Portal:Telecommunication

The Telecommunication Portal

Telecommunication, often used in its plural form or abbreviated as telecom, is the transmission of information over a distance using electrical or electronic means, typically through cables, radio waves, or other communication technologies. These means of transmission may be divided into communication channels for multiplexing, allowing for a single medium to transmit several concurrent communication sessions. Long-distance technologies invented during the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries generally use electric power, and include the electrical telegraph, telephone, television, and radio.

Early telecommunication networks used metal wires as the medium for transmitting signals. These networks were used for telegraphy and telephony for many decades. In the first decade of the 20th century, a revolution in wireless communication began with breakthroughs including those made in radio communications by Guglielmo Marconi, who won the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics. Other early pioneers in electrical and electronic telecommunications include co-inventors of the telegraph Charles Wheatstone and Samuel Morse, numerous inventors and developers of the telephone including Antonio Meucci, Philipp Reis, Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell, inventors of radio Edwin Armstrong and Lee de Forest, as well as inventors of television like Vladimir K. Zworykin, John Logie Baird and Philo Farnsworth.

Since the 1960s, the proliferation of digital technologies has meant that voice communications have gradually been supplemented by data. The physical limitations of metallic media prompted the development of optical fibre. The Internet, a technology independent of any given medium, has provided global access to services for individual users and further reduced location and time limitations on communications. (Full article...)

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Royal Arms of HM Government

The General Post Office (GPO) was the state postal system and telecommunications carrier of the United Kingdom until 1969. Established in England in the 17th century, the GPO was a state monopoly covering the dispatch of items from a specific sender to a specific receiver (which was to be of great importance when new forms of communication were invented); it was overseen by a Government minister, the Postmaster General. Over time its remit was extended to Scotland and Ireland, and across parts of the British Empire.

The GPO was abolished by the Post Office Act 1969, which transferred its assets to the Post Office, so changing it from a Department of State to a statutory corporation. Responsibility for telecommunications was given to Post Office Telecommunications, the successor of the GPO Telegraph and Telephones department. In 1980, the telecommunications and postal sides were split prior to British Telecommunications' conversion into a totally separate publicly owned corporation the following year as a result of the British Telecommunications Act 1981. In 1986 the Post Office Counters business was made functionally separate from Royal Mail Letters and Royal Mail Parcels (the latter being later rebranded as 'Parcelforce'). At the start of the 21st century the Post Office became a public limited company (initially called 'Consignia plc'), which was renamed 'Royal Mail Group plc' in 2002. In 2012 the counters business (known as 'Post Office Limited' since 2002) was taken out of Royal Mail Group, prior to the latter's privatisation in 2013. The privatised holding company (Royal Mail plc) was renamed International Distributions Services plc in 2022. (Full article...)

