Communications: An International History of the Formative YearsCommunications: An international history of the formative years traces the evolution of communications from 500 BC, when fire beacons were used for signalling, to the 1940s, when high definition television systems were developed for the entertainment, education and enlightenment of society. The book does not simply provide a chronicle of dates and events, nor is it a descriptive catalogue of devices and systems. Rather, it discusses the essential factors - technical, political, social, economic and general - that enabled the evolution of modern communications. The author has taken a contextual approach to show the influence of one discipline upon another, and the unfolding story has been widely illustrated with contemporary quotations, allowing the progress of communications to be seen from the perspective of the times and not from the standpoint of a later generation. |
Contents
Communication among the ancients | 1 |
Electric telegraphy commercial and social considerations | 109 |
Submarine telegraphy | 127 |
The telephone | 180 |
Optical communications | 195 |
Images by wire picture telegraphy 1843c 1900 | 207 |
Distant vision c 18801908 | 231 |
The early wireless pioneers | 259 |
Television development pre1914 | 389 |
The Great War years 19141918 | 401 |
The birth of sound broadcasting | 439 |
Some important developments in the 1920s | 451 |
The birth of high definition television | 511 |
EMI and high definition television | 541 |
The emergence of new technologies | 575 |
Epilogue | 603 |
Early experimental wireless telegraphy 18951898 | 285 |
Maritime wireless telegraphy | 359 |
Pointtopoint communications | 379 |
Bibliography | 625 |
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Communications: An International History of the Formative Years R. W. Burns No preview available - 2004 |
Common terms and phrases
Admiralty ANON antenna apparatus application AT&T Bain Baird beacons beam Bell Bell Telephone Laboratories British patent broadcasting cable cathode cathode ray cathode-ray tube Chappe circuit coil Committee communications December demonstrated detector disc distance electric telegraph electromagnetic waves electron employed equipment established experimental experiments Fessenden Figure film frequency gutta percha Hertz high definition television HMS Defiance iconoscope instrument invention inventor January July laboratory later letter licence light Lodge London magnetron manufactured Marconi Company messages method miles mirror modulation Morse operation oscillations paper Paris photoelectric picture plate Poldhu Post Office practical Preece radar radio receiver Royal scanner scanning selenium cell ships signals Source spark spark gap stations submarine synchronising Telefunken Telegraph Company telephone television system torpedo transmission transmitted tube United Kingdom utilised valve wavelength Wheatstone wire wireless telegraphy York Zworykin