Innovations+of+Communication+Throughout+Time

toc =**Innovation in Ancient Times**=

Before the [|papyrus], stone was the main medium that was used as a writing tool. Writing with stone was very rigid, jagged and time consuming but when switched to the use of papyrus; a new form of smoother cursive writing was permitted. This was more time efficient and led to the elimination of characters that looked like pictures to what was known as script. Another advantage to the use of papyrus was the ability to transport the light weight medium over vast distances. The scribes used brushes to write from right to left in columns or horizontally to produce pages and pages of information, stories, religion and history. Harold Innis, a Canadian scholar states that "by escaping from the heavy medium of stone, thought gained lightness".

Fig 1. Papyrus

=The Print Revolution=

The print revolution occurred in the age of industrial society. A European man by the name of [|Johannes Gutenberg] was the first to create a movable type machine in the year of 1455 that vastly increased the speed of production in contrast to the older method of hand-copying. Gutenberg's movable type machine led the way of mass production of affordable books that allowed a large audience to become more literate and educate themselves. According to Straubhaar LaRose, "the industrial revolution extended Gutenberg's methods to the manufacture of virtually all types of goods". By the year 1910, the United States had fully evolved into a consumerist society of mass production and the printing process spread to new and different innovative mediums which include film, radio, and television.

Fig 2. Printing Press

=Wiring the World=

In the yeas of 1783-1805, a man by the name of [|Claude Chappe] tried to create new ways in distributing messages that would eliminate the use of messengers at the time. Chappe devised a new invention known as the optical telegraph that did not need the use of electricity and that could be seen from vast distances. The [|optical telegraph] was able to create 98 positions and used the positions to create a morse code signal. However, Chappe's invention contained two weaknesses. One was the reliability of perfect performance of the workers and the other was that the optical telegraph could not perform at night or in bad weather, it was only at it's optimal on bright sunny days.

Fig 3. Optical Telegraph

Chappe's envision of his optical telegraph was that "The telegraph shortens distances and in a way, brings immense population together at a single point". Chappe envisioned what Marshall McLuhan coined as a global village and the telegraph provided a step forward towards this ultimate goal.

Over the course of the years, the optical telegraph was then replaced by the [|electric telegraph] that overcame the barrier of bad weather and the electrical telegraph could handle a larger capacity of information in comparison to its precursor. The electrical telegraph was coined by Samual Morse as "lightning" and Daniel Headrick considers the electrical telegraph "the first science based invention. This opened the door to real time communication and compressed space and time even further.

Fig 4. Electric Telegraph

=The Telephone=

Following the telegraph, a Canadian man by the name of [|Alexander Graham Bell] wanted to reinvent the revolution and was the first to create the telephone in March of the year 1876. Bell then created the Bell Company and began to lease telephones by the pairs and reaped the profit by charging rental fees. By the year 1878, a mere two years after the great invention, approximately 10,000 telephones by Bell's company were used across the state. The downfall came two years later as interference of the phone lines were created by newly installed electric street cars and created a pause in the development of the telephone.

Bell insisted on over coming the obstacle and replaces the single iron or steel metal wires with a pair of copper wires that allowed the return of the current and he also replaced the wet batteries that were in use with a 'common-system battery' and thus the power that the telephone needed came from within a central exchange. After this redesign, the telephone was once again in popular demand by the 1990's.

Fig 5. Early Telephone

=Photography=

According to Susan Sontag, photographs are considered an experience that is captured in that perfect slice of time. The first ever photographic image to be captured was in 1814 by Joseph Nicephore Niepce's [|Camera Obscura]. At that stage the camera obscura had to be exposed to light for at least eight hours and the photographic image would eventually fade. Approximately two decades later in 1837, a man by the name of Louis Jaque Mande Daguerre created the first successful photographic process that did not fade and only required an exposure of less than thirty minutes properly named as the [|Daguerreotype]. The Daguerreotype worked by exposing a copper plate to iodine with the fumes forming light sensitive silver iodide. The plates however would have to be used within the hour. The Daguerreotype's photographs were astonishing although it was a positive image and thus could never be reproduced and could only create one original. The photograph itself was quite fragile and the chemicals used during the process were toxic.

Fig 6. Daguerreotype

By the year 1841, William Henry Talbot created the Calotype process which created the first negative-positive process that enabled reproduction of images for the first time. This fueled the use of production of images in advertisements and aided the rise of the industrial society.

