Hello? By Kyle McRae

A Book Explaining the Evolution of Communication

Technology Through History

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Table of Contents Cave Drawings………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….3 Cuneiform Writing…………………………………………………………………………………………………………...4 Papyrus Paper…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..5 Parchment Paper………………………………………………………………………………………………………..…...6 Codex……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...7 Smoke Signals………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….8 Chinese Manual Printing Press…………………………………………………………………………………………..9 German Mechanical Printing Press…………………………………………………………………………………..10 Newspapers…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….11 Telephone……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...13 Mechanical Telegraph……………………………………………………………………………………………………..14 Electric/Morse Code Telegraph………………………………………………………………………………………...15 Braille…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….16 The Babbage Engine………………………………………………………………………………………………………..17 Mail Delivery Service Systems…………………………………………………………………………………………..18 Radio Waves…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...21 Typewriter……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..22 Radio…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….24 Landline Telephones……………………………………………………………………………………………………….26 E-Mail…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...27 Cell Phones…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...28 Chat Rooms…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...31 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..33 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..34 About the Author…………………………………………………………………………………………………………...36

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Cave Drawings The first known method of communication by humans is cave drawings. Using either a

sharp tool, or makeshift paint from crushed berries, mud or soot, the Neanderthals

would often draw pictures of animals or humans. Due to the fact that these paintings

started to appear around 40,000 years ago, scientists aren’t able to accurately determine

the messages that the cavemen were trying to display. The popular theories are that they

were used to decorate, to aid spiritually in a hunt or to exemplify their great feats for

future generations to be awed by. Over time, cave drawings would evolve into signs,

which allowed villagers walking by to view information on a current situation or a new

product, without the need of a person nearby.

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Cuneiform Writing Thousands of years after the creation of cave drawings, humans had evolved quite

dramatically, so the creation of a new method of communication became necessary.

Cuneiform was invented by the Sumerians of Mesopotamia around 3500 BC, and was

quickly adopted by other regional civilizations. At its very beginning, cuneiform used

easily drawn images that represented people, places, objects or events, otherwise known

as things that could be seen by the human eye. However as it became more popular, it

became more apparent that symbols had to be created to represent thoughts, feelings

and ideas. It was originally written carefully with a stylus on a clay tablet, which could

easily be transported, and allowed people who lived far away from each other to

communicate, as long as they were willing to pay the messenger the appropriate fee.

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Papyrus Paper Around 3000 BC, a new surface that could be written on was discovered along the Nile

River in Egypt, that was much lighter and easier to transport than a clay tablet. Papyrus

paper was created by cutting Cyperus papyrus into slices, laying the pieces side by side,

which was then soaked in water and pressed under a rock for around twenty days. Since

this material weighed a lot less and could be rolled up, messengers could transport more

messages at a time. Papyrus paper was also much easier to write on, since words didn’t

have to be carved onto it’s surface, but rather written on. The fabric wasn’t very strong

however, so texts would potentially have to be rewritten if the paper was torn.

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Parchment Paper Throughout the second century BC, a new type of paper began to rival papyrus, that

used the skin of animals instead of wood, yet resulted in a writing material that was

much more expensive. Parchment paper could be written on on both sides, and due its

strength and flexibility, multiple pieces of parchment could be sewn together to form the

spine of a book. These two advantages allowed it’s popularity to increase, and caused

papyrus to be used less. Parchment was originally created because the king of Egypt did

not want to export papyrus paper to Pergamum, due to the fact that it could cause a

rivalry between the library of Pergamum and that of Alexandria.

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Codex The codex is the basis of what a modern book looks like today; multiple pages were sewn

together to form a book that had information on a specific subject, or to tell a story. Made with

parchment paper, this creation blew papyrus scrolls out of the water, due to the fact that they

could hold much more information since more pages could be held together with the help of a

sturdy cover. This style of book was adopted by the Christian church so that the Bible would

look different when compared to the religious texts of the other religions, and since it was very

easy to transport and very accessible, Christianity flourished across the lands, along with this

style of book, starting around 400 AD.

