Portal:Telecommunication
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 -
The Internet originated in the efforts of scientists and engineers to build and interconnect computer networks. The Internet Protocol Suite, the set of rules used to communicate between networks and devices on the Internet, arose from research and development in the United States and involved international collaboration, particularly with researchers in the United Kingdom and France.
Computer science was an emerging discipline in the late 1950s that began to consider time-sharing between computer users, and later, the possibility of achieving this over wide area networks. J. C. R. Licklider articulated the idea of a universal network at the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) of the United States Department of Defense (DoD) Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). Independently, Paul Baran at the RAND Corporation proposed a distributed network based on data in message blocks in the early 1960s, and Donald Davies conceived of packet switching in 1965 at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), proposing a national commercial data network in the United Kingdom. (Full article...)
General images
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Typical low-cost webcam used with many personal computers (from History of videotelephony) -
Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1856–1894) proved the existence of electromagnetic radiation. (from History of radio) -
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) -
Swedish Prime Minister Tage Erlander using an Ericsson videophone to speak with Lennart Hyland, a popular TV show host (1969) (from History of videotelephony) -
A replica of one of Claude Chappe's semaphore towers (optical telegraph) in Nalbach, Germany (from History of telecommunication) -
Reconstruction of Aeneas Tacticus' hydraulic telegraph (4th c. B.C.) in Kotsanas Museum of Ancient Greek Technology, Athens, Greece. (from History of telecommunication) -
"Doc" Herrold is shown at the microphone of KQW, c. 1925 (from History of broadcasting) -
First television test broadcast transmitted by the NHK Broadcasting Technology Research Institute in May 1939 (from History of television) -
Family watching TV, 1958 (from History of television) -
British Post Office engineers inspect Guglielmo Marconi's wireless telegraphy (radio) equipment in 1897. (from History of radio) -
1917 wall telephone, open to show magneto and local battery (from History of the telephone) -
Ad for the beginning of experimental television broadcasting in New York City by RCA in 1939 (from History of television) -
"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) -
The "Kerbango Internet Radio" was the first stand-alone product that let users listen to Internet radio without a computer. (from History of broadcasting) -
Australian radio sets usually had the positions of radio stations marked on their dials. The illustration is a dial from a transistorised, mains-operated Calstan radio, c. 1960s. (Click image for a high resolution view, with readable callsigns.) (from History of broadcasting) -
A French Gower telephone of 1912 at the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris (from History of the telephone) -
Naomi ("Joan") Melwit and Norman Banks at the 3KZ microphone, in the late 1930s (from History of broadcasting) -
An early experiment demonstrating the refraction of microwaves by a paraffin lens by John Ambrose Fleming in 1897 (from History of radio) -
An early Smart TV from 2012 running the discontinued Orsay platform (from History of television) -
The first commercial AM Audion vacuum tube radio transmitter, built in 1914 by Lee De Forest who invented the Audion (triode) in 1906 (from History of radio) -
Philipp Reis, 1861, constructed the first telephone, today called the Reis telephone. (from History of the telephone) -
Artist's conception: 21st-century videotelephony imagined in the early 20th century (1910) (from History of videotelephony) -
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation logo, first introduced in 1975 and based on the Lissajous curve (from History of broadcasting) -
Code of letters and symbols for Chappe telegraph (Rees's Cyclopaedia) (from History of telecommunication) -
Lee DeForest broadcasting Columbia phonograph records on New York station 2XG, 1916 (from History of broadcasting) -
Tihanyi' Radioskop patent (1926) was recognized as Document of Universal Significance by the UNESCO (from History of television) -
Elisha Gray, 1876, designed a telephone using a water microphone in Highland Park, Illinois. (from History of the telephone) -
A 19th century acoustic tin can or "lovers' telephone" (from History of the telephone) -
Portrait of John Reith, 1st Baron Reith, in 1925, founding director general of the BBC from 1922 to 1938 (from History of broadcasting) -
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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) -
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) -
The master telephone patent, 174465, granted to Bell, March 7, 1876 (from History of telecommunication) -
RCA 630-TS, the first mass-produced television set, which sold in 1946–1947 (from History of television) -
Philo Farnsworth in 1924 (from History of television) -
John Logie Baird in 1925 with his televisor equipment and dummies "James" and "Stooky Bill" (right) (from History of television) -
The earliest photograph of a television picture, showing the face of Oliver Hutchinson in June 1926. The television picture was projected using Baird's television camera. (from History of television) -
The master telephone patent granted to Bell, 174465, March 7, 1876 (from History of the telephone)
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Antonio Meucci, 1849, developing a voice-communication apparatus that several sources credit as the first telephone. (from History of the telephone) -
Alexander Graham Bell was awarded the first U.S. patent for the invention of the telephone in 1876. (from History of the telephone) -
The first mass-produced Czechoslovak TV-set Tesla 4001A (1953–57) (from History of television) -
Broadcasting pioneer Frank Conrad in a 1921 portrait (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) -
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) -
Bell prototype telephone stamp(from History of the telephone)
Centennial Issue of 1976 -
The Philco Predicta, 1958. In the collection of The Children's Museum of Indianapolis (from History of television) -
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Charles Logwood broadcasting at New York station 2XG, 1916 (from History of broadcasting) -
The 1969 AT&T Mod II Picturephone, the result of decades long R&D at a cost of over $500M. (from History of telecommunication) -
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)
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Selected biography -
Nikola Tesla (10 July 1856 – 7 January 1943) was a Serbian American engineer, futurist, and inventor. He is known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system.
Born and raised in the Austrian Empire, Tesla first studied engineering and physics in the 1870s without receiving a degree. He then gained practical experience in the early 1880s working in telephony and at Continental Edison in the new electric power industry. In 1884, he migrated to the United States, where he became a naturalized citizen. He worked for a short time at the Edison Machine Works in New York City before he struck out on his own. With the help of partners to finance and market his ideas, Tesla set up laboratories and companies in New York to develop a range of electrical and mechanical devices. His AC induction motor and related polyphase AC patents, licensed by Westinghouse Electric in 1888, earned him a considerable amount of money and became the cornerstone of the polyphase system, which Westinghouse marketed. (Full article...)
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