What do you do when you’re bored? Sleep? Some activity? Communicate? How far do you think the history of communication goes? Are you still awestruck by hearing someone’s voice who is farther from you?

The function of hearing each other’s voices from far off seems very common now, but it wasn’t the same commonality earlier. In the earlier times, the development of ‘telecommunications’ was just a dream for many. There were drums and smoke used for communication. When they had a friend living far off somewhere, they would use the method of smoke to call him. Also, loud drums were beaten to generate noise in order to call the person. These were few methods of sending vibrations in the air and calling people.

picture courtesy: Wikipedia (using smoke to communicate)

But as we know that Necessity is the mother of Invention, during 1844 (as a part of the Industrial Revolution), thanks to Samuel Morse, the first-ever Telegraph was developed. Written messages started to be printed and everyone was astounded by what the telegraph could do. Now it became easy and convenient to send private messages to somebody, without announcing it through drums! After that Marconi developed the electric Telegraph and led the movement for communication forward.

picture courtesy: Youtube (telegraph machine)

The necessity and curiosity of communicating in a better way didn’t stop there. People thought if they could reach till here, then why not further. Thus, the invention of Telecommunication started. The smallest initiative transformed into a colossal. During the same century, a fully processed Telephone call occurred between two people. It became a wired form of communication leaving everyone dumbstruck. People were in awe because they could not believe the human intelligence of hearing someone’s voice when he/she is far off somewhere.

This exchanging of messages via a private system led to further development and that’s how wireless devices called mobile phones were developed. People living in far-off countries could hear each other's voices, carry this device in their pockets and control it anywhere they desired. Earlier, the size of mobile phones was quite large, but later the size was reduced to being smaller. Today’s mobiles are comfortable to carry & easy to connect.

On achieving so much, the human race wasn’t satisfied enough. They created another ground-breaking phenomenon called the internet. It is the most valuable and feasible discovery of the human race noted to date. It provides numerous uses to humankind that cannot be listed in one single article. The Internet transformed the globe completely and changed the way we lived. Whether it is a boon or a bane is another topic to be discussed but now no work is possible without the internet.

The internet authorities collaborated with the telecom sector to develop Voice over Internet protocol. As a result of this, we have internet calling and totally internet-running phones called smartphones. Nobody ever dreamt of this. But as they say, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Just like that, it took centuries to build these features. The flower of communication finally blossomed.

Further developments are still going on in the field of cloud development, artificial intelligence, and IoT. With these developments, the human race expects to connect even with the dead! Seems unrealistic, right? But scientists, developers, and researchers worldwide are working towards making this possible. The struggle for communication started very early via the smoke methods and has now transformed into CDMA, GSM, 4G & 5G internet connectivity. These technologies are not only cost-efficient for the human race but also are bound to save a lot of manual labor.

So cheers to whatever happened in the past and a glorious welcome to the future!