On the shoulders of giants.

Today’s amazing range of Telecommunication services did not spring