History of

telecommunications
IICT-BAS

History of telecommunications

Messaged carried by men, ship, animals

Earliest distance communications - smoke signals
(North America and China) and drums (Africa, New
Guinea and South America)
Europe - 1790s - fixed semaphore systems information is conveyed by means of visual
signals, using towers with pivoting shutters, also
known as blades (paddles)
1792 visual telegraphy (semaphore) between
Lille and Paris

History of telecommunications

1809 - 'electrochemical' telegraph - German physician,

anatomist and inventor Samuel Thomas von Smmering
1832 - electromagnetic telegraph - Baron Schilling,
Russia - short-distance transmission of signals between
two telegraphs in different rooms, tested on a 5 km
experimental underground and underwater cable
1833 - Carl Friedrich Gauss and Wilhelm Weber,
Germany - communicate over a distance of 1200 m
within Gttingen achieve distant needle move in the
direction set by the commutator on the other end of the
line
developed signals, own alphabet encoded in a binary code
which was transmitted by positive or negative voltage
pulses which were generated by means of moving an
induction coil up and down over a permanent magnet and
connecting the coil with the transmission wires by means
of the commutator

History of telecommunications

1836 David, American - the first known American

electric telegraph
1836 - the telegraph - developed by Samuel Morse (until
he was 34, he was a painter!) and Alfred Vail (USA) transmitting over long distances using poor quality wire;
Vail - developed the Morse code signaling alphabet with
Morse
1837 - the first commercial electrical telegraph - Sir
William Fothergill Cooke and Charles Wheatstone,
England patented as an alarm system; successfully
demonstrated Euston and Camden Town (London)

History of telecommunications

1843 - U.S. Congress appropriated $30,000 to fund an

experimental telegraph line from Washington, D.C. to
Baltimore
24 May 1844 - first public demonstration by Morse of his
telegraph - a message from the Supreme Court
Chamber in Washington to the B&O Railroad in
Baltimore
1861 - the first transcontinental telegraph system (USA)
1866 - the first successful transatlantic telegraph cable
between Ireland and Newfoundland
reduced communication time to a matter of a few hours,
allowing a message and a response in the same day !!!

History of telecommunications

1861 - Johann Philipp Reis, Germany - first

telephone couldnt interest people in Germany
in his invention
1876 Alexander Bell Bell's patent 174,465,
was issued to Bell on March 7
Elisha Gray also experimenting with acoustic
telegraphy and files a patent application 3 hours
after Bell with the U.S. Patent Office for a
telephone - Bell got the patent

History of telecommunications

1878 Microphone Edison (General Electric)

1878 - First Telephone Exchange in New
Haven, USA - 21 listings
Mid-1880s - telephone exchanges in every
major city of the United States
1832, James Lindsay (UK) - classroom
demonstration of wireless telegraphy; 1854, he
demonstrated a transmission across the Firth of
Tay from Dundee to Woodhaven (3 km), using
water as the transmission medium

History of telecommunications

1884 Radio Telegraph Popov

1892 First Automatic Telephone Exchange in
La Porte USA by Strowger
1896 Radio Telegraph Marconi (Italy)
1898 First Automatic Telephone Exchange in
Germany
1901 Marconi - wireless communication
between Britain and Newfoundland, earned the
Nobel Prize in physics in 1909

History of telecommunications

1918 Radio Carrier System /USA 1920 Radio

Broadcasting
1925 John Baird, Scottish - demonstrated the
transmission of moving silhouette pictures in
London
1929 - Bairds work formed the basis of semiexperimental broadcasts done by the British
Broadcasting Corporation

History of telecommunications

1927 demonstration of the cathode ray tube (CRT)

in broadcasting of images CRT inventor was Karl
Braun in 1897

1930 Coaxial cables

1931 Radiolinks

1937 Pulse Code Modulation - PCM (64kbps)

Reeves (Bell Labs) - representation of a signal by a
series of digital pulses firstly by sampling the signal,
quantizing it and then encoding it a method
developed in the seventies

History of telecommunications

1945 - Arthur C. Clarke proposes the idea

for Synchronous Orbit Satellites
1946 Cellular Radio (Bell Labs) remained
costly and not widely used until 1995

1947 Transistor (Bell Labs)

1957 Sputnik, USSR first satellite

1962 Telstar - first active, direct relay

commercial communications satellite

History of telecommunications

1960 first LASER (Light Amplification by Stimulated

Emission of Radiation) Theodore Maiman , USA

1960 - AT&T installs first electronic switching system

in Morris, IL

1961 - Electronic Telephone Exchange (Bell Labs); T1 Carrier System (Bell Labs) TDM (Time Domain
Multiplexing) - 24 channels = 64 Kbps, 1.544 Mbps
(mega bits per sec)

