? (explicit)

References: http://www.retro-gram.com/telegramhistory.html [] [] http://gadgets.boingboing.net/gimages/acc62box7commcode8ca.jpg [] [] [] []__ [] __ __ [] __ __ [] __ __ [] __ __ [] __ __ [] __ __ [] __