One of the first actions of a person isolated from society, in long-term solitary confinement, or stranded on a desert island as a result of a shipwreck, is to keep a calendar in the form of daily notches on a stone or tree. Time stamps made by a deprived individual mark the first steps of the human race towards the transmission of written and oral information.
Probably, our ancestors began keeping calendars 35 thousand years ago, back in the Stone Age.
Among the many rock paintings Western Europe created over the next 25 thousand years, mysterious signs were discovered. Their meaning is still unclear to scientists today, but as for artists, they perceive them as clearly expressed symbolic means of communication.
Hunters in France and Spain around the end of the last ice age (about 8000 BC) used other mysterious symbols. They painted pebbles with red ocher, drawing dots, dashes and wavy lines. It is possible that these items were simply used to keep track of animals and grain. Such signs were widespread throughout the agricultural belt, from southwest Turkey to Pakistan. Over time, they have become much more diverse. By the 4th millennium BC. e. The urban civilization of the Sumerians in southern Iraq developed a complex counting system that included 250 different types of signs. Divided into groups and sealed in clay envelopes, they could be used like a waybill to accompany goods during shipment.
These interesting containers could play a vital role important role in the subsequent sharp leap in the technology of means of communication - the invention of writing. The first step was the image of the goods themselves and their list in the form of signs located inside the envelope, and a small number of symbols imprinted on the outside, which subsequently made the internal list unnecessary. A clay tablet with signs imprinted on it fulfilled this role perfectly. At some point, people realized that this method could be used for more than just counting. By depicting pictograms, you can show almost everything, from objects to actions. Thus, writing was invented, the first undisputed examples of which come from the Sumerian city of Kish around 3500 BC. e. Egyptian hieroglyphic writing arose in a similar way (around 3000 BC), although its development was much faster.
Pictographs quickly evolved into more stylized forms of writing, such as the wedge-shaped signs of Ancient Iraq. They could be quickly written down by pressing a wooden stylus onto a soft clay tablet, which was then dried in the sun or fired. Over time, the letter became more and more phonetic, expressing sounds rather than depicting objects. As soon as wedge-shaped signs began to convey complex grammatical forms, they began to form words literary language. On Sumerian tablets dating back to approximately 2300 BC. e., the works of the first were recorded known to the world poetess - Enheduanna, daughter of the Akkadian king Sargon. Elevated by her father to the rank of high priestess of the moon god in the city of Ur, she wrote several hymns in honor of the great temples and gods of the Earth, subscribing to them as a priestess of the moon god. Even a portrait of Enheduanna, found in Ur, has survived.
Clay tablets made it possible to accumulate and reliably store information - a thoroughly burned tablet becomes hard and can be preserved for centuries.
Indeed, the clay “libraries” of the Assyrian and Babylonian civilizations of Ancient Iraq may survive even after nuclear disaster, which cannot be said about modern means of storing information, such short-lived ones as paper and magnetic tape. However, clay tablets as a means of communication are very cumbersome. In ancient times, there was a service for sending "clay letters" (in clay envelopes, of course), but gradually the need for more portable means arose.
Papyrus, invented by the Egyptians around 3000 BC. e., also suitable for recording accounts. It was discovered in Egypt in a natural state; the reeds used to make papyrus once covered vast areas of marshy land in the Nile Delta. Film-like strips from the pith of this plant were beaten to make them as flat as possible, folded crosswise at right angles and placed under a press. Then the resulting sheets were polished with special grinding stones. At the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. e. and subsequently Egypt exported papyrus scrolls to other countries. The invention of paper of this kind occurred independently, although much later, in America. The first samples of paper began to appear in Teotihuacan (Mexico) starting in the 5th century AD. e. Ancient Mexican paper was most often made from bark fig tree by soaking and beating the fibers until they turned into thin sheets, which were then coated with lime varnish and polished with special stones. This production became widespread, and by the time of the Aztec Empire in the 15th century. n. e. bureaucratic services consumed up to 480 thousand sheets of paper per year.
Development of cuneiform. The first column shows a pictogram invented by the Sumerians of southern Iraq around 3500 BC. Rotated 90 degrees, the designs were stylized over several centuries. The last column depicts signs used in Assyria and Babylon around 700 BC. Cuneiform gets its name from the shape of the stylus imprint with square edges on soft clay.
Modern paper types require much more advanced technology; it is made from thin sheets wood pulp placed in the form of an aqueous solution in flat shape. Then the water is drained, and the residue is taken out and dried. This method was invented by the Chinese, which was confirmed by finds in a burial ground near Xi'an dating back to the 1st century. BC BC, but were later recognized as a fake, so the earliest should probably be considered the paper samples found in 1942 in the ruins of a watchtower in northern China, destroyed during the uprising in 110 AD. e. Written messages written on mulberry paper and telling about the production of hats, clothing and weapons date back to the same time. Long time The Chinese kept the secret of paper production strictly secret and tried to prevent its production in other Asian countries in order to maintain a monopoly. But in the 7th century. n. e. this method became known in India, and then to the Arabs from prisoners captured during the capture of Samarkand in 751 AD. e. The Arabs, in turn, also tried to keep this secret, and Europeans did not know how to make paper until the 12th century.
Stone paper mallet (5th century AD), found in Mexico. These beaters were used to beat fibrous masses of plant material, usually the bark of a fig tree, turning it into thin sheets.
It goes without saying that the technology and means for recording information were available only educated people. In an ancient society where the vast majority of the population was engaged in agriculture, such people constituted only a very small percentage of the population. Literacy was the only way to achieve success in any field other than studies agriculture, craft or military service, and “scribes” became by inheritance, engaging in this activity from generation to generation since ancient times. This occupation was considered honorable. IN Ancient Egypt Scribe training began at age 5. The complexity of many pre-alphabetic writing systems means that it took years to learn and only a select few could boast mastery of writing.