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Smoke Signals A method of communication that was popular with Native American Indians and the

ancient Chinese was to send a message through the use of smoke. Setting themselves up

on a mountain or any other area that was visible from far away, the messengers would

make different patterns of smoke float up into the air using a fire bowl to signal, for

example, that everything was fine, or that help was needed immediately. Different

patterns could be interpreted differently by other tribes or camps because there was no

universal patterns; in other words, one puff of smoke might mean something to one

tribe, but something completely different to another tribe.

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Chinese Manual Printing Press Around 1050, the first manual printing press was invented by Bi Sheng in Bianliang,

China. The first step in creating the machine was cutting pieces of wood into the 3,000

most common Chinese characters, which surprisingly didn’t take him that long. Sheng

would then place the characters that were needed on an iron board, then a piece of

paper would be pressed against the symbols which had a layer of water-based ink. This

process would be repeated until the needed quantity of papers was met. This quickened

the process of the copying of texts quite drastically, since they were previously copied

painstakingly by hand.

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German Mechanical Printing Press Around the middle of 15th century in Strasbourg, Germany, the printing press became

mechanical thanks to Johannes Gutenberg. By creating a screw mechanism that could be used in

his machine, Gutenberg managed to make the process of copying information even faster, for a

fraction of the cost and with even less manual labour. Papers would be placed on a flat surface,

then slid into the machine, where it would be pressed down with ink, and brought back out with

text copied onto it. If multiple machines were used in a factory, the result would be enough

newspapers for an entire city (with an average 15th century sized population)

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Newspapers Newspapers started to become used during the Renaissance period in Europe, when

merchants would hand off letters to each other containing information regarding the

conditions of multiple aspects of their city (economy, war, politics, etc.). The first true

English newspaper was the London Gazette, which started in 1666, and the first

American newspaper was entitled Publick Occurrences, and was created in Boston in

1690. Publick Occurrences didn’t last very long however, due to the paper’s subject

matter, which resulted in the arrest of the publisher and the destruction of nearly every

copy.

The first successful american paper was the Boston News-Letter, created by John

Campbell in 1704, which was subsidized by the colonial government, and by 1783, there

were around 43 newspapers in print. During this time, newspapers were used mainly to

express political opinions, but would eventually come to explain current events and

other important affairs happening in the country.

In the 1830s, thanks to advancements in technology, newspapers started to become

available to the general public, since they could now be bought for a cent per copy, when

previously only the rich, literate minority had the funds and the capability to read the

papers.

In the 1850s, during the first Industrial revolution, printing companies were capable of

printing large numbers of papers, and the introduction of pictures appeared during this

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time as well. During the early 20th century, smaller companies would be bought out by

larger manufacturers, and thus resulted in newspapers become very bland in opinion.

As time passed, newspapers would have a smaller part in society due to the introduction

of radios and televisions.

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Telephone In 1849, Antonio Meucci accidentally discovered the science behind the telephone while

performing a medical experiment. When Meucci placed electrodes in the mouth of his

patient, which were connected to an electric generator, and also connected himself to

the machine to make sure that the current wasn’t too strong, he was able to hear what

his patient was saying. Using this knowledge,

Meucci developed the teletrofono, two cones

that were connected together by an

electrically-charged copper wire. When

something was said at the transmitter cone, it

could be heard coming out of the receiving cone,

a creation similar to the two metal cans attached

by a string, popular with little children.

In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Augustus Watson

popularized/modernized Meucci’s invention of the

telephone. Unlike Meucci however, the duo were able

to get a lot more investors interested, allowing for the

product to skyrocket in demand. Then finally, in early

October, they successfully had the first two-way long

distance call. The success of the telephone resulted in

the foundation of the Bell Telephone Company, a

corporation which is now found all across Canada and the United States.