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General images

The following are images from various telecommunication-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Reginald Fessenden, the "father" of radio broadcasting in the U.S. (from History of broadcasting)
Image 2Artist's conception: 21st-century videotelephony imagined in the early 20th century (1910) (from History of videotelephony)
$Image 3An early experiment demonstrating the refraction of microwaves by a paraffin lens by John Ambrose Fleming in 1897 (from History of radio)$
Image 3An early experiment demonstrating the refraction of microwaves by a paraffin lens by John Ambrose Fleming in 1897 (from History of radio)
Image 4
Bell prototype telephone stamp
Centennial Issue of 1976
(from History of the telephone)
Image 5Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1856–1894) proved the existence of electromagnetic radiation. (from History of radio)
Image 6Portrait of John Reith, 1st Baron Reith, in 1925, founding director general of the BBC from 1922 to 1938 (from History of broadcasting)
Image 7Broadcasting pioneer Frank Conrad in a 1921 portrait (from History of broadcasting)
Image 8The Regency TR-1, which used Texas Instruments' NPN transistors, was the world's first commercially produced transistor radio in 1954. Size: 3×5×1.25 inch (7.6×12.7×3.2 cm) (from History of radio)
Image 9Australian radio sets usually had the positions of radio stations marked on their dials. The illustration is a dial from a transistorised, mains-operated Calstan radio, c. 1960s. (Click image for a high resolution view, with readable callsigns.) (from History of broadcasting)
Image 10AT&T Picturephone (Mod II) fully enclosed in its housing, control pad at bottom (courtesy: Richard Diehl) (from History of videotelephony)
Image 11Private conversation, 1910 (from History of the telephone)
Image 12The Marconi Company was formed in England in 1910. The photo shows a typical early scene, from 1906, with Marconi employee Donald Manson at right. (from History of broadcasting)
Image 13An early Smart TV from 2012 running the discontinued Orsay platform (from History of television)
Image 14Reconstruction of Aeneas Tacticus' hydraulic telegraph (4th c. B.C.) in Kotsanas Museum of Ancient Greek Technology, Athens, Greece. (from History of telecommunication)
Image 15First television test broadcast transmitted by the NHK Broadcasting Technology Research Institute in May 1939 (from History of television)
Image 16Philo Farnsworth in 1924 (from History of television)
Image 17Philipp Reis, 1861, constructed the first telephone, today called the Reis telephone. (from History of the telephone)
Image 18The master telephone patent, 174465, granted to Bell, March 7, 1876 (from History of telecommunication)
Image 19Reginald Fessenden (around 1906) (from History of radio)
Image 20RCA 630-TS, the first mass-produced television set, which sold in 1946–1947 (from History of television)
Image 21Typical low-cost webcam used with many personal computers (from History of videotelephony)
Image 22The Nipkow disk. This schematic shows the circular paths traced by the holes, which may also be square for greater precision. The area of the disk outlined in black shows the region scanned. (from History of television)
Image 23Stock telegraph ticker machine by Thomas Edison (from History of telecommunication)
Image 24The Australian Broadcasting Corporation logo, first introduced in 1975 and based on the Lissajous curve (from History of broadcasting)
Image 25Color bars used in a test pattern, sometimes used when no program material is available (from History of television)
Image 26Receiver schematic, c.1906 (from History of the telephone)
Image 27In the 1920s, the United States government publication, "Construction and Operation of a Simple Homemade Radio Receiving Outfit", showed how almost any person handy with simple tools could build an effective crystal radio receiver. (from History of radio)
Image 28Tivadar Puskás proposed the telephone switchboard exchange in 1876. (from History of the telephone)
Image 29The earliest photograph of a television picture, showing the face of Oliver Hutchinson in June 1926. The television picture was projected using Baird's television camera. (from History of television)
Image 30Antonio Meucci, 1849, developing a voice-communication apparatus that several sources credit as the first telephone. (from History of the telephone)
Image 31Family watching TV, 1958 (from History of television)
Image 32British Post Office engineers inspect Guglielmo Marconi's wireless telegraphy (radio) equipment in 1897. (from History of radio)
Image 33Replica of the telettrofono at Museo Nazionale Scienza e Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci of Milan, Italy, invented by Antonio Meucci and credited by several sources as the first telephone. (from History of the telephone)
Image 34Ferdinand Braun (from History of broadcasting)
Image 35A 19th century acoustic tin can or "lovers' telephone" (from History of the telephone)
Image 36The 1969 AT&T Mod II Picturephone, the result of decades long R&D at a cost of over $500M. (from History of telecommunication)
Image 37Swedish Prime Minister Tage Erlander using an Ericsson videophone to speak with Lennart Hyland, a popular TV show host (1969) (from History of videotelephony)
Image 38Historical marker commemorating the first telephone central office in New York State (1878) (from History of the telephone)
Image 39An exposed view of the Picturephone's rear circuit board (courtesy: Richard Diehl) (from History of videotelephony)
Image 40Top of cellular telephone tower (from History of the telephone)
Image 41Manfred von Ardenne in 1933 (from History of television)
Image 42The French Matra videophone (1970) (from History of videotelephony)
Image 43The Kyocera VP-210 Visual Phone was the first commercial mobile videophone. The Personal Handy-phone System (PHS) phone was introduced in Japan (1999). (from History of videotelephony)
Image 44DBS satellite dishes (from History of television)
Image 45Early pioneers of radio science and technology in the United States, including Charles Steinmetz, David Sarnoff, Irving Langmuir, and Alfred Goldsmith in 1921, photographed next to the antenna feed wires of the New Brunswick Marconi Station, one of the first transatlantic radio links. The photo includes Albert Einstein as a visiting guest. (from History of radio)
Image 46John Logie Baird in 1925 with his televisor equipment and dummies "James" and "Stooky Bill" (right) (from History of television)
Image 47The "Kerbango Internet Radio" was the first stand-alone product that let users listen to Internet radio without a computer. (from History of broadcasting)
Image 481917 wall telephone, open to show magneto and local battery (from History of the telephone)
Image 49Ad for the beginning of experimental television broadcasting in New York City by RCA in 1939 (from History of television)
Image 50Ferdinand Braun (from History of television)
Image 51Reis's telephone around 1861, first device called telephone (from History of the telephone)
Image 52A replica of one of Claude Chappe's semaphore towers (optical telegraph) in Nalbach, Germany (from History of telecommunication)
Image 53A French Gower telephone of 1912 at the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris (from History of the telephone)
Image 54Donald Manson working as an employee of the Marconi Company (England, 1906) (from History of radio)
Image 55AT&T magazine advertisement announcing commercial launch of Picturephone service. (from History of videotelephony)
Image 56The master telephone patent granted to Bell, 174465, March 7, 1876 (from History of the telephone)
Image 57The first mass-produced Czechoslovak TV-set Tesla 4001A (1953–57) (from History of television)
Image 58Right side view, housing removed, one of its printed circuit boards exposed (courtesy: Richard Diehl) (from History of videotelephony)
Image 59Tihanyi' Radioskop patent (1926) was recognized as Document of Universal Significance by the UNESCO (from History of television)
Image 60"Doc" Herrold is shown at the microphone of KQW, c. 1925 (from History of broadcasting)
Image 61The first commercial AM Audion vacuum tube radio transmitter, built in 1914 by Lee De Forest who invented the Audion (triode) in 1906 (from History of radio)
Image 62A German rotary dial telephone, the W48 (from History of the telephone)
Image 63The Philco Predicta, 1958. In the collection of The Children's Museum of Indianapolis (from History of television)
Image 641896 telephone (Sweden) (from History of the telephone)
Image 65Guglielmo Marconi (from History of broadcasting)
Image 66Lee DeForest broadcasting Columbia phonograph records on New York station 2XG, 1916 (from History of broadcasting)
Image 67Naomi ("Joan") Melwit and Norman Banks at the 3KZ microphone, in the late 1930s (from History of broadcasting)
Image 68Apple iPhone smartphone (from History of the telephone)
Image 69Alexander Graham Bell was awarded the first U.S. patent for the invention of the telephone in 1876. (from History of the telephone)
Image 70Code of letters and symbols for Chappe telegraph (Rees's Cyclopaedia) (from History of telecommunication)
Image 71"Fiction becomes fact": Imaginary "Edison" combination videophone-television, conceptualized by George du Maurier and published in Punch magazine. The drawing also depicts then-contemporary speaking tubes, used by the parents in the foreground and their daughter on the viewing display (1878). (from History of videotelephony)
Image 72Around 1920, radio broadcasting started to get popular. The Brox Sisters, a popular singing group, gathered around the radio at the time. (from History of radio)
Image 73Actor portraying Alexander Graham Bell in a 1932 silent film. Shows Bell's second telephone transmitter (microphone), invented 1876 and first displayed at the Centennial Exposition, Philadelphia. (from History of the telephone)
Image 74Innocenzo Manzetti considered the idea of a telephone in 1844 (from History of the telephone)
Image 75Elisha Gray, 1876, designed a telephone using a water microphone in Highland Park, Illinois. (from History of the telephone)
Image 76Thomas Edison invented the carbon microphone which produced a strong telephone signal. (from History of the telephone)
Image 77Charles Logwood broadcasting at New York station 2XG, 1916 (from History of broadcasting)
Image 78Oliver Lodge's 1894 lectures on Hertz demonstrated how to transmit and detect radio waves. (from History of radio)
Image 79Screen idol Rudolph Valentino at the microphone of WSB in Atlanta, 1923 (from History of broadcasting)