The first public schools in the history of mankind were established by the Sumerian king Shulgi in the cities of Nippur and Ur (Iraq) shortly before 2000 BC. e. The ruins of such schools dating back to 1700 BC. e., were discovered 60 years ago in Ur by the great archaeologist Leonard Woolley. In the part of the priest's house set aside as a boys' school, Woolley found about 2,000 clay tablets with student exercises, mathematical tables, religious texts and inscriptions copied from monuments and dictionaries. Discipline in such schools was harsh. In Iraq, for example, the school staff had a person with a “whip” who made sure that students stayed in class. At the same time, only the sons of wealthy parents could overcome the difficulties of learning to write.
As it turned out, the first civilization to introduce compulsory education, there was a civilization of the Aztecs. According to the Spanish conquerors of Mexico, all Aztec boys, regardless of origin, were required to attend school. As for girls, oddly enough, it was desirable that only the daughters of merchants or peasants study at school.
What we now call higher education began in Greece. The famous Academy of Athens was founded in 387 BC. e. Plato, a philosopher who set himself the goal of reforming society. He wanted to educate the townspeople, who would then create a new, educated ruling class. Therefore, ethics and philosophy were the main subjects of study. Under the leadership of Plato's followers, the academic method of teaching acquired an encyclopedic character by collecting information about all branches of science. Then, following the example of Athens, open institutes were founded in Beirut and Antioch and the famous Museyon of Alexandria. There, women's participation was welcomed, both as students and teachers. By the 3rd century. BC e. Alexandria Museyon became scientific center Mediterranean. And although the School of Alexandria eclipsed the Academy of Athens, the latter existed for another 800 years and was closed in 529 AD. e. by order of Emperor Justinian, who saw in it a hotbed of paganism. By this time, the Eastern Roman Empire had officially become a Christian power, and for 100 years there had been a university in Constantinople, in contrast to the ancient pagan institutions, which was an exclusively male Christian center of learning.
An Egyptian scribe writes on papyrus with a reed pen while sitting. In front of him on the table is a stand with multi-colored ink and a vessel with water.
It seems that such violent religious conflicts did not exist in the educational system of the great ancient philosopher Confucius. In Luoyang in 124 BC. e. Emperor Wu Ti founded an imperial university with 50 students, the number of which increased by 10 BC. e. up to 3 thousand, and by 30 AD. e. - up to 10 thousand. Several teaching positions were created, which were called "experts in the great science." In 276 AD e. A national academy was also founded. These two organizations performed different functions: the descendants of the imperial clan were trained at the university, and “talented people from the common people” were accepted into the academy.
Concerning higher education in India, its past has been little studied, but from the notes of travelers who visited the country, the Buddhist university in Nalanda is well known. At the beginning of the 7th century. n. e. Chinese scholar Xuan Can wrote that 10 thousand students study in this complex of 400 buildings. Admission to Nalanda University was based on a strict oral examination, as a result of which 80 percent of candidates were eliminated. The university's reputation was so high that many simply pretended to study there; Eventually the problem of fake graduates became so acute that the university authorities were forced to issue a degree certificate in the form of a clay seal.
The first libraries appeared in Iraq - the birthplace of writing and schools. During the Sumerian era, huge archives of religious texts accumulated in the castles of the local nobility, which were carefully preserved and copied over the centuries. Since such collections were first created by ancient rulers, the first of the known large national libraries was built in the palace garden by the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal (668-627 BC). The Assyrians were the heirs of a Mesopotamian civilization dating back three thousand years, and the task of Ashurbanipal's librarians was to collect in one place all the surviving evidence of the wisdom of their predecessors. The king ordered them to diligently look for new acquisitions:
“Hunt in the archives for valuable tablets that are not in Assyria, and send them to me... I wrote to the officials... and no one should hide a single tablet from us, and if you find out about any... which I did not write to you about, but which, in your opinion, may be useful for my palace, then find it, acquire it and send it to me.”
A lot of collected material turned out to be in a dead Sumerian language. To help scribes translate these texts into Assyrian, hundreds of word lists and entire dictionaries were prepared. These assiduous efforts of the Assyrians made Sumerian literature accessible to modern scholars. The scientific study of languages began in Mesopotamia more than 2,500 years ago.
Ashurbanipal, Assyrian king (668-627 BC), founder of the world's first large library in Nineveh (Iraq).
Mesopotamian librarians also took the first steps in the direction of information science. The texts written on the tablets were carefully numbered in order; the final tablet often contained a brief summary of the entire text, as well as the name of the copyist. The tablets were stacked on shelves or in baskets to which clay tags were attached, and catalogs were compiled listing the contents and location of the baskets containing the tablets.
The Hellenistic Greek rulers of the Middle East were more fanatical book collectors than the Assyrians. Ptolemy I of Egypt (323-283 BC) founded the most famous library of antiquity in his capital Alexandria, collecting about 200 thousand manuscripts. It was completed by the king's son, Ptolemy II, a passionate patron of science. Scholars were sought for the position of chief librarian in all parts of the Hellenistic world. The main Library of Alexandria was built for the students of Museion, but soon afterwards an additional library was founded to accommodate the manuscripts that would not fit on the shelves. This library could be used by readers from the street. As one snobby student from Museion lamented, “It allowed the whole city to indulge in philosophy.”
Ptolemy III (247-222 BC) was a notorious bibliomaniac. He ordered that all manuscripts in his possession be taken from everyone arriving at the port of Alexandria. If the texts contained there were not yet listed in the library, the manuscripts were taken away, and their owners were compensated for the loss with a copy made on cheaper papyrus. In order to take possession of the original source, Ptolemy did not neglect dishonest tricks. He persuaded the rulers of Athens to lend him the manuscripts of the plays of their great playwrights - Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, giving them a huge deposit in gold as a guarantee. As soon as these works were in his hands, he decided not to part with them. The enraged Athenians were deceived, receiving in return only gold and some worthless copies of their priceless literary treasures.