=Motion Picture=

In the early years of 1870's and 1880's, scientists began to intensely study animal and human movement. The use of photography aided them in this quest. Etienne Jules Marey and [|Eadweard Muybridge] created the protocinema that contributed to the study of movement and motion picture. A famous example would be Muybridge's "Flying Horse" that was multiple shots of a horse jumping and created a flying affect with the horse's four legs in the air at the same time. W.K.L Dickson (an employee for Edison) aided in the creation of the first motion picture camera known as the "Kinetograph" and the first viewing machine [|Kinetoscope] between 1888 and 1896. At the time the kinetoscope could only cater to one viewer at a time and were only 15 seconds long. After the year of 1900, Woodville Latham and his sons created the "Latham Loop" allowing longer lengths of film. The growth and popularity led to the explosion of what was known as the "Nickelodeans" after 1905. Jane Addams observed that "the very darkness of the theatre is an added attraction to many young people, for whom the space is filled with the glamour of love-making". This continues today in present movie theatres and is now coined as cinematic apparatus.

Fig 7. Kinetoscope

=The Radio=

The very first acoustic recording technology was created by Thomas Edison known as the [|phonograph]. In 1882, Emile Berliner recreated the phonograph and created what was known as the gramophone that played flat discs called records and just like kinetoscopes, gramophones were placed into Nickelodeans and Penny Arcades. In 1896, a man by the name of Guglielmo Marconi invented the wireless telegraph as in advancement to the optical and the electrical telegraphs and that used radiowaves to carry messages in Morse code. By 1913 the radio was crucial to reporting news and was dominated by the military.

Marconi later wanted to make the radio a "household utility" that every family needed to have. Advertising was a key vision for the radio and to hold the audiences attention, entertainment and educational programs hit the airwaves.

Fig 8. Wireless Telegraph

=The World Wide Web=

According to David Gauntlett and Ross Horsley, "The internet is a global network of interconnected computers". The internet began as a military experiment to with stand a nuclear attack while maintaining communication. It was then known as ARPANET. In 1974, Vint Cerf and Bob Khan created TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) and IP (Internet Protocol) that enabled data to break up into small packets of information that allowed rapid transmission.

Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web in the year of 1990 that was a user-friendly interface. Marc Andreessen and Eric Bana then added a Web Browser called Mosaic allowing easy and simple navigation through the World Wide Web. Tim Berners-Lee also envisioned the use of hyperlinks that with a quick click, the user would arrive at another page or a different sector within that webpage.

Thus the internet and World Wide Web being one of the latest innovations of our time has enabled mankind to compress time to instant and real time allowing one to communication with another around the globe in a fraction of a second, compress space by creating a global village and even expanding the use of infinite space across the web.

Fig 9. Mosaic Web Browser

=References=

Bellis, Mary. __Photography Timeline.__ 22 Feb. 2005. About Inc. 2006.

Crowley, David and Heyer, P. __Communication in History: Technology, Culture, Society.__ Boston: Pearson Education Inc., 2003.

Gauntlett, David and Horsley, R. __Web Studies: Second Edition.__ New York: Oxford University Press Inc., 2004.

LaRose, Straubhaar. __Media Now: Understanding Media, Culture, and Technology.__ Toronto: Wadsworth, 2004.

Images Courtesy of:
Fig. 1) Papyrus - http://www.sundayschoolresources.com/images/photo3.jpg

Fig. 2) Printing Press - http://www.renaissanceconnection.org/images/time_printingpress.jpg

Fig. 3) Optical Telegraph - [|http://www.ucalgary.ca/~bakardji/ElectricComm/Daig%202.gif]

Fig. 4) Rlectrical Telegraph - http://ocw.mit.edu/NR/rdonlyres/Global/F/FC0655C0-7048-4E66-BB7C-19E6544004F3/0/chp_telegraph_1.jpg

Fig. 5) Telephone - http://www.innovationslearning.co.uk/subjects/history/information/victorians/inventions/inventions/images/phone.jpg

Fig. 6) Daguerreotype - http://www.ccsd.ca/charlotte/dagazine/mi/exhibit/Image2.jpg

Fig. 7) Kinetoscope - http://www.centres.ex.ac.uk/bill.douglas/Schools/movingpics/kinetoscope.jpg

Fig. 8) Wireless Telegraph - http://www.antiqueradio.com/images/Feb02-Stone-Wavemeter-Fig2.jpg

Fig. 9) Mosaic Web Browser - http://docs.rinet.ru/uHTML/f2-9.gif