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Telecommunications History

A Historical Timeline

Here is a time-line of the history of telecommunications. What was to start as brief  time-line for our site, has actually grown. It had been decided it is far more interesting to go into some depth into the history of man’s accomplishments with communications the more historical research was done on the subject.

These feats in communications include historical achievements in optical (visual) telegraphy, computers, mail delivery, Internet, and audio communications. Telecommunications has a very rich history that can easily be appreciated in this time-line we created. This was no easy path, and no single man can take all of the credit for our current technologies in modern communications. The hats go off to thousands of pioneers in this ever growing technology.

We hope this time-line information is helpful to you in your learning studies whether for pleasure, school, or work. If there is additional information you think we should add to this page for a historical time line of telecommunications history, please feel free to contact us with “Telecom History”  in the subject line.

We thank you for visiting our site and hope to see you back here soon!

The Beginning

Year 0 (The beginning of Humanity without Calendar dates) – The first man or close to man species that emerged no doubt had to communicate. In my personal belief I would have to say the first communication over a distance would have been a howl or grunt to alert those within hearing distance of impending danger or of the arrival of herds of animals for a hunt. Arms, hands, sticks, fire, and the throwing of objects into the air very well were probably used at a fair distances (yards) as well to signal during hunts or tribal area warnings. This is speculative, but fairly a reasonable speculation. The rest below is of “recorded” history.

48 B.C. – Julius Caesar has towers built distances from each other where his sentinels can relay messages down a line through the method of shouting. Makes you wonder if any messages were ever mixed up down the line and what price may have been payed when an error occurred.

62 B.C. – Written messages are delivered via carriage and chariot in Greece. This would be the very first recorded and well documented postal service but was reserved for Emperors and others of importance in that era. Relatives of  immediate civilian family were used for delivery of messages. Civil delivery was done usually by walking and running on foot and were used much earlier in time. Both methods could take days, months, or years.

150 B.C. – The alphabet is code converted into numerals for the purpose of smoke signaling by Polybius, a Greek historian. Smoke signals were one of the first instances of telecommunications which were capable of visibility from as far as 400 miles in only a few hours or days, but not in this Greek alphanumeric coding. This is one documented mention of what is known as the Optical Telegraph.

350 B.C. – Water clocks in Greece are first used and are still considered to be the FIRST actual telegraph in existence for sending and receiving messages over a distance..

405 BC  – Ancient Greek soldiers and sailors use polished shields to reflect the sun for signaling. Later in history, the method and science of reflecting the sun for signaling would produce the first heliograph.

776 B.C. – Olympic outcomes are sent via courier pigeons from Olympic arenas to Athens.

1184 B.C. – Fire signals were used to message the victory of the Greeks from the city of Troy to Argos.

1352  B.C. – Trumpets are used for signaling of dangers for towns and kingdoms throughout Europe as well as to alert of other announcements. It would be a long time before a trumpet would be used for actual music. The first trumpets originally were fashioned from bull horns.

3000 B.C. – Drums are fashioned and used as a means for communication between tribes in various regions for peace, war, and hunts.

1150 A.D. – Homing pigeons regularly used to carry messages from one point to another in Baghdad in the Middle East. Consider this the first version of wireless SMS text messaging or email

1588 A.D. – Signal fires are used to alert Queen Elizabeth the 1st of an impending attack from Spain. The advance warning allows victory over the Spanish and saves England from occupation.

1665 A.D. – Remember the two tin cans and piece of string you could attach to use to talk across the room with your childhood friend in somewhat privacy? It was created by Robert Hooke and experimented with without tin cans (not invented yet). Instead cups and wire were used and it was often dubbed “the lovers’ telephone” later in the19th century.

1684 A.D. – The concept of Semaphore Towers using large paddles or blades atop for signaling messages over distances is thought up by Robert Hooke. The blades would be converted to different angles to convey a certain code or message. There would be a line of towers within sight of each other that would relay the same signal until it reached it’s destination over the course of hundreds of miles. It is never constructed or used though but contributes to the invention of the first visual telegraph.

1692  A.D. – In  America (before The United States was formed) the first postal service is created under a grant provided by King William.

1787 A.D. – A French mechanic by the name of Lomond uses a single wire to send his wife a coded message to another room in his house with static electricity via his own homemade machine.

1792 A.D. -  The optical telegraph is used in France which works much like the Semaphore Towers of Robert Hook with the exception that instead of blades or paddles, 2 long extended limbs with moveable parts are put atop the towers that can be shaped into many forms to create more complex and precise coding for communication. This is in thanks to Claude Chappe who built off of Robert Hooks’s idea.