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Tesla, c. 1890

Nikola Tesla (10 July 1856 – 7 January 1943) was a Serbian-American engineer, futurist, and inventor. He is known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system.

Born and raised in the Austrian Empire, Tesla first studied engineering and physics in the 1870s without receiving a degree. He then gained practical experience in the early 1880s working in telephony and at Continental Edison in the new electric power industry. In 1884, he migrated to the United States, where he became a naturalized citizen. He worked for a short time at the Edison Machine Works in New York City before he struck out on his own. With the help of partners to finance and market his ideas, Tesla set up laboratories and companies in New York to develop a range of electrical and mechanical devices. His AC induction motor and related polyphase AC patents, licensed by Westinghouse Electric in 1888, earned him a considerable amount of money and became the cornerstone of the polyphase system, which Westinghouse marketed. (Full article...)

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... that the Japanese live-action television drama adaptation of Accomplishment of Fudanshi Bartender was first broadcast in Taiwan before being broadcast in its home country?
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... that on every Christmas Eve since 1994, Willem Lange's story about the fruitcake-delivering farmer Favor Johnson is broadcast on public radio stations in Vermont?
... that a Nebraska TV station stopped carrying live studio wrestling after wrestlers kicked a TV monitor?
... that people were scammed on New Zealand television by the host of You've Been Scammed?