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Mechanical Telegraph During the French Revolution, Claude Chappe, an inventor, was approached by the

government of France, who were currently being overthrown by the people that they

ruled over. They asked Chappe to create a system that would allow them to receive

messages from their far-away armies, without the use of a messenger. Using a pair of

wooden arms, symbols would be created at the top of a tower, which would then be

transmitted from tower to tower until the message reached its destination. Although this

invention was revolutionary, it couldn’t be used at night or in bad weather, it had to be

operated manually (meaning messages could not be sent very quickly), and anybody

who knew the semaphore alphabet could expose the secret messages.

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Electric/Morse Code Telegraph Around the beginning of the 19th century, american and european scientists started to

experiment with electricity, allowing them to discover several things about it. One of

these discoveries was that signals could be sent from one electromagnet to another. By

placing electromagnets at equivalent intervals, messages could be sent over long

distances, an innovation that was discovered by Joseph Henry. About half a decade

later, Samuel Morse created a language that was composed of a combinations of dots

and dashes that represented letters, numbers, and punctuation marks, which we now

know today as morse code. Each tap would send an electrical current, which would

travel along miles of wire, and once it reached its destination, the current would be

transformed back into dots and dashes. The main advantages of this style of telegraph

over the mechanical one was that messages could be kept secret, they could travel over

longer distances with less manual labour, and they could be used at any point in the day.

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Braille At the beginning of the 19th century, Charles Barbier, a captain in Napoleon’s army, invented

“night­writing”, the first form of braille. Knowing that the use of lamps to read messages during

the night would attract enemy soldiers, Barbier invented a method of communication that used

dots. As intelligent as this idea was, humans couldn’t feel the lead on the paper, due to the fact

that it was a two­dimensional surface.

The actual language of braille was developed from 1821 to 1824, by Louis Braille, a native of

France who lost an eye at the age of three. This was Braille’s inspiration to create a language that

could be read (or rather felt) by those who could not see, and by the age of 15, he had completed

this task. Although there have slight modifications over the years, the braille alphabet is still used

to this day.

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The Babbage Engine Created by Charles Babbage in 1821, the Babbage Engine was capable of calculating polynomial

functions, whose answers were then printed on a piece of paper. Although this invention’s

concept was realised at the beginning of the 19th century; it was only actually created in 1985

and completed in 2002 by the Science Museum of London, long after computing technology had

evolved significantly. Nonetheless, the Babbage Engine was the first machine capable of

thinking on its own and was the great grandfather of the computer. Who knows how different the

world would have been if Charles had had enough money to actually realize his idea. The

evolution of not only communication technology, but also other kinds of machines as well, could

be years ahead of what it’s at now.

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Mail Delivery Service Systems Around 2400 BC, Egyptian pharaohs sent messages throughout their country through

the use of a courier. It is difficult to determine who created the first actual mail delivery

service since the majority of them started to appear in the 18th and 19th century all

across the world, with their level of organization varying drastically.

However, what is believed to be the first actual postal system was invented in Paris by

the Frenchman De Valayer. De Valayer set up mail boxes on streets and delivered

messages to these drop-off points in exchange for money. Unfortunately his business

didn’t last very long because rivals would place mice in his boxes, scaring away his

customers before they could up their mail.

In 1837, the postage stamp was created by Rowland Hill, an Englishman, who thought it

would be smarter to charge a package for its weight, instead of its size. This innovation

made mail delivery much more logical in relation to how much to charge for a delivery.

In March of 1860, the Pony Express found its

beginning when an American transportation

pioneer, William Russell, listed an ad in several

newspaper asking for young men who were fit

enough to ride a horse across the country in order

to transport mail. Most of the journeys took about

10 days, a major improvement in time compared

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to the baffling six weeks by boat that it took previously to ship mail from coast to coast.

