History of Telecommunications Telecommunications, otherwise known as Telecom is defined as the transmission of signals over long distances. The story begins in the year 1837 with the invention of the telegraph, later followed by the telephone in 1876. In the late 1800’s the first radio broadcast was made and in the early 1900’s the first television broadcast launched. Despite the popularity of radio and television todays most popular forms of telecommunication remain cellphone networks and the Internet. Earlier forms of telecommunications transmissions consisted of analog signals, which were exchanged through copper wires. More recently telephone and cable companies still use these copper lines however most transmissions today are digital. As a result of digital transmission most new wiring is designed to optimize digital communication. For instance Fiber optic cables along with digital phone lines. Due to the fact that both analog and digital communication are based on electrical signals, the data that is transmitted gets received practically instantaneously regardless of where it is being sent. This allows people to instantly communicate with other people, whether they are in the neighborhood or on the other side of the world. Be it an email, a text message, phone call or even just watching television, if it wasn’t for telecommunications none of this would be possible. Technology (Analog/Digital) Digital data is stored by using zeros and ones as a series of numbers. A prime example of a digital machine is a computer; this is because it can only read information as on or off (1 or 0) The way in which a computer computes information is also known as the binary system. Although it may be simplistic in the way it operates it can be utilized to represent immense amounts of data. DVD’s and CD’s can be used as a means of storage for high-quality sound or even video all using the binary system. Humans on the other hand are dif