History of telecommunications

1965 - AT&T introduces stored program

controlled switching
1966 - Fibre Glass optics - Kao & Hockman,
Standard Telecom Labs

1967 - Larry Roberts paper proposing ARPANET,

Advanced Research Projects Agency

1969 - The Department of Defense initiates the

ARPANet, which led to the development of
Internet - initially computers at Stanford
University and UCLA are connected

History of telecommunications

1969 ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network

2x64k+16k)

1970 Aloha-network (Hawaii)

1974 Packet and Circuit Switched data networks

(CCITT X.25 and X.21) - International Telegraph and

Telephone Consultative Committee (CCITT,
from French: Comit Consultatif International Tlphonique et
Tlgraphique)

History of telecommunications

1974 Arpanet/ Internet DoD/USA

1974 - Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn discuss connecting

networks together to form an "internet". They
collaborate in creating a Transmission Control
Protocol (TCP).

1976 Optical Fiber in data transmission

1977 Ethernet 10Mbps Xerox (developed in 1974),

Ether is the mysterious invisible fluid that transfers
heat, originally based on the ALOHA radio protocol

History of telecommunications

1972 Mobile Networks ARP

1978 ISO/OSI + CCITT x.200 (the standard describing

the OSI model)

1984 MHS (Message Handling System) CCITT/ISO

ODA (Open Document Architecture) CCITT/ISO

1984 Intelligent Networks (AIN Series) Bellcore

1987 GSM (Groupe Special Mobile, CEPT) Global System for Mobile Communications

History of telecommunications

1987 - Bellcore introduces the Asymmetric Digital

Subscriber Line (ADSL) concept which has the
potential of multimedia transmission over the nation's
copper loops
1989 HTTP/HTML in Cern by Tim Barners-Lee Hypertext Transfer Protocol (a protocol i.e. set of
procedures describing how to pass information)
/HyperText Markup Language (language how to
present information that passes via HTTP)

History of telecommunications

1991 - ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode 155

Mb/s)

1991 - IN CS.1 (Intelligent Networks) by ITU and

ETSI

1992 - WWW (World Wide Web) - the first audio

and video multicasts are broadcast over the
Internet

1993 - Internet browser MOSAIC is introduced at

the University of Illinois

History of telecommunications

1998 GPRS (General Packet Radio System)

2001 UMTS (Universal Mobile

Telecommunication System)

Terminal Complex

First computer telecommunication systems early 60s: local multi-user systems - terminal
complex
Classical Terminal Complex - shares computer
resources among closely located users via
telecommunication lines
Computer configuration (CPU / RAM / Channel
(usually phone line))
Transmission medium:
wires/cables: pairs or cable set of pairs; twisted pairs
for reduction of signal interference; coaxial cables (noise
shield)

Terminal complex
I/O system

I/O interface

CPU
I/O channel

Multiplexor

RAM
Telephone exchange
T

Modem

Modem

Modem

Modem

Modem

...

Modem
Terminal

Link channels

Link channels

Modem

Modem

Modem

Terminal Complex

Information transmission methods:

Synchronous: byte-stream forming data blocks,
synchronization based on

additional signals in control lines

synchro-symbols in the front and in the end of the block

advantage: higher speed, less communication overload

drawback: more complicated hardware, buffer memory
application: high speed communication

Asynchronous: 1 start impulse and 1 or 2 stop

impulse; clock frequency is higher than the readwrite frequency (access instants)

advantage: no buffering, simple synchronization circuit

drawback: communication overload (30%)
application: slow terminals in short distance

Terminal Complex

Information transmission modes:

Terminal complexes use mostly
phone/telegraph lines on

switched lines: use the public exchange by

dialed access from point to point

advantage: chipper
drawback: slower, noisy
application: smaller traffic

leased lines: fixed lines for monopoly use

from point to point; connection line is owned
of local PTT company

advantage: reliable error-free, faster, promptness

drawback: price
application: bigger traffic

Terminal Complex
Standard Interface
usually bus of 30-60 signal lines
physical parameters: line length; signal
parameters (amplitude, frequency, working
mode: monopoly, multiplex, block-multiplex);
multiplexors number

Multiplexor:
transforms parallel (byte) stream from terminals
to sequential (bit) stream for the channel
interface
addressing the terminals - 2 methods: cycle
time-driven or event driven selection
error control
same functions in opposite direction (from
channel to terminals)

Terminal Complex

Modems (signal MODulator/DEModulator)

phone line transmission with digital to analog
and analog to digital conversion
Structure and components:

Modulator (data input)

Demodulator (data output)
Filter (frequency separator)
Linear Amplifier

Modulation types
AM
FM
PhM

Modulations