Unfortunately, the Pony Express delivery service didn’t last long because the telegraph

was becoming more and more

popular.

After it was realized that pigeons

were very intelligent creatures that

could travel back to the location

they came from, they started to

become used as messengers during

the late 19th century. After they had been transported by way of varying transportation

methods, pigeon handlers would attach crucial messages onto the ankles or the backs of

a few pigeons (in case some of

them got shot down or killed by

German falcons). They would

then return to their home, and

deliver the message to an

awaiting soldier. Pigeons were

responsible for saving the lives

of many soldiers in need of help,

who were unable to communicate with their bases, and it was thanks to these birds that

they were able to be rescued.

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Throughout the rest of the 19th century and the 20th century, mail would be delivered

by continuously evolving postal service, which would expand and provide faster

delivery, through the use of trucks, airplanes, boats and door-to-door service.

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Radio Waves Around the middle of the 19th century, an English scientist by the name of James Clerk Maxwell

created a theory that an electromagnet wave was created by the coupling of electrical and

magnetic waves. By understanding the science behind electromagnet waves, Heinrich Hertz, a

German physicist, was able to produce a radio wave. By using two rods as receivers and a spark

gap, Hertz could determine when radio waves were present. By proving that radio waves were in

fact electromagnetic waves, Hertz was able to determine that radio waves are a form of light and

that electrical and magnetic waves could be separated from one another. This discovery would

lead to the creation of radios several years later.

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Typewriter The first model of typewriter, called “The Writing Ball” was invented by Danish pastor Rasmus

Malling­Hansen in 1870. Although the machine looked very odd, with buttons pointing in

several directions on a spherical surface, this model was actually the fastest for typing, even to

this day. The pistons would be bent in a certain way once a force had been exerted onto them so

that the distance between each letter on the paper

would be the same. This made the contraption very

unique, even if it was a commercial failure, most

likely due to it’s weird shape.

However, in 1873, the Sholes & Glidden

typewriter was invented by Christopher Sholes,

and with it came the introduction of the

QWERTY­style keyboard to the world. Letters

that were frequently next to each other in words were placed further away on this keyboard to

create less jams in the mechanics of the machine.

Unlike “The Writing Ball”, the S&G typewriter

would be evolved throughout the years. At this

time, papers would not be visible unless they

manually removed from the machine, making it

hard for the users to know whether or not they

made a mistake.

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Luckily, in 1895, John Newton Williams invented the Williams, the first “visible” typewriter.

This allowed the user to see his paper as he was writing, and was the final step in creating the

“perfect” mechanical typewriter. This invention allowed the average man to own a tool that

could be used to write a text quickly and

professionally.

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Radio The radio was the first machine that allowed for mass communication. It was first used

for contacting ships out at sea using morse code messages, when sailors would need to

alert stations on land of a problem. After heavily being used in World War I, the

invention started to be used in the United States and Europe. Founded in 1922 by

Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of the radio, and other prominent figures in the

development of wireless technology, the British

Broadcasting Company (or BBC) began broadcasting

plays, classical music and variety programs in

London, but quickly spread to the rest of the UK by

1925. At several points in history, whether it be

during the General Strike of 1926, when printing

press

workers went on strike, stopping the

production of newspapers, or instead during

the Second World War, when television

stations were shut down, radio broadcasts

were the sole source of information. Even

today, when cities are struck with power

outages, radios are one of the few inventions that don’t require a connection to an

electric socket, with the invention of portable radios that can pick up AM and FM

signals. It didn’t take long for the system to be adopted in North America, and it was and

still is a frequently used piece of tech all across the globe. However, at the beginning of

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the 21st century, new satellite radios that could pick up XM signals were developed,

allowing listeners to listen to radio broadcasts from all around the world. In 2015, the

radio is used as a music player and a distributor of information.