Eumenes II (197-159 BC), Greek ruler Kingdom of Pergamon in Western Turkey, established a library that could compete with that of Alexandria. To nip this threat in the bud, Ptolemy banned the export of papyrus, in response to which Pergamon began producing parchment (made from specially treated animal skins through prolonged soaking, scraping, stretching and grinding. The resulting material was cut into sheets to obtain manuscripts.) This gave reason to believe that it was the inhabitants of Pergamon who invented parchment; in fact, only the origin of the word “parchment” is associated with Pergamum. The inhabitants of Pergamon only improved the technique of making this material. Archaeological finds indicate that parchment was invented much earlier; samples made from camel skin in the 7th century. BC BC, were found near Hebron in Palestine in 1969.
The passion for increasing concentration of information in the royal libraries of Alexandria and Pergamum had mixed success until both cities were conquered by the Romans. Where the books disappeared remains a mystery. The Greek historian Plutarch says that Mark Antony took possession of 200 thousand volumes of the Pergamon library in 41 BC. e. and presented them to Queen Cleopatra, the last ruler of the Ptolemaic dynasty. But this encouraging message about the unification of two rival libraries is crossed out by Plutarch himself’s remark that he does not believe this fable. In any case, by this time the Library of Alexandria had collected half a million scrolls, and it continued to flourish under Roman rule. The claim that Julius Caesar destroyed the library in 48 BC. e., is a myth that arose due to a misunderstanding of the events when, during the siege of the city, a huge number of papyri that were in houses were burned.
The real enemies of the library were the late Christians, who systematically searched the pagan centers of knowledge in the 4th-5th centuries. n. e. The library was burned after their conquest of Egypt in 640 AD. e., but by that time little had survived in this once great temple of science. If it were not for the Arabs, who preserved much of the heritage of Greek science in their universities and passed it on to the Western world in the subsequent Middle Ages, then we would not know many scientific treatises from the times of Greece and Rome.
However, it is impossible to imagine that ancient art means of communication were limited to reading, writing, linguistics, information science, or the transmission of literary and scientific classics. When the ancients used codes and ciphers, the skill was really about hiding a message so that only those who had the key could understand it. But there was a need for more direct means of communication, especially during military operations, key element which was the speed of message transmission.
The postal service, pigeon mail, and even the telegraph were invented to get news from point A to point B as quickly as possible. The advances of ancient societies in communication tools may have brought them closer to us than any other technological advance: not only the systems they invented are very similar to those in use today, but their purpose - preserving records - gives us an invaluable source of information about life in the ancient world.
"This new development of technology brings unlimited possibilities for good and evil"
It's only begining...
Since ancient times, humanity has been looking for and improving means of information exchange. Messages were transmitted over short distances by gestures and speech, and over long distances using bonfires located within line of sight from each other. Sometimes a chain of people was built between points and news was transmitted by voice along this chain from one point to another. In central Africa, tom-tom drums were widely used for communication between tribes.
Ideas about transferability electric charges over distances and the implementation of telegraph communication in this way have been spoken about since the middle of the 18th century. Professor of the University of Leipzin Johann Winkler - it was he who improved the electrostatic machine, proposing to rub the glass disk not with hands, but with pads made of silk and leather - in 1744 wrote: “With the help of an insulated suspended conductor it is possible to transmit electricity to the ends of the world at the speed of a bullet.” . In the Scottish magazine "The Scot's Magazine" on February 1, 1753, an article appeared, signed only by C.M. (later it turned out that its author, Charles Morison, was a scientist from Renfrew), in which a possible telecommunication system was described for the first time It was proposed to hang between two points as many uninsulated wires as there are letters in the alphabet. Attach the wires at both points to glass stands so that their ends hang down and end with elderberry balls, under which the letters written on pieces of paper are placed at a distance of 3-4 mm. When touched in at the point of transmission by the conductor of the electrostatic machine of the end of the wire corresponding to the required letter, at the receiving point the electrified elderberry ball would attract a piece of paper with this letter.
In 1792, the Genevan physicist Georges Louis Lesage described his design for an electrical communication line based on laying 24 bare copper wires in a clay pipe, inside of which partitions made of glazed clay or glass with holes would be installed every 1.5...2 m for wires The latter would thus maintain a parallel arrangement without touching each other. According to one unconfirmed, but very probable version, Lesange in 1774, at home, conducted several successful experiments in telegraphy according to the Morison scheme - with the electrification of elderberry balls that attract letters. Transmitting one word took 10...15 minutes, and phrases 2...3 hours.
Professor I. Beckmann from Karlsruhe wrote in 1794: “The monstrous cost and other obstacles will never allow the use of the electric telegraph to be seriously recommended.
And just two years after this notorious “never”, according to the project of the Spanish physician Francisco Savva, military engineer Augustin Betancourt built the world’s first electric telegraph line, 42 km long, between Madrid and Aranjuez.
The situation repeated itself a quarter of a century later. Since 1794, first in Europe and then in America, the so-called semaphore telegraph, invented by the French engineer Claude Chappe and even described by Alexandre Dumas in the novel “The Count of Montecristo,” became widespread. On the route, lines were built at a line of sight distance (8...10 km) tall towers with poles like modern antennas with movable crossbars, mutual arrangement which denoted a letter, a syllable or even a whole word. At the transmitting station, the message was encoded, and the crossbars were one by one installed in the required positions. Telegraph operators at subsequent stations duplicated these provisions. Two people were on duty at each tower in shifts: one received the signal from the previous station, the other transmitted it to the next station.
