Telecommunication

“ Traditionally, transmission capacity has been offered for discrete services, such as telephone service. With the incorporation of digital technology into the telephone network and the inclusion of computer processing capabilities into both terminal equipment located in the customer's premises and the equipment making up a firm's "network," this is no longer the case. Telecommunications service is no longer just "plain old telephone service" to the user. A subscriber may use telephone service to transmit voice or data. ”

“ Telephone system:
general assessment: the "Telecommunications Liberalization Plan of 1998" opened the telecommunications market to competition and foreign investment encouraging the growth of modern telecommunications technology; fiber-optic cable trunk lines are being installed between all major cities; major networks are entirely digital and the availability of telephone service is improving
domestic: microwave radio relay, fiber-optic cable, and a domestic satellite system with 40 earth stations serve the trunk network ”

“ In the industrialized nations, a technological revolution is taking place—a revolution marked by rapid, dramatic advances in computers and telecommunications. ”

“ Wireless telegraphy is part of the established order of things. The wireless telephone is practical for limited distance, but is not a commercial rival of the telegraph. Great distances are claimed, but they are matters for proof and speculation.
There is no immediate possibility that wireless telephony will take the place of local exchanges. If the time ever does come that it in any way tends to supplant the line telephone for some uses, it is more than probable that each subscriber must have his own generating station and call up direct. ”

“ Since 1903, wireless has made possible the radio, the wireless telephone, and now television. Is it not probable that the future holds other great marvels, one day to become commonplace-perhaps in God's Kingdom! ”

“ These telephone girls are the human part of a great communication machine. They are weaving a web of talk that changes into a new pattern every minute. How many possible combinations there are with the five million telephones of the Bell System, or what unthinkable mileage of conversation, no one has ever dared to guess. But whoever has once seen the long line of white arms waving back and forth in front of the switchboard lights must feel that he has looked upon the very pulse of the city's life. ”

“ FIG. 153.—The aerial system of a transatlantic station.
The wireless telephone enables a passenger on board ship to communicate direct with his home by relaying the message over the line wires. By the same means the captain of a ship can call his home office and communicate with the owner of the vessel.
Telegraphs and telephones are the nerves of the world, carrying swift messages from its brain centers to its hands, annihilating distance in thought. All differences between men as individuals and people as nations can be traced to the lack of close contact. ”

“ In such a sense many of the most common modern conveniences of life would have seemed impossible a century ago. To travel with safety sixty miles an hour, to talk through the telephone with a friend an hundred miles away, to receive intelligible messages across the Atlantic by a cable, and, still more, to communicate by wireless telegraphy would have seemed impossible until recently. ”

“ When in the middle of the nineteenth century the human race had achieved a degree of development that made swift communication essential to the common life, the telegraph and the ocean cable were invented; or it might rather be said, the laws that make them possible were discerned, and were taken advantage of to utilize for this purpose. The constant developments in rapid transit, in the instantaneous conveniences of telephonic communication, and, latest of all, in wireless telegraphy, are all in the line of absolute correspondence with the advancing needs of humanity. ”

“ Millions of messages going in all directions, crossing and recrossing one another, as is done every day by wire, are probably an impossibility by wireless telephony. Weird and little-understood conditions of the ether, static electricity, radio disturbances, make wireless work uncertain, and such a thing as twenty-four-hour service, seven days in the week, can probably never be guaranteed. In radio communication all must use a common medium, and as its use increases, so also do the difficulties. The privacy of the wire is also lacking with the wireless telephone. ”

“ Here, in the depths, is woven that mysterious power that carries the wireless message through the rocks of the mountains and the channels of the sea, and wraps the earth in a diaphanous garb that makes the wireless telephone a possibility. ”

“ The history of wireless telegraphy and telephony is a striking example of how it is possible for scientists laboring in the field of pure research and stimulated by accumulated knowledge and imagination to arrive at discoveries of the most vital importance. ”

“ Wireless telephony, like wireless telegraphy, but to an even greater extent, is peculiarly suited for the conveyance of marine intelligence. Wireless telephony occupies a unique position in this regard-no operator is required. The additional expense of an operator is an objection to the wireless telegraph in many cases, and forbids its installation. Anybody can operate the wireless telephone. It is also much quicker-words can be spoken more rapidly than they can be put into Morse signals and translated. ”

“ The telephone service has been extended to great distances—for instance, from Boston to Omaha—not by relays, but by strengthening the blows upon the medium between the transmitting circuit and the receiving one, just as we desire to do in what is called wireless telegraphy, the apparatus of which is almost identical in principle to that employed in telephony. ”

“ Railways and steamships had begun this work of binding man to man by "nobler and cunninger methods." The telegraph and cable had gone still farther and put all civilized people within sight of each other, so that they could communicate by a sort of deaf and dumb alphabet. And then came the telephone, giving direct instantaneous communication and putting the people of each nation within hearing distance of each other. ”

“ Its operators, installers and other representatives are your neighbors. Some may be your friends or relatives. Its departments are managed by your fellow citizens—men and women who have come up through the ranks.
Nine out of every ten telephone calls handled by these home town people are local calls. The tenth call may go across the continent or across the ocean. But wherever the calls go, they travel by means of a marvelously ordered world of wires, cables, switchboards, dial equipment, radio and above all, with the help of people working together to serve the public. ”

