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 -
Radio broadcasting is the transmission of signals, especially audio, to receivers using radio waves over a wide area. Listeners require a broadcast radio receiver to receive these signals. "Terrestrial" broadcasts come from stations on land, and include AM and FM (both analog); and DAB (digital). Audio is also broadcast via satellite in both digital and analog, originating from a satellite in orbit around Earth.
Radio stations may produce their own programming or be affiliated with a radio network that provides content either through broadcast syndication or by simulcasting, or both. The most common transmission technologies are analog and digital. Analog radio uses one of two modulation methods: amplitude modulation (AM) or frequency modulation (FM). Digital radio stations transmit using one of several digital audio standards, such as DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting), HD Radio, or DRM (Digital Radio Mondiale). (Full article...)
General images
The master telephone patent, 174465, granted to Bell, March 7, 1876 (from History of telecommunication)
Naomi ("Joan") Melwit and Norman Banks at the 3KZ microphone, in the late 1930s (from History of broadcasting)
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)
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)
Code of letters and symbols for Chappe telegraph (Rees's Cyclopaedia) (from History of telecommunication)
Receiver schematic, c.1906 (from History of the telephone)
An early experiment demonstrating the refraction of microwaves by a paraffin lens by John Ambrose Fleming in 1897 (from History of radio)
John Logie Baird in 1925 with his televisor equipment and dummies "James" and "Stooky Bill" (right) (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)
1896 telephone (Sweden) (from History of the telephone)
Reconstruction of Aeneas Tacticus' hydraulic telegraph (4th c. B.C.) in Kotsanas Museum of Ancient Greek Technology, Athens, Greece. (from History of telecommunication)
Historical marker commemorating the first telephone central office in New York State (1878) (from History of the telephone)- The master telephone patent granted to Bell, 174465, March 7, 1876 (from History of the telephone)
Innocenzo Manzetti considered the idea of a telephone in 1844 (from History of the telephone)
A 19th century acoustic tin can or "lovers' telephone" (from History of the telephone)
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation logo, first introduced in 1975 and based on the Lissajous curve (from History of broadcasting)
Swedish Prime Minister Tage Erlander using an Ericsson videophone to speak with Lennart Hyland, a popular TV show host (1969) (from History of videotelephony)
Top of cellular telephone tower (from History of the telephone)
British Post Office engineers inspect Guglielmo Marconi's wireless telegraphy (radio) equipment in 1897. (from History of radio)
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)
Typical low-cost webcam used with many personal computers (from History of videotelephony)
Lee DeForest broadcasting Columbia phonograph records on New York station 2XG, 1916 (from History of broadcasting)
The first mass-produced Czechoslovak TV-set Tesla 4001A (1953–57) (from History of television)
Philo Farnsworth in 1924 (from History of television)- Donald Manson working as an employee of the Marconi Company (England, 1906) (from History of radio)
Elisha Gray, 1876, designed a telephone using a water microphone in Highland Park, Illinois. (from History of the telephone)
Thomas Edison invented the carbon microphone which produced a strong telephone signal. (from History of the telephone)
The Kyocera VP-210 Visual Phone was the first commercial mobile videophone. The Personal Handy-phone System (PHS) phone was introduced in Japan (1999). (from History of videotelephony)
Ad for the beginning of experimental television broadcasting in New York City by RCA in 1939 (from History of television)
First television test broadcast transmitted by the NHK Broadcasting Technology Research Institute in May 1939 (from History of television)
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)
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)
Family watching TV, 1958 (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)
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)
Screen idol Rudolph Valentino at the microphone of WSB in Atlanta, 1923 (from History of broadcasting)
The Philco Predicta, 1958. In the collection of The Children's Museum of Indianapolis (from History of television)
Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1856–1894) proved the existence of electromagnetic radiation. (from History of radio)
Manfred von Ardenne in 1933 (from History of television)
Antonio Meucci, 1849, developing a voice-communication apparatus that several sources credit as the first telephone. (from History of the telephone)
Guglielmo Marconi (from History of broadcasting)
Alexander Graham Bell was awarded the first U.S. patent for the invention of the telephone in 1876. (from History of the telephone)
Reginald Fessenden, the "father" of radio broadcasting in the U.S. (from History of broadcasting)
1917 wall telephone, open to show magneto and local battery (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)
Portrait of John Reith, 1st Baron Reith, in 1925, founding director general of the BBC from 1922 to 1938 (from History of broadcasting)
The French Matra videophone (1970) (from History of videotelephony)
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Selected biography -
Paul Julius Gottlieb Nipkow (German: [ˈpaʊl ˈgɔtliːp ˈnɪpkoː]; 22 August 1860 – 24 August 1940) was a German electrical engineer and inventor. He invented the Nipkow disk, which laid the foundation of television, since his disk was a fundamental component in the first televisions. Hundreds of stations experimented with television broadcasting using his disk in the 1920s and 1930s, until it was superseded by all-electronic systems in the 1940s.
Nipkow has been called the "father of television", together with other early figures of television history like Karl Ferdinand Braun. (Full article...)
Did you know (auto-generated) -
- ... that during hearings for a new TV station in the state of Washington, an engineer collapsed on the witness stand, a radio station owner suffered food poisoning, and his rival's wife was hospitalized?
- ... that ten dancers dressed as furry monkeys featured in the television premiere of Through the Crystal Ball?
- ... that in 1939, a teenage Robin Ordell became the youngest radio announcer in Australia?
- ... that the television host Jimmy Kimmel met his bandleader Cleto Escobedo III when they were both nine years old?
- ... that an Alabama radio station was described by its program director as a "no-format mess"?
- ... that Angelle's debut single was promoted with an entire television channel – and still only reached number 43 on the UK Singles Chart?
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