Although this telegraph served humanity for more than half a century, it did not satisfy society's needs for fast communication. It took an average of 30 minutes to transmit one dispatch. Inevitably there were communication interruptions due to rain, fog, and blizzards. Naturally, the “eccentrics” sought out more advanced means of communication. London physicist and astronomer Francis Ronalds began conducting experiments with the electrostatic telegraph in 1816. In his garden, in the suburbs of London, he built a 13-kilometer line of 39 bare wires, which were suspended by silk threads from wooden frames, installed every 20 m. Part of the line was underground - a tarred wooden trench was laid in a trench 1.2 m deep and 150 m long, at the bottom of which there were glass tubes with copper wires passed through them.
In 1823, Ronalds published a pamphlet outlining his results. By the way, this was the world's first printed work in the field of electrical communications. But when he offered his telegraph system to the authorities, the British Admiralty declared: "Their Lordships are quite satisfied existing system telegraph (the semaphore described above) and do not intend to replace it with another."
Literally a few months after Oersted’s discovery of the effect of electric current on a magnetic needle, the baton of further development of electromagnetism was picked up by the famous French physicist and theorist Andre Ampère, the founder of electrodynamics. In one of his communications to the Academy of Sciences in October 1820, he was the first to put forward the idea of an electromagnetic telegraph. “The possibility has been confirmed,” he wrote, “of making a magnetized needle, located at a great distance from the battery, move using a very long wire.” And further: “It would be possible... to transmit messages by sending telegraph signals in turn along the corresponding wires. In this case, the number of wires and arrows should be taken equal to the number of letters in the alphabet. At the receiving end there should be an operator who would write down the transmitted letters, observing the deviating arrows. If the wires from the battery were connected to a keyboard, the keys of which were marked with letters, then telegraphing could be carried out by pressing the keys. The transmission of each letter would take only the time required to press the keys on the one hand and read the letter on the other sides."
Not accepting the innovative idea, the English physicist P. Barlow wrote in 1824: “In the very early stage of experiments with electromagnetism, Ampere proposed creating an instantaneous telegraph using wires and compasses. However, the assertion ... that it would be possible to carry out this project with wire up to four miles (6.5 km) long. Experiments I have made have found that a noticeable weakening of the action occurs already with a wire length of 200 feet (61 meters), and this has convinced me of the impracticability similar project".
And just eight years later, corresponding member Russian Academy Sciences Pavel Lvovich Schilling embodied Ampere's idea into a real design.
The inventor of the electromagnetic telegraph, P. L. Schilling, was the first to understand the difficulty of manufacturing reliable underground cables and proposed the ground part designed in 1835-1836. make the telegraph line overhead by hanging uninsulated bare wire on poles along the Peterhof road. This was the world's first project overhead line communications. But members of the government “Committee to Consider the Electromagnetic Telegraph” rejected Schilling’s project, which seemed fantastic to them. His proposal was met with unfriendly and mocking exclamations.
And 30 years later, in 1865, when the length of telegraph lines in European countries amounted to 150,000 km, 97% of them were overhead lines.
The invention of the telephone belongs to a 29-year-old Scot, Alexander Graham Bell. Attempts to transmit sound information through electricity have been made since the mid-19th century. Almost the first in 1849 - 1854. The idea of telephony was developed by Parisian telegraph mechanic Charles Boursel. However, he did not translate his idea into a working device.
Since 1873, Bell has been trying to construct a harmonic telegraph, achieving the ability to simultaneously transmit seven telegrams (according to the number of notes in an octave) over one wire. He used seven pairs of flexible metal plates, similar to a tuning fork, with each pair tuned to a different frequency. During experiments on June 2, 1875, the free end of one of the plates on the transmitting side of the line was welded to the contact. Bell's assistant mechanic Thomas Watson, unsuccessfully trying to fix the problem, cursed, perhaps even using not entirely normative vocabulary. Bell, who was in another room and manipulated the receiving plates, with his sensitive, trained ear, caught the sound that came through the wire. The plate, spontaneously fixed at both ends, turned into a flexible membrane of sorts and, being above the pole of the magnet, changed its magnetic flux. As a result, entering the line electricity changed according to the vibrations in the air caused by Watson's muttering. This was the birth of the telephone.
The device was called a Bell tube. It had to be applied alternately to the mouth and ear, or to use two tubes at the same time.
May 7 (April 25, old style) 1895 occurred historical event, which was appreciated only a few years later. At a meeting of the physics department of the Russian Physico-Chemical Society (RFCS), the teacher of the Mine Officer Class, Alexander Stepanovich Popov, spoke with a report “On the relationship of metal powders to electrical vibrations.” During the report by A.S. Popov demonstrated the operation of a device he created, designed to receive and register electromagnetic waves. It was the world's first radio receiver. He sensitively responded with an electric bell to parcels. electromagnetic vibrations, which were generated by a Hertz vibrator.
Here is what the newspaper "Kronstadt Bulletin" wrote on April 30 (May 12), 1895 about this: Dear teacher A.S. Popov... combined a special portable device that responds to electrical vibrations with an ordinary electric bell and is sensitive to Hertzian waves on outdoors at a distance of up to 30 fathoms.
The invention of radio by Popov was a natural result of his purposeful research into electromagnetic oscillations.
In 1894, in his experiments, A. S. Popov began to use the coherer of the French scientist E. Branly (a glass tube filled with metal filings), first used for these purposes by the English researcher O. Lodge, as an indicator of electromagnetic radiation. Alexander Stepanovich worked hard to increase the sensitivity of the coherer to Hertzian rays and restore its ability to register for new pulses of electromagnetic radiation after exposure to the previous electromagnetic message. As a result, Popov came to original design devices for receiving electromagnetic waves, thereby taking a decisive step towards creating a system for transmitting and receiving signals over a distance.