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Landline Telephones Landline telephones were invented in 1876 by Alexander Graham Bell, and allowed for

verbal communication across long distances. Thanks to their increased usage during the

20th century, landline telephones became more and more accessible, since more and

more telephone lines were being constructed. During the early to mid 2000s, landline

telephones reached their peak in popularity, since, after 2006, wireless communication

technologies started to take center stage. However, one of their main benefits, even in

2015, is that calls can still be made when electricity is lost during a power outage.

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E-Mail Around 1965, when computers were just starting to grow into the powerful machines

that they are today, an electronic mailing system called MAILBOX was used. MAILBOX

could allow users to send messages to people who were using computers on the same

network, through the use of “dumb terminals”, which had the sole purpose of

connecting computers together so they could send and receive messages.

However, at the time, it was impossible to send messages to computers that were on

other networks, that is, until 1972. In this year, Ray Tomlinson created a program that

was able to do just that, and through the years he made many adjustments to it to make

it even better. These changes were to make the service more accessible, to make the

service look more aesthetically pleasing and to make it more efficient. Although it is still

quite heavily used by most people, texting is now used for shorter amounts of text.

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Cell Phones Before the cell phone, machines called radio common carriers (or RCCs for short) were

used; similar to a walkie talkie, when it’s push-button was pressed, it could transmit

voice communication. The only differences are that

it used a public telephone network and had it’s own

unique telephone number.

The world’s first cell phone was the Motorola

DynaTAC 8000x, and sold at a price of $3,995 (no

there isn’t a missing decimal) during the early 80s. Created by

Ernie Wise, the invention had an instant success, and had a

waiting list for six months after launch. Bearing an LED screen,

the humongous phone allowed the user to have thirty minutes of

talking time before the battery died.

Being the first flip phone on the market, the MicroTAC

(a.k.a. the Clamshell) went for a bit less than its predecessor,

costing its consumers around $2,500. The improved cell

phone was much smaller than the DynaTAC, offered a 12

digit keypad and was hands-free operational. Over the years,

the size of the phone would continually decrease until

smartphones took over the phone market in 2007.

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In 1998, the Iridium Communication Services Program was

launched, and allowed its customers, for the first time in cell phone

history, to communicate with anyone around the world. However,

as its name suggests, the phone would only connect to satellites

orbiting in space instead of nearby cell towers.

What could easily be seen as the “first” smartphone, the PDA

(Personal Digital Assistant) was the first cellular phone to bear a

touchscreen. Popularized by

Palm, the phone had a

virtual keyboard, handwriting recognition and

Internet connectivity, all features which were

unheard of for cell phones in the 90s.

The Nokia 6000 was the phone that really

introduced cell phones to the general public, since it made mobile communication

affordable as well as widely available during the early

2000s. Although the phone itself looked very generic,

the world would be vastly different without its

influence in the cell phone industry. A few years

later, in 2004, a new phone, the Motorola Razr took

its place, as it bore a much more sleek figure.

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Also debuting in the early 2000s, the Blackberry introduced instant messaging, a feature

that is almost impossible not to find on most of today’s phones. It was quickly adopted

by many businessmen/businesswomen. A phone that would be more friendly for

teenagers and casual cell phone users would arrive a little

later, bearing the name “T-Mobile Sidekick”, which bore

a sliding keypad.

In 2007, Apple took the world by storm when it

introduced the iPhone, a phone that was more than just a

phone. Working as a GPS, TV, camera and overall

entertainment system, the iPhone had a large influence

on the cell phone industry. Flip phones went extinct (for the most part), and the new

thing was touchscreens, apps and a new connected world. It didn’t take long for

companies like Samsung, HTC, LG and Motorola to make their own versions of these

smartphones. Now, in 2015, it’s almost impossible to

not find someone under 40 who doesn’t have one of

these machines. And they’re only getting lighter,

larger, and even more powerful (and influential). But

as Uncle Ben once said: “With great power, comes

great responsibility.”

