Telecommunications

Abstract

The word ‘telecommunications’ means every possible kind of electronic communication system. The very first system to come under this heading was probably the telegraph (see Chapter 23). In 1844, Samuel Morse (Morse code was named after him) set tip a telegraph link between Washington DC and Baltimore in 1844, which was very successful and resulted in the adoption of the telegraph throughout the USA. Other inventors who played a prominent part in the development of telecommunications were Alexander Graham Bell, who patented his ‘telephone’ in 1876; Gugliemo Marconi, who in 1895 transmitted a radio signal to a receiver over a kilometre away; John Logie Baird, who invented a workable (although electromechanical) television in 1926; and Philo Taylor Farnsworth who, inspired by the work of Boris Basing, invented, in 1927, what was probably the first electronic television system.