The 12 Biggest Breakthroughs in Communication Technology
1 The Printing Press Spreads Knowledge and Ideas People need and like to communicate with each other Over the years this has led to many amazing inventions One of the first was the printing press Before the middle of the 1400s there was no mechanical printing Everything was done by hand It took a long time to make a book There weren’t many books And the books that did exist were very expensive At first that didn’t matter much Very few people could read In 1450 only about seven percent of people in Germany could read But the printing press changed all that The first person to successfully use a printing press was Johannes Gutenberg He was a stonecutter and goldsmith in Gutenberg examines the first sheets printed on his press 44
Germany With his printing press books could be made quickly Soon more printing presses were built By 1500 2,500 cities in Europe had printing presses Ten million books had been printed These books were cheaper than early books Information became easier to share New ideas were spreading quickly More people learned how to read Today 83 percent of all people in the world can read 200 Number of Bibles printed by Johannes Gutenberg in 1452 Early books were made The printing press made books quickly More people learned to read Very few people could by hand read MOVABLE METAL TYPE The first printing presses used movable type Each letter of the alphabet was cast in metal and attached to a block of metal or wood The blocks were put together to make words Lines of words made a page First a printer would put together a whole page Then many copies of the page could be printed quickly 55
2 Telegraph Cables Carry Dots and Dashes Around the World sent and received by machines Operators weren’t needed This meant messages went faster In 1913 it became possible to send eight messages at once Then 72 messages could be sent at the same time By 1959 users could send printed documents to each other Today the telegraph is no longer used But it was the first step in a long line of communication inventions In 1830 Joseph Henry became the first person to send an electric current over a wire The signal traveled one mile and caused a bell to strike This invention became known as the telegraph Wires were run between cities The telegraph sent signals over these wires The signals were in the form of a code Operators translated the code The first message was sent in 1844 It came from Washington DC It said Henry Clay had been nominated for president By 1854 the United States had 20,000 miles 32,000 km of telegraph cable In 1866 a line was laid across the Atlantic Ocean It went from Ireland to Canada Before long there were telegraph lines from Hawaii to Asia and Australia Soon telegraph messages were 6 Portrait of Joseph Henry in 1860
Early telegraph machines required an operator MORSE CODE Samuel F B Morse improved the telegraph and also invented the code system it used The code used dots and dashes which stood for letters of the alphabet Common letters had short signals E was one dot Less common letters had long signals B was dash dot dot dot The first message sent on the telegraph was from the Bible It said What hath God wrought 40 50 Number of words a trained Morse code operator could send in one minute The telegraph sent signals electronically over wires The signals were in code Wires were run all over the world Machines replaced operators and messages went faster 7