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Chat Rooms During the 90s, online “chat rooms”, where friends could send each other messages,

either privately or to a group, were the newest trend. However, it was in 1978, when Roy

Trubshaw, a student from the University of Essex, developed a program that allowed

people to take part in a fantasy based game, based off of the dice-based game Dungeons

& Dragons, called Multi-User Dungeon (or MUD), and indirectly created the first online

chat room. Players could communicate what would happen next in the game via

messages, and other players could type in replies, just like a normal conversation.

In August of 1988, Internet Relay Chat (or IRC) was created by Jarkko Oikarinen while

working for the University of Oulu in Finland. With the intention of actually creating a

chat room rather than a game, Oikarinen created a program that resulted in the sole

method to communicate information to outside the borders of the USSR for news

regarding the Soviet coup d’état attempt of 1991. This caused the program to become

used worldwide, with thousands of IRC networks currently used for discussing several

different topics.

In 1995, Java Chat was created as a byproduct of the Java language developed by

computer engineers from Sun. Instead of being a downloadable program, Java Chat

could be easily accessed when logged into a website on a browser. They are frequently

seen as the customer service chats that appear when logging into a business website, but

are also used for recreational and personal purposes. Also gaining popularity in 1995

was Instant Messaging Chat Rooms, a service which started off as an exclusive program

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for AOL members, which allowed them to communicate with each other over the

Intranet. However, in 2001, the program was made public, and non-AOL subscribers

could communicate with each other in private chat rooms.

Nowadays, voice chat has replaced chat rooms, with services like Xbox Live, Skype and

Facetime. Starting with Microsoft’s NetMeeting, users of the program could

communicate with other members through the Internet by using their voice instead of

typing messages. Although texting and chat rooms are still very prominent in most

people's’ lives, voice chat technology is being developed to deliver even smoother and

crisper sound quality.

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How has the Evolution of Communication Technology Affected our Day-to-Day Lives?

There was a time when people only knew those who they were closest to, both geographically and mentally. Then people learned how to talk, allowing them to interact with people they had never met before, and start to communicate with them. Then people learned that they could send messages from one small village to another. Then people learned how to make multiple copies of messages, and send them to multiple destinations. Then people learned how to communicate with each other while being miles away from each other. Then people learned how to broadcast information across an entire country. And now, people have discovered how to communicate with people across the globe; now, somebody from Bolivia can have a grand old conversation with their friend in Italy. Do you know the expression “it’s a small world”? The evolution of communication technology has made this statement oh so very true. We now live in a connected world (albeit maybe a little too much) where something occurring in Canada can be discovered by the population of Australia in a matter of minutes. One hundred years ago, it would have taken much longer. Although this might seem amazing, just like everything else in the world, this innovation does have some negatives. For example, since news from all around the world is available at our fingertips, we tend to get addicted to finding out what the latest trend is, instead of looking up from our phones and communicating with the people around us. Although this rule doesn’t apply to everyone, it has caused many people to not bother trying to create new relationships, since they have the Internet to help them pass the time instead. Don’t get me wrong though; faster and more efficient communication has resulted in the saving of many people’s lives since people can be alerted of incoming threats before it’s too late. People are also able to catch up with people they haven’t seen in years because we live in a world that’s so connected.

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About the Author Kyle McRae is a young author from Montreal, Canada. He has been fascinated with

technology since a very young age, and has become acquainted with it, as much of his

generation has. This book is his IB personal project for St. Thomas High School, and this

sentence acts as a certification that he did write this book.

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“Hello?” is a novel explaining the evolution of technology used for

communication throughout history. Have you ever wondered how humans

first talked to each other? How we went from cave drawings, to typewriters,

to cellphones? The way humans communicate has changed significantly

over the centuries, so join us on a journey throughout time to see how far

we’ve come since the time of cavemen! We’re certain it’s something you’ll

be talking about for a long time.

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