The Telecommunication Portal
Telecommunication, often used in its plural form or abbreviated as telecom, is the transmission of information over a distance using electrical or electronic means, typically through cables, radio waves, or other communication technologies. These means of transmission may be divided into communication channels for multiplexing, allowing for a single medium to transmit several concurrent communication sessions. Long-distance technologies invented during the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries generally use electric power, and include the electrical telegraph, telephone, television, and radio.
Early telecommunication networks used metal wires as the medium for transmitting signals. These networks were used for telegraphy and telephony for many decades. In the first decade of the 20th century, a revolution in wireless communication began with breakthroughs including those made in radio communications by Guglielmo Marconi, who won the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics. Other early pioneers in electrical and electronic telecommunications include co-inventors of the telegraph Charles Wheatstone and Samuel Morse, numerous inventors and developers of the telephone including Antonio Meucci, Philipp Reis, Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell, inventors of radio Edwin Armstrong and Lee de Forest, as well as inventors of television like Vladimir K. Zworykin, John Logie Baird and Philo Farnsworth.
Since the 1960s, the proliferation of digital technologies has meant that voice communications have gradually been supplemented by data. The physical limitations of metallic media prompted the development of optical fibre. The Internet, a technology independent of any given medium, has provided global access to services for individual users and further reduced location and time limitations on communications. (Full article...)
Selected article -
A 300-page iPhone bill from AT&T Mobility mailed in a box was the subject of a viral video made by YouTube personality Justine Ezarik, best known as iJustine, which became an Internet meme in August 2007. Ezarik's video focused on the unnecessary waste of paper, as the detailed bill itemized all data transfers made during the first billing period of the original iPhone, including every email and text message. Stories of unexpected billing issues began to circulate in blogs and the technical press after the iPhone's heavily advertised and anticipated release, but this video clip brought the voluminous bills to the attention of the mass media.
Ten days later, after the video had been viewed more than 3 million times on the Internet and had received international news coverage, AT&T sent iPhone users a text message outlining changes in its billing practices. The information technology magazine Computerworld included this incident in its list of "Technology's 10 Most Mortifying Moments". (Full article...)
General images
Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1856–1894) proved the existence of electromagnetic radiation. (from History of radio)
Typical low-cost webcam used with many personal computers (from History of videotelephony)
Swedish Prime Minister Tage Erlander using an Ericsson videophone to speak with Lennart Hyland, a popular TV show host (1969) (from History of videotelephony)
The first mass-produced Czechoslovak TV-set Tesla 4001A (1953–57) (from History of television)
Bell prototype telephone stamp(from History of the telephone)
Centennial Issue of 1976
DBS satellite dishes (from History of television)
Code of letters and symbols for Chappe telegraph (Rees's Cyclopaedia) (from History of telecommunication)
1896 telephone (Sweden) (from History of the telephone)
Private conversation, 1910 (from History of the telephone)
Apple iPhone smartphone (from History of the telephone)
Thomas Edison invented the carbon microphone which produced a strong telephone signal. (from History of the telephone)
The French Matra videophone (1970) (from History of videotelephony)
Replica of the telettrofono at Museo Nazionale Scienza e Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci of Milan, Italy, invented by Antonio Meucci and credited by several sources as the first telephone. (from History of the telephone)
The Nipkow disk. This schematic shows the circular paths traced by the holes, which may also be square for greater precision. The area of the disk outlined in black shows the region scanned. (from History of television)
An early experiment demonstrating the refraction of microwaves by a paraffin lens by John Ambrose Fleming in 1897 (from History of radio)
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation logo, first introduced in 1975 and based on the Lissajous curve (from History of broadcasting)
British Post Office engineers inspect Guglielmo Marconi's wireless telegraphy (radio) equipment in 1897. (from History of radio)
A French Gower telephone of 1912 at the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris (from History of the telephone)
Artist's conception: 21st-century videotelephony imagined in the early 20th century (1910) (from History of videotelephony)
Family watching TV, 1958 (from History of television)
The Marconi Company was formed in England in 1910. The photo shows a typical early scene, from 1906, with Marconi employee Donald Manson at right. (from History of broadcasting)
In the 1920s, the United States government publication, "Construction and Operation of a Simple Homemade Radio Receiving Outfit", showed how almost any person handy with simple tools could build an effective crystal radio receiver. (from History of radio)
Philo Farnsworth in 1924 (from History of television)
The master telephone patent granted to Bell, 174465, March 7, 1876 (from History of the telephone)- Donald Manson working as an employee of the Marconi Company (England, 1906) (from History of radio)
Alexander Graham Bell was awarded the first U.S. patent for the invention of the telephone in 1876. (from History of the telephone)
Around 1920, radio broadcasting started to get popular. The Brox Sisters, a popular singing group, gathered around the radio at the time. (from History of radio)
"Doc" Herrold is shown at the microphone of KQW, c. 1925 (from History of broadcasting)- The master telephone patent, 174465, granted to Bell, March 7, 1876 (from History of telecommunication)
1917 wall telephone, open to show magneto and local battery (from History of the telephone)
Tihanyi' Radioskop patent (1926) was recognized as Document of Universal Significance by the UNESCO (from History of television)
Fessenden operating an underwater oscillator in 1915. (from History of radio)
Antonio Meucci, 1849, developing a voice-communication apparatus that several sources credit as the first telephone. (from History of the telephone)
Actor portraying Alexander Graham Bell in a 1932 silent film. Shows Bell's second telephone transmitter (microphone), invented 1876 and first displayed at the Centennial Exposition, Philadelphia. (from History of the telephone)
Guglielmo Marconi (from History of broadcasting)
Color bars used in a test pattern, sometimes used when no program material is available (from History of television)
The Regency TR-1, which used Texas Instruments' NPN transistors, was the world's first commercially produced transistor radio in 1954. Size: 3×5×1.25 inch (7.6×12.7×3.2 cm) (from History of radio)
Innocenzo Manzetti considered the idea of a telephone in 1844 (from History of the telephone)
The 1969 AT&T Mod II Picturephone, the result of decades long R&D at a cost of over $500M. (from History of telecommunication)
Philipp Reis, 1861, constructed the first telephone, today called the Reis telephone. (from History of the telephone)
"Fiction becomes fact": Imaginary "Edison" combination videophone-television, conceptualized by George du Maurier and published in Punch magazine. The drawing also depicts then-contemporary speaking tubes, used by the parents in the foreground and their daughter on the viewing display (1878). (from History of videotelephony)
An early Smart TV from 2012 running the discontinued Orsay platform (from History of television)
First television test broadcast transmitted by the NHK Broadcasting Technology Research Institute in May 1939 (from History of television)
Early pioneers of radio science and technology in the United States, including Charles Steinmetz, David Sarnoff, Irving Langmuir, and Alfred Goldsmith in 1921, photographed next to the antenna feed wires of the New Brunswick Marconi Station, one of the first transatlantic radio links. The photo includes Albert Einstein as a visiting guest. (from History of radio)
Lee DeForest broadcasting Columbia phonograph records on New York station 2XG, 1916 (from History of broadcasting)
Charles Logwood broadcasting at New York station 2XG, 1916 (from History of broadcasting)
Historical marker commemorating the first telephone central office in New York State (1878) (from History of the telephone)
Screen idol Rudolph Valentino at the microphone of WSB in Atlanta, 1923 (from History of broadcasting)
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Selected biography -
Charles Bourseul (28 April 1829 – 23 November 1912) was a pioneer in development of the "make and break" telephone about 20 years before Bell made a practical telephone. (Full article...)
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