In the same year of 1792 in The United States of America, the United States Post Office is put into service under the direction of Benjamin Franklin. He was the first ever appointed Post Master General.

1794 A.D. – Electric visual telegraphs made their first debut by interrupting electricity streams over wire causing large sparks on the receiving end. The longest message being sent 26 miles.

1800′s

1801 A.D. – The first semaphore system for commercial use in the United States is built and runs a span of  72 miles.

1805 A.D. – A man named Salva produces an eletrolytic telegraph which emits hydrogen bubbles in water from the end of a wire. These hydrogen bubbles were the actual transmitted code.

1823 A.D. – An English man by the name of Francis Ronalds invents a telegraph machine that reveals letters for each transmission via rotating discs and pith balls.

1830 A.D. – Joseph Henry operates the first electromagnetic telegraph successfully from over a mile away.

1832 A.D. – Samuel Morse drafts up his first code while aboard a packet ship “Sully” after learning from another passenger of the recent discoveries of electromagnetism and electricity. The seed has been planted for the future of Morse code and the telegraph as he becomes convinced that messages can be delivered at the speed of lightening over wire over any distance.

1837 A.D. – Over 1,700 feet of wire, Morse demonstrates a working telegraph machine and his finished code to close friends.

1838 A.D. Joseph Henry discovers electrical currents can travel through the air from one wire to another. This eventually will birth radio and wireless communications.

1844 A.D. – Samuel Morse first publicly demonstrates the electric telegraph with the first telegraph being the honor of a Miss Elsworth with the religious message “What Hath God Wrought”.

1847 A.D. – The first postage stamp in the United States is issued and sold.

Additionally the first Morse coded telegraph office opens up for business.

1851 A.D. – Fifty-one telegraph companies now are in operation using Morse code.

1856 A.D. – Western Union is created by six business savvy men with a vision who start to acquire as many telegraph companies and offices as possible within the United States. Their ultimate goal was to unify the telegraph communications to streamline the process for more reliable and speedier services.

1857 A.D. – A set of maritime flag codes for sea vessels become a worldwide standard thanks to the British Board of Trade with the International Code of Signals otherwise known as ICS.

1858 A.D. – The fist transatlantic telegraph cable line is put into place, but fails after less than a month due to too high of a voltage. Telegraph messages for that brief moment in time were transferred between the States and Europe for the first time in history in almost real time.

1860 A.D. – The last semaphore tower system goes out of business.

The Pony Express is created in this same year to deliver mail through the “Wild West”.

1861 A.D. – Semaphore flag signals are first militarily used in the First Battle of Bull Run during The Civil War.

In this year as well, the Pony Express only after one year of it’s service is shut down due to the progression of telegraph lines throughout the West.

Now there are also 2,250 telegraph operations in 1861 throughout the United States with both coasts from East to West receiving Morse code messages.

1865 A.D. – Using what was the invention of the Pantelegraph machine, the first commercial fax service is created in France between the cities of Paris and Lyon.

1869 A.D. -  The first heliograph is designed and created. This device used a mirror to reflect the light of the sun to send coded (flash beams of light) messages up to 20 miles away to another location usually observing from a telescope. It primarily was used for military communication purposes.

1870 A.D. – Multiplex telegraphy is invented by Thomas Edison allowing for multiple simultaneous transmissions of Morse code.

1875 A.D. – Alexander Graham Bell proves his theory correct with the telephone and the first words are spoken over the telephone line.

1876 A.D. – Alexander Graham Bell successfully has a two way conversation over a phone with someone else from 2 miles away. Previously, only one voice signal could be transmitted at a time.

1877 A.D. – The first telephone is installed into a residential house dwelling in New York City.

The Bell Telephone company is created with Alexander Bell’s assistant Watson.

The first telephone directory ever is created with a whopping 50 listings on one page in New Haven, Connecticut. Sorry, trying not to laugh while typing that.

Phones are rented not sold, and only rented in pairs so that the renter can provide another residence or location of importance with the means of contact to the renter or vice versa. Renting a phone was the first viable way of maintaining a profit, essentially being the first phone service run exclusively off of the renting of hardware.

1878 A.D. – The first switchboard operator, George Willard Croy,  is put into employment under the Boston Telephone Dispatch Company. Over the years many more men and teenage boys would be employed as switchboard operators.