“ Wireless telephones will not only transmit the speech more clearly and distinctly, but have the further advantages that the initial cost is very much lower than that of wire lines, the maintenance is almost nil in comparison, the depreciation is smaller, the number of employees required is less, and a break-down is limited to the inside of the station, where it could be quickly remedied by the substitution of a duplicate spare piece of apparatus. ”

“ Wireless telegraphy.—To the men who were struggling to unite continents by electrical conductors the idea that connection for the purposes of communication could be established without any conductors whatever would have seemed an idle dream. ”

“ The Marconi station at Glacé Bay, Cape Breton, is now receiving messages for cableless transmission to England at the rate of ten cents a word—newspaper matter at five cents a word. Transatlantic wireless telegraphy is an everyday occurrence, and the common practical uses are almost beyond mention. ”

“ To use the language of the money-market, there was a temporary “slump” in cable shares. The world again woke up—this time to the fact that experiments of which it had heard faintly had at last culminated in a great triumph, marvellous in itself, and yet probably [Pg 9] nothing in comparison with the revolution in the transmission of news that it heralded.
The subject of Wireless Telegraphy is so wide that to treat it fully in the compass of a single chapter is impossible. ”

“ At the close of the century, however, by means of ocean cables and telegraph lines, and telephone instrumentalities—to say nothing of the more wonderful wireless telegraphy now coming into use—we are in instant communication with all the great centers of civilization, and each morning may read the world's daily history gathered by these agencies for our instruction. ”

“ It was after the turn of the century that telegraph engineers began in earnest to think about a system of telegraphy that would permit direct intercommunication by the printed word, and direct circuit connection to any outlying subscriber as in the telephone communication system. ”

“ That the telephone is now doing most of all, in this binding together of all manner of men, is perhaps not too much to claim, when we remember that there are now in the United States seventy thousand holders of Bell telephone stock and ten million users of telephone service. ”

“ Wireless telegraphy, as it is practiced to-day, is based upon the fact that a system of wires or circuits, through which high frequency oscillations are surging, becomes a source of electromagnetic waves. Various methods have been devised for making the system more efficient and capable of giving better results with a given amount of power. ”

“ So it’s particularly true, because 20th century technology offered us ubiquitous point‐to‐point wire line interpersonal communication called “the telephone”, and there was a very long period—three generations plus—in which the profits of treating that as a commodity for sale accrued to a few favored players who became enormously powerful. ”

“ In the case of the wireless telegraph the number of messages which may be sent simultaneously is much restricted. In the case of the wireless telephone, owing to the thousands of separate wave-lengths required for the transmission of speech, the number of telephone conversations which may be carried on at the same time is still further restricted and is so small that all who can employ wires will find it necessary to do so, leaving the ether available for those who have no other means of communication. ”

“ We’re inventors, and we have discovered something regarding wireless telephony which will soon startle the whole world. The boy, whoever he is, will be startled and hold his tongue—till we decide how to deal with him. ”

“ The Bell telephone—The Edison transmitter—The granular carbon transmitter—General arrangement of a telephone circuit—Double-line circuits—Telephone exchanges—Submarine telephony.
For the purposes of everyday life the telephone is even more useful than the telegraph. Telephones now connect one room of a building with another, house with house, town with town, country with country. An infinitely greater number of words pass over the telephonic circuits of the world in a year than are transmitted by telegraph operators. ”

“ Wireless telegraphy already has reached remarkable perfection, but it is still a young science, and we may confidently expect developments which will enable us to send messages with all speed across vast gulfs of distance at present unconquered. ”

“ Indeed, most of them can and do work the key with one hand while they eat their lunch with the other; and the call or signal for his office will instantly awaken him from a sleep which a cannon-shot would not disturb. Telegraphy, in a word, develops a sort of sixth sense, and the experienced operator receives or sends a message as readily as he talks or reads or writes. It is second nature. ”

“ CHAPTER IV. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ART
Four wire-using businesses were already in the field when the telephone was born: the fire-alarm, burglar-alarm, telegraph, and messenger-boy service; and at first, as might have been expected, the humble little telephone was huddled in with these businesses as a sort of poor relation. To the general public, it was a mere scientific toy; but there were a few men, not many, in these wire-stringing trades, who saw a glimmering chance of creating a telephone business. ”

“ But because a way was found to couple the wireless telephone with the wire telephone, the new wonder has great possibilities as a supplement to our existing system. Before so very long it may be possible for an American business man sitting in his office to call up and converse with a friend on a liner crossing the Atlantic. ”

“ We have tried to describe to you the general principles underlying the art of wireless telegraphy as plainly as possible, using for illustration the simplest kind of apparatus employed for the practical sending and receiving of messages. At the present day there are several systems in actual practice, and with the growth of the art there have been many elaborations of apparatus that have come into use. ”

“ If you invent a new way of using the phone network—say, a cheaper way of making long-distance calls using voice-over-IP, you can’t roll that out on the phone network without the permission of the carrier. ”

“ To make the telephone an annex of the post office or the telegraph has become absurd. There are now in the whole world very nearly as many messages sent by telephone as by letter; and there are THIRTY-TWO TIMES as many telephone calls as telegrams. In the United States, the telephone has grown to be the big brother of the telegraph. It has six times the net earnings and eight times the wire. And it transmits as many messages as the combined total of telegrams, letters, and railroad passengers. ”

“ Twenty-three years ago the first telephone exchange in the world was established in the United States, and from that beginning has been built up the great system of exchanges, and the network of connecting lines over which conversation can be held between points over a thousand miles apart. ”