Table of Contents
- The Telegraph and Telephone: The First Communication Networks
- Radio: Invention of Wireless Communication
- The Early Days of Data Communication: Telex and Fax
- Computer Networks: The Early Days
- Satellite Communication: Connecting the World Through Space
- Networks in Business and Universities
- Conclusion: How It All Led to the Internet
No doubt, the internet is very important in everyone's daily life today. It's a tool that connects us to our friends, family, work, and entertainment, which was unimaginable twenty-five years ago. However, did you know that networking has actually begun even before the age of the internet? In fact, people have been working on ways to communicate with each other over long distances for centuries. Let's take a look at how networks worked before the internet and how these early systems paved the way for the digital world we live in today.
1. The Telegraph and Telephone: The First Communication Networks
1.1. The Telegraph: Sending Messages in a New Way
Today, there are e-mails, but before the invention of phones, there were letters. Letters are messages that take days or weeks before being read by the recipient. Well, that all came to an end in 1837 when Samuel Morse invented the telegraph. The telegraph was a kind of machine that communicated with the help of electrical signals over a distance. These messages were Morse code translated letters and numbers into sequences of dots and dashes.
How it worked:
- There was an operator tapping a message in Morse code on a special key which then hit onto wires.
- Another operator at the end listened to the signals and interpreted the dots and dashes back into letters to read a message.
In 1851, India took up the telegraph system, with the first line running from Calcutta to Diamond Harbour. It was really big news at the time for the improvement in communication in the country—it marked the beginning of a much easier, faster way to communicate matters of government and business.
1.2. The Telephone: Real-Time Voice Communication
Not so long after the telegraph, in 1876, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. The telegraph was great for sending short messages, but the telephone took it to a completely different level in terms of communication because one could actually speak to another person in real-time. It made talking much easier and faster as well.
How it worked:
- Telephones would change sound (your voice) into electrical signals and travel over wires.
- The first telephones had switchboards where operators used to connect calls manually by plugging the wires into appropriate circuits.
Telephone services reached India in 1881 in Kolkata, and within no time, major cities across India started replicating it. People became closer to each other through faster and more personal modes of communication.
2. Radio: Invention of Wireless Communication
2.1. How Radio Changed the Scenario of Communication
Next came radio after the telegraph and telephone. In 1895, a man by the name Guglielmo Marconi discovered wireless communication: transmission of signals over long distances without using any wires. The discovery was significant at the time because messages could be transmitted over long distances without using cables.
How it worked:
- Radio waves went through the air and could cover far greater distances than telegraph or telephone wires.
- Radio was originally used for Morse code, but it has evolved into voice messaging, eventually becoming what we now know as AM and FM radio.
Radio became highly significant in wars because it could carry messages in real-time from one military leader to the other. Later, in the 1920s, radio started being employed for entertainment and news broadcasting. Such broadcasts allowed the reach of information to homes in a vast dimension.
2.2. Radio in India
India embraced radio in 1927 when the Indian Broadcasting Company started its activities. Later, it became All India Radio (AIR) in 1936. This was a medium to share news and music and other important government information with people even living in remote corners.
3. The Early Days of Data Communication: Telex and Fax
3.1. Telex: Typewritten Messages Over Long Distances
As time passed, the need for written messages to travel faster arose. That is when Telex came into the fray. Telex was invented in the 1930s, and this would send typed messages from a machine to another device from afar. Telex was nearly exclusively used by business and governments to send messages quickly.
How it worked:
- People typed their messages into a Telex machine.
- The message was transmitted over telegraph lines to a receiving machine, which would print out the message.
Telex was introduced in India in the 1950s and was used for official purposes for decades.
3.2. Fax Machines: Sending Documents Instantly
The other early technology was the fax machine, which allowed people to send written information quickly. Its primary use was to fax copies of documents. Although it was developed much earlier, fax machines became popular in the 1960s.
How it worked:
- The fax machine scanned a document and converted the image into electrical signals.
- These messages traveled over a telephone line to another fax machine, where the printout of a document waited.
That meant an awful lot to businesses, since contracts, legal papers, and other documents could be shared instantly with one another.
4. Computer Networks: The Early Days
4.1. The First Computer Network: ARPANET
This made the researchers wonder how people could connect computers when these were becoming a necessity in the 1950s and 1960s. The computer was a big and expensive gadget at an early stage in the life cycle of the technology. It was generally an independent device: no machines communicated with each other while in use, but the researchers knew it should be easy to share information if they could connect computers together.
In 1969, a new creation called ARPANET came into being as one of the first networks to connect computers over long distances. This was the emergence of what would be known as the internet in the future.
How it worked:
- ARPANET used something called packet switching, with which it broke data up into small pieces, basically packets, to be sent over the network and reassembled at another end.
- Computers at different locations could thus send and receive information.
4.2. Early Networks in India
The Indians got into developing their own computer networks in the 1980s. One of the big ones was INDONET, interlinking government offices, research institutes, and businesses. It helped make the ground for the internet to grow in India.
5. Satellite Communication: Connecting the World Through Space
5.1. Satellites Take Communication Global
Another giant leap was the introduction of communication satellites. These earth-orbiting satellites made it possible for people to send messages, TV programs, and other communications across entire continents without the use of cables.
How it worked:
- Signals were transmitted to a satellite placed in space from ground stations on Earth.
- Then the satellite transmitted the signal back to another earth-based ground station, but this time on the other side of the globe.
This technology allowed people to communicate effectively with one another without having to pay more from anywhere in the world.
5.2. Satellite Communication in India
India put Aryabhata in orbit in 1975, then in 1982, it developed the INSAT system. It was more or less used for broadcasting, weather monitoring, and telecommunication, connecting all people, especially in remote areas in the country.
6. Networks in Business and Universities
6.1. Sharing Computers: Mainframes and Time-Sharing
Before personal computers were everywhere, organizations used big, powerful machines called mainframe computers. These mainframes were so costly that no one could buy them for themselves, so they shared them, rather than each having their own.
How it worked:
- Time-sharing let many users share the same computer.
- Each received a share of the computer's power, so many people could work at the same time on the same computer.
This proved especially useful in universities, where one wanted to aggregate computing power for student and researcher use.
6.2. Local Area Networks (LANs)
In the 1970s, LANs were invented. LANs allowed computers within the same building or campus to be connected, making it easier for people to share files, printers, and other resources.
How it worked:
- LANs connected computers by cables that speedily established communication between computers.
- Ethernet was developed in the 1970s and soon became the way to connect a LAN. It is still used today.
7. Conclusion: How It All Led to the Internet
The internet did not pop out of nowhere. It was the culmination of years of progress in technologies from the telegraph to the telephone, then to radio, and finally to early computer networks. Those early communication systems helped shape the way we connect with each other today.
Every stage in the growth of communication networks brought people closer to each other and eased the transmission of information. The internet is just one part of this long history and the latest, most advanced step in the progression. With new technologies still awaiting development, communication and information sharing will only get better.