From experiments within the walls of the Mine Class, Alexander Stepanovich moved on to experiments in the open air. Here he implemented a new idea: to increase sensitivity, he attached a thin copper wire- antenna. The signaling range from the oscillation generator (Hertz vibrator) to the receiving device has already reached several tens of meters. It was a complete success.
These experiments on signaling at a distance, i.e. essentially radio communications, were carried out at the beginning of 1895. By the end of April, Popov considered it possible to make them public at a meeting of the physics department of the Russian Federal Chemical Society. So May 7, 1895 became the birthday of radio - one of the greatest inventions of the 19th century.
A television.
Modern electronic television originated in St. Petersburg in the project of a teacher at the Technological Institute, Boris Lvovich Rosing. In 1907, he filed patent applications in Russia, Germany and England for the invention of a television device with cathode ray tube(prototype of a kinescope), and on May 9, 1911 he demonstrated the image on the kinescope screen.
“...Professor Rosing,” V.K. Zvorykin later wrote), assisted Rosing, and in 1918 emigrated to the USA, becoming a famous scientist in the field of television and medical electronics), “discovered a fundamentally new approach to television, with the help of which he hoped to overcome the limitations of mechanical scanning systems...".
Indeed, in 1928-1930. In the USA and in a number of European countries, TV broadcasting began using not electronic, but mechanical systems, allowing you to transmit only elementary images with clarity (30-48 lines). Regular transmissions from Moscow according to the standard 30 lines, 12.5 frames were carried out on medium waves from October 1, 1931. The equipment was developed at the All-Union Electrotechnical Institute by P. V. Shmakov and V. I. Arkhangelsky.
In the early 30s, CRT televisions began to appear at foreign exhibitions and then in stores. However, image clarity remained poor because mechanical scanners were still used on the transmitting side.
An important task on the agenda is the creation of a system that accumulates light energy from the transmitted image. The first to practically solve this problem was V.K. Zvorykin, who worked at the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). He managed to create, in addition to the kinescope, a transmission tube with accumulation of charges, which he piled with an iconoscope (in Greek, “observe the image”). Zworykin made a report on the development of a completely electronic TV system with a group of employees, with a clarity of about 300 lines, on June 26, 1933 at the conference of the US Society of Radio Engineers. And a month and a half after that, he read his sensational report to scientists and engineers of Leningrad and Moscow.
In the speech of Professor G.V. Braude, it was noted that in our country A.P. Konstantinov made a transmitting tube with accumulation of charges, similar in principle to the Zvorykin tube. A.P. Konstantinov considered it necessary to clarify: “In my device, basically the same principle is used, but Dr. Zvorykin has done it immeasurably more elegantly and more practically...”
Artificial Earth satellites.
On October 4, 1957, the world's first artificial Earth satellite was launched in the USSR. The launch vehicle delivered the satellite to a given orbit, the highest point of which is at an altitude of about 1000 km. This satellite had the shape of a ball with a diameter of 58 cm and weighed 83.6 kg. It was equipped with 4 antennas and 2 radio transmitters with power supplies. Artificial Earth satellites can be used as: a relay station for television, significantly expanding the range of television broadcasts; radio navigation beacon.
Short...
Cellular systems were created to provide wireless radiotelephone services for the benefit of large number subscribers (ten thousand or more in one city), they make it possible to use the frequency resource very efficiently. This year will mark the 27th anniversary of cellular communications - this is a lot for advanced technology.
Paging systems are designed to provide one-way communication with subscribers by transmitting short messages in digital or alphanumeric form.
Fiber optic communication lines. The global information infrastructure has been under construction for a long time. It is based on fiber optic cable lines, which have gained dominant positions in global communication networks over the past quarter century. Such highways have already entangled most of the Earth; they pass through both the territory of Russia and the territory of the former Soviet Union. Fiber optic communication lines with high throughput, provide transmission of signals of all types (analog and digital).
InterNet is a worldwide collection of networks that connects millions of computers. The embryo was the distributed network ARPAnet, which was created in the late 60s by order of the US Department of Defense to communicate between the computers of this ministry. The developed principles for organizing this network turned out to be so successful that many other organizations began to create own networks on the same principles. These networks began to merge with each other, forming a single network with a common address space. This network became known as InterNet.
Bibliography
1) Magazine "Radio": 1998 No. 3, 1997 No. 7, 1998 No. 11, 1998 No. 2.
2) Radio Yearbook 1985.
3) Figurnov V.E. "IBM PC for the user. A short course."
4) Great Soviet Encyclopedia.
To prepare this work, materials were used from the site http://mini-soft.net.ru/
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Human development is impossible without the exchange of information. For several hundred years, mail remained practically the only way to deliver a message from point A to point B. However, with the discovery of electricity and electromagnetic fields, the situation began to change.
The emergence of wired and radio communications had a positive impact on the development of the world community. At the end of the 19th century, new means of data transmission appeared, which dramatically increased the speed of information exchange over long distances. Moreover, permanent communication between continents became possible. And yet, where did it all start?
Chronology of the development of communications
Telegraph. In 1837, William Cook introduces the first wired electric telegraph with its coding system. Later, in 1843, the famous Morse presented his development of the telegraph and developed his own coding system - Morse code. And already in 1930, a full-fledged teletype appeared, equipped with a telephone dialer and a keyboard like a typewriter.
Telephone. Alexander Bell patented a device in 1876 that could transmit speech over wires. By the way, the first telephones appeared in Russia in 1880. And in 1895, the Russian scientist Alexander Popov conducted the first radio communication session.
