Communication in the 20th Century

Communication in the 20th Century.  Communication begins for all of us when we are too young to speak but convey our messages by facial expressions.  This method is known as pre-verbal communication.

Language it the vehicle which allows people to communicated their thoughts and ideas to other people and through print to save those ideas and not only share them with their contemporaries but to pass them down to the generations to come.

In the early 1800’s the electric telegraph made long distance communication possible.  In the 1870’s the telephone was also developed making communication in local areas possible which then spread to connect larger area and eventually the world.

Fewer than five years after its introduction, over 47,000 telephones were being used in the United States. The growth of these communications media accelerated the pace of social interaction, migration, commerce, and government activities.

In the 20th century the radio was invented and this allow an increased mobility for communications, such as ship to ship and police department broadcasts.  When the vacuum tube was invented radio then became capable of international communications.

Use of electronic surveillance for legitimate purposes such as intelligence and law enforcement investigation, as well as for illegitimate purposes, spurred enactment of a number of laws intended to comprehensively address such activities. Congress enacted the first federal wiretap statute as a temporary measure to prevent disclosure of domestic telephone or telegraph communications during the First World War.

Satellite communication became a reality in 1962 with the launch of the first communications satellite into space.  It was the first satellite to receive, amplify, and simultaneously re-transmit signals from earth. The development of satellite communications allowed greater volumes of communications worldwide.

The Internet is a globally distributed network comprising many voluntarily interconnected autonomous networks. It operates without a central governing body. However, to maintain interoperability, all technical and policy aspects of the underlying core infrastructure and the principal name spaces are administered by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), headquartered in Marina del Rey, California. ICANN is the authority that coordinates the assignment of unique identifiers for use on the Internet, including domain names, Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, application port numbers in the transport protocols, and many other parameters