In this exact same year the first woman switchboard operator was employed. The men and boys were rude to customers, cursed at many callers, and were caught slacking on the job and making mistakes. Women quickly became the employed standard for switchboard operator services Nationwide and men were quickly phased out.

1880 A.D. – The photophone is invented by Alexander Graham Bell which actually used sunlight to carry messages. This was a successful experiment that allowed for wireless conversations between two phones. It never developed into production unfortunately. Yes, you might as well consider this the beginning of the cell phone all the way back then, right?

There are now 30,872 Bell telephones within the United States in this year.

1881 A.D. – The first public telephone long distance line is laid out between Boston and Providence.

1884 A.D. – The first long distance phone call from a telephone is made from Boston to New York City. Phone service officially opens between Boston and New York City thanks to overhead copper line.

1885 A.D. – The subsidiary American  Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T) company is formed by the Bell company.

1887 A.D. – AT&T opens it’s doors for business offering telegraph and phone services.

Electromagnetic waves are proven to exist by Heinrich Hertz in this same year.

1888 A.D. – Heinrich Hertz effectively produces radio waves opening the doors to a new era of communications technology for the future.

1891 A.D. – The first underseas cable runs from England to France allowing for telephone and telegraph communications between both countries.

1893 A.D. – With over 220 miles of telephone wire in Budapest, Hungary, 6000 telephone subscribers subscribe to regularly scheduled broadcast entertainment, news, and music through their phones. This was considered one of the earliest broadcasts in telecommunications history.

1895  A.D. – The first radio receiver is conceived and is used as a “lightning detector”. The inventor of this radio receiver was a Russian named Alexander Stepanovich Popov.

1896 A.D. – With the invention of selector trunking, dial telephones now are possible and start being produced and used. Previously telephones simply were picked up and hung up and lines were only connected via an operator or person to person (P2P).

1898 A.D. – The first relay switch is made and used for routing call from a switchboard. The frame was made of die cast. This technology did not replace operators right away and wouldn’t for many years to come.

1899 A.D. – The created Bell subsidiary AT&T takes over American Bell Telephone as well as all the other original Bell subsidiaries Western Electric and Bell System companies.

1900′s

1900 A.D. – There are now 856,000 telephones in service in the United States which has a population of 76,212,168 making the telecommunications market a phenomenal growth. 676,733 Bell telephone stations are now owned and operating Nationwide as well.

1901 A.D. – The first ever transatlantic wireless signals are sent on the 12th of December by a man named Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian inventor. He later would be dubbed “the father of long distance radio”.

1902 A.D. – The first long distance conversation via UNDERGROUND wire is conducted with success at a distance of  90 miles.

1903 A.D. – The record of the most telephones in any one building is made when the New York Stock Exchange building opens. There were over 500 phones.

1906 A.D. – The first ever AUDIO radio broadcast is emitted playing a violin version of O Holy Night as well as a read passage from the bible. It is only heard on ships off the coast of Ocean Bluff-Brant Rock, Massachusetts. This was the first AM radio broadcast.

1907 A.D. – The first commercial transatlantic telegraph service opens up for business, The Wireless & Telegraph Company. It is opened and run by no other than Guglielmo Marconi, the founder of the technology.

1909 A.D. -  Guglielmo Marconi receives the Nobel Prize in Physics for his development of wireless telegraph communications.

1910 A.D. – The first commercially available radios are sold.

There are now 5,142,692 Bell phone service and telegraph stations running in operation.

1911 A.D. – Long distance telephone communications reach a new milestone as loading coils are more properly spaced on phone lines allowing long distance communications to now reach from Denver to New York.

CTR Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company  is formed which later will be renamed IBM. The company sells punch cards, punch card machines, tabulators, time recorders, and even meat and cheese slicers.

The multiplying and dividing machine (calculator) is invented by an inventor named Jay Monroe.

1912 A.D. – The Monroe Calculator Company is formed by Jay Monroe.

1913 A.D. – The first antitrust against Bell is filed by the Government for charges of monopolizing the telephone services in the entire Pacific Northwest. AT&T agreed to stop acquiring other telecommunication companies and to release it’s stock holdings in Western Union as well as allow other telecom companies to interconnect within their networks.

In long distance communications, underground wire conversations are now capable of transmissions at 455 miles of a distance which is Boston to Washington and overhead wire conversations are now capable of distances of 2,600 miles, Salt Lake City to New York.

1914 A.D. - to be continued …