The discovery of the possibility of transmitting a signal via radio made a real revolution in the development of communications. Now is the opportunity to create a truly global communications network. After all, with all the advantages of the first telephones and telegraphs, they had one drawback - wires. Now, thanks to radio, it was possible to establish constant communication with moving objects (ships, planes, trains) and establish intercontinental data transmission.
Pager and mobile phone. In 1956, the American company Motorola released the first pagers. This gadget has already been forgotten and is not used at present, but once it was a breakthrough in the communications industry. In 1973, the first mobile phone from Motorola appeared. It weighs more than a kilogram and has impressive dimensions.
Computer network. Computer development began in earnest after World War II. Already in 1969, the first computer network was created - ARPANET. It is generally accepted that it was this network that served as the basis of the modern Internet.
Global information network. At the moment, all means and types of communication are combined into one global telecommunications structure. Development modern technologies allows you to connect to the World Wide Web from almost anywhere on earth and gain access to any necessary information.
The need for communication, transmission and storage of information arose and developed along with the development of human society. Today it can already be argued that the information sphere of human activity is a determining factor in the intellectual, economic and defense capabilities of the state and human society as a whole.
Since ancient times, sound and light have served as a means for people to exchange information. Sound is the basis of our verbal communication. At the dawn of his development, man, calling for a hunt or warning his fellow tribesmen about danger, gave signals by shouting or knocking. But if the distance between the interlocutors was great and the strength of the voice was not enough, auxiliary means were required. Therefore, man began to use improvised means - initially fires, torches, drums, gongs and whistles, and after the invention of gunpowder - shots and rockets. In those distant times, special people appeared - messengers who carried and transmitted messages, announced the will of the rulers to the people, but this required a lot of time.
Experience gained over centuries has shown that the most effective carrier of information is light, with the help of which it was possible to transmit short messages over considerable distances. That is why the first communication “systems” were sentry light posts located around settlements on specially built towers or towers, and sometimes simply in trees.
Almost before the discovery of magnetism and electricity, humanity had been using the natural capabilities of the human ear and eye for centuries. Even today, when the developing peoples of Africa are successfully mastering modern means connection, for them the drum has still not lost its meaning. In railway transport to this day, when it is necessary to urgently stop a train, sound signals are used: three firecrackers are placed on the rails at a short distance from each other, which explode noisily under the wheels of a moving train.
The discovery of electricity made it possible to find a new means of delivering messages over long distances, first using physical (wired) and then wireless communication lines. The development of the theory of electricity and magnetism in the 19th century led to the emergence of first wired (telephone and telegraph) and then wireless communications, which created the technological basis for all media - radio broadcasting, television, the Internet, mobile communications, which were actively used at the beginning of the 20th century. entered into everyday life. The needs for transmitting large volumes of information over long distances have led to active research, both in the field of conditions for the propagation of electromagnetic waves, and in signal processing methods that provide high throughput of communication channels with the required reliability in the received information. The result of the research was the emergence of certain types of communications: wired, radio, radio relay, tropospheric, satellite, which, complementing each other, help improve the quality of life of the population in terms of information exchange.
In just a century and a half, from the invention of the telegraph to the present day, humanity has mastered telecommunications means that have allowed it to be not only informed, but also mobile. Let us list the main fundamental milestones along this path: telegraph (1753), rotary printing press (1847), telephone (1870), radio (1895), wireless telegraph (1922), television (1930) .), the Internet (1969) and finally the mobile phone (1973).
The creation of the entire set of material and political conditions in the field of communications led to an explosion in the field of information and a revolution in the way people thought and acted. Currently, people, communicating with each other, through intellectual speech activity, supply the noofield, which is an analogue of the Internet, with morphological linguistic structures that govern life on earth.
This manual makes an attempt to systematize the known material on the history of the development of communications and substantiate the emergence of a new term - information and communication technologies.
The manual is intended not only for students of radio engineering universities and specialists working in the field of information and communication technologies, but also for people interested in the development of information society technologies.
"This new development of technology brings unlimited possibilities for good and evil"
It's only begining...
Since ancient times, humanity has been looking for and improving means of information exchange. Messages were transmitted over short distances by gestures and speech, and over long distances using bonfires located within line of sight from each other. Sometimes a chain of people was built between points and news was transmitted by voice along this chain from one point to another. In central Africa, tom-tom drums were widely used for communication between tribes.
Ideas about the possibility of transmitting electrical charges over distances and implementing telegraph communication in this way have been expressed since the middle of the 18th century. Professor of the University of Leipzin Johann Winkler - it was he who improved the electrostatic machine, proposing to rub the glass disk not with hands, but with pads made of silk and leather - in 1744 wrote: “With the help of an insulated suspended conductor it is possible to transmit electricity to the ends of the world at the speed of a bullet.” . In the Scottish magazine "The Scot's Magazine" on February 1, 1753, an article appeared, signed only by C.M. (later it turned out that its author, Charles Morison, was a scientist from Renfrew), in which a possible telecommunication system was described for the first time It was proposed to hang between two points as many uninsulated wires as there are letters in the alphabet. Attach the wires at both points to glass stands so that their ends hang down and end with elderberry balls, under which the letters written on pieces of paper are placed at a distance of 3-4 mm. When touched in at the point of transmission by the conductor of the electrostatic machine of the end of the wire corresponding to the required letter, at the receiving point the electrified elderberry ball would attract a piece of paper with this letter.
In 1792, the Genevan physicist Georges Louis Lesage described his design for an electrical communication line based on laying 24 bare copper wires in a clay pipe, inside of which partitions made of glazed clay or glass with holes would be installed every 1.5...2 m for wires The latter would thus maintain a parallel arrangement without touching each other. According to one unconfirmed, but very probable version, Lesange in 1774, at home, conducted several successful experiments in telegraphy according to the Morison scheme - with the electrification of elderberry balls that attract letters. Transmitting one word took 10...15 minutes, and phrases 2...3 hours.
Professor I. Beckmann from Karlsruhe wrote in 1794: “The monstrous cost and other obstacles will never allow the use of the electric telegraph to be seriously recommended.
And just two years after this notorious “never”, according to the project of the Spanish physician Francisco Savva, military engineer Augustin Betancourt built the world’s first electric telegraph line, 42 km long, between Madrid and Aranjuez.
The situation repeated itself a quarter of a century later. Since 1794, first in Europe and then in America, the so-called semaphore telegraph, invented by the French engineer Claude Chappe and even described by Alexandre Dumas in the novel “The Count of Montecristo,” became widespread. Along the line route, high towers with poles like modern antennas with movable crossbars were built at a line of sight distance (8...10 km), the relative position of which indicated a letter, syllable or even a whole word. At the transmitting station, the message was encoded, and the crossbars were one by one installed in the required positions. Telegraph operators at subsequent stations duplicated these provisions. Two people were on duty at each tower in shifts: one received the signal from the previous station, the other transmitted it to the next station.
Although this telegraph served humanity for more than half a century, it did not satisfy society's needs for fast communication. It took an average of 30 minutes to transmit one dispatch. Inevitably there were communication interruptions due to rain, fog, and blizzards. Naturally, the “eccentrics” sought out more advanced means of communication. London physicist and astronomer Francis Ronalds began conducting experiments with the electrostatic telegraph in 1816. In his garden, in the suburbs of London, he built a 13-kilometer line of 39 bare wires, which were suspended using silk threads on wooden frames installed every 20 m. Part of the line was underground - in a trench 1.2 m deep and 150 m long there was a tarred wooden trench was laid, at the bottom of which there were glass tubes with copper wires passed through them.
In 1823, Ronalds published a pamphlet outlining his results. By the way, this was the world's first printed work in the field of electrical communications. But when he proposed his telegraph system to the authorities, the British Admiralty stated: “Their Lordships are quite satisfied with the existing telegraph system (the semaphore system described above) and do not intend to replace it with another.”
Literally a few months after Oersted’s discovery of the effect of electric current on a magnetic needle, the baton of further development of electromagnetism was picked up by the famous French physicist and theorist Andre Ampère, the founder of electrodynamics. In one of his communications to the Academy of Sciences in October 1820, he was the first to put forward the idea of an electromagnetic telegraph. “The possibility has been confirmed,” he wrote, “of making a magnetized needle, located at a great distance from the battery, move using a very long wire.” And further: “It would be possible... to transmit messages by sending telegraph signals in turn along the corresponding wires. In this case, the number of wires and arrows should be taken equal to the number of letters in the alphabet. At the receiving end there should be an operator who would write down the transmitted letters, observing the deviating arrows. If the wires from the battery were connected to a keyboard, the keys of which were marked with letters, then telegraphing could be carried out by pressing the keys. The transmission of each letter would take only the time required to press the keys on the one hand and read the letter on the other sides."
Not accepting the innovative idea, the English physicist P. Barlow wrote in 1824: “In the very early stage of experiments with electromagnetism, Ampere proposed creating an instantaneous telegraph using wires and compasses. However, the assertion ... that it would be possible to carry out this project with wire up to four miles (6.5 km) long. My experiments have found that a noticeable weakening of the action occurs already with a wire length of 200 feet (61 meters), and this convinced me of the impracticability of such a project."
And just eight years later, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Pavel Lvovich Schilling embodied Ampere’s idea into a real design.
The inventor of the electromagnetic telegraph, P. L. Schilling, was the first to understand the difficulty of manufacturing reliable underground cables at the dawn of electrical engineering and proposed the ground part designed in 1835-1836. make the telegraph line overhead by hanging uninsulated bare wire on poles along the Peterhof road. This was the world's first overhead communication line project. But members of the government “Committee to Consider the Electromagnetic Telegraph” rejected Schilling’s project, which seemed fantastic to them. His proposal was met with unfriendly and mocking exclamations.
And 30 years later, in 1865, when the length of telegraph lines in European countries amounted to 150,000 km, 97% of them were overhead lines.
Telephone.
The invention of the telephone belongs to a 29-year-old Scot, Alexander Graham Bell. Attempts to transmit sound information through electricity have been made since the mid-19th century. Almost the first in 1849 - 1854. The idea of telephony was developed by Parisian telegraph mechanic Charles Boursel. However, he did not translate his idea into a working device.
Since 1873, Bell has been trying to construct a harmonic telegraph, achieving the ability to simultaneously transmit seven telegrams (according to the number of notes in an octave) over one wire. He used seven pairs of flexible metal plates, similar to a tuning fork, with each pair tuned to a different frequency. During experiments on June 2, 1875, the free end of one of the plates on the transmitting side of the line was welded to the contact. Bell's assistant mechanic Thomas Watson, unsuccessfully trying to fix the problem, cursed, perhaps even using not entirely normative vocabulary. Bell, who was in another room and manipulated the receiving plates, with his sensitive, trained ear, caught the sound that came through the wire. The plate, spontaneously fixed at both ends, turned into a flexible membrane of sorts and, being above the pole of the magnet, changed its magnetic flux. As a result, the electric current entering the line changed according to the air vibrations caused by Watson's muttering. This was the birth of the telephone.
The device was called a Bell tube. It had to be applied alternately to the mouth and ear, or to use two tubes at the same time.
Radio.
On May 7 (April 25, old style), 1895, a historical event occurred, which was only appreciated several years later. At a meeting of the physics department of the Russian Physico-Chemical Society (RFCS), the teacher of the Mine Officer Class, Alexander Stepanovich Popov, spoke with a report “On the relationship of metal powders to electrical vibrations.” During the report by A.S. Popov demonstrated the operation of a device he created, designed to receive and record electromagnetic waves. It was the world's first radio receiver. He sensitively responded with an electric bell to the sending of electromagnetic oscillations that were generated by the Hertz vibrator.
Scheme of the first receiver A. S. Popov.
Here is what the newspaper "Kronstadt Bulletin" wrote on April 30 (May 12), 1895 about this: Dear teacher A.S. Popov... combined a special portable device that responds to electrical vibrations with an ordinary electric bell and is sensitive to Hertzian waves on open air at a distance of up to 30 fathoms.
The invention of radio by Popov was a natural result of his purposeful research into electromagnetic oscillations.
In 1894, in his experiments, A. S. Popov began to use the coherer of the French scientist E. Branly (a glass tube filled with metal filings), first used for these purposes by the English researcher O. Lodge, as an indicator of electromagnetic radiation. Alexander Stepanovich worked hard to increase the sensitivity of the coherer to Hertzian rays and restore its ability to register for new pulses of electromagnetic radiation after exposure to the previous electromagnetic message. As a result, Popov came to the original design of a device for receiving electromagnetic waves, thereby taking a decisive step towards creating a system for transmitting and receiving signals over a distance.
From experiments within the walls of the Mine Class, Alexander Stepanovich moved on to experiments in the open air. Here he implemented a new idea: to increase sensitivity, he attached a thin copper wire - an antenna - to the receiving device. The signaling range from the oscillation generator (Hertz vibrator) to the receiving device has already reached several tens of meters. It was a complete success.
These experiments on signaling at a distance, i.e. essentially radio communications, were carried out at the beginning of 1895. By the end of April, Popov considered it possible to make them public at a meeting of the physics department of the Russian Federal Chemical Society. So May 7, 1895 became the birthday of radio - one of the greatest inventions of the 19th century.
A television.
Modern electronic television originated in St. Petersburg in the project of a teacher at the Technological Institute, Boris Lvovich Rosing. In 1907, he filed patent applications in Russia, Germany and England for the invention of a television device with a cathode ray tube (a prototype of a kinescope), and on May 9, 1911, he demonstrated an image on a kinescope screen.
“...Professor Rosing,” V.K. Zvorykin later wrote), assisted Rosing, and in 1918 emigrated to the USA, becoming a famous scientist in the field of television and medical electronics), “discovered a fundamentally new approach to television, with the help of which he hoped to overcome the limitations of mechanical scanning systems...".
Indeed, in 1928-1930. In the USA and in a number of European countries, TV broadcasting began using not electronic, but mechanical systems that made it possible to transmit only elementary images with clarity (30-48 lines). Regular transmissions from Moscow according to the standard 30 lines, 12.5 frames were carried out on medium waves from October 1, 1931. The equipment was developed at the All-Union Electrotechnical Institute by P. V. Shmakov and V. I. Arkhangelsky.
In the early 30s, CRT televisions began to appear at foreign exhibitions and then in stores. However, image clarity remained poor because mechanical scanners were still used on the transmitting side.
An important task on the agenda is the creation of a system that accumulates light energy from the transmitted image. The first to practically solve this problem was V.K. Zvorykin, who worked at the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). He managed to create, in addition to the kinescope, a transmission tube with accumulation of charges, which he piled with an iconoscope (in Greek, “observe the image”). Zworykin made a report on the development of a completely electronic TV system with a group of employees, with a clarity of about 300 lines, on June 26, 1933 at the conference of the US Society of Radio Engineers. And a month and a half after that, he read his sensational report to scientists and engineers of Leningrad and Moscow.
In the speech of Professor G.V. Braude, it was noted that in our country A.P. Konstantinov made a transmitting tube with accumulation of charges, similar in principle to the Zvorykin tube. A.P. Konstantinov considered it necessary to clarify: “In my device, basically the same principle is used, but Dr. Zvorykin has done it immeasurably more elegantly and more practically...”
Artificial Earth satellites.
On October 4, 1957, the world's first artificial Earth satellite was launched in the USSR. The launch vehicle delivered the satellite to a given orbit, the highest point of which is at an altitude of about 1000 km. This satellite had the shape of a ball with a diameter of 58 cm and weighed 83.6 kg. It was equipped with 4 antennas and 2 radio transmitters with power supplies. Artificial Earth satellites can be used as: a relay station for television, significantly expanding the range of television broadcasts; radio navigation beacon.
Short...
Cellular systems were created to provide wireless radiotelephone communication services for the benefit of a large number of subscribers (ten thousand or more in one city), they allow very efficient use of frequency resources. This year will mark the 27th anniversary of cellular communications - this is quite a lot for advanced technology.
Paging systems are designed to provide one-way communication with subscribers by transmitting short messages in digital or alphanumeric form.
Fiber optic communication lines. The global information infrastructure has been under construction for a long time. Its basis is fiber optic cable lines, which have gained dominant positions in global communication networks over the past quarter century. Such highways have already entangled most of the Earth; they pass through both the territory of Russia and the territory of the former Soviet Union. Fiber-optic communication lines with high bandwidth provide transmission of signals of all types (analog and digital).
InterNet is a worldwide collection of networks that connects millions of computers. The embryo was the distributed network ARPAnet, which was created in the late 60s by order of the US Department of Defense to communicate between the computers of this ministry. The developed principles for organizing this network turned out to be so successful that many other organizations began to create their own networks based on the same principles. These networks began to merge with each other, forming a single network with a common address space. This network became known as InterNet.
Bibliography
1) Magazine "Radio": 1998 No. 3, 1997 No. 7, 1998 No. 11, 1998 No. 2.
2) Radio Yearbook 1985.
3) Figurnov V.E. "IBM PC for the user. A short course."
4) Great Soviet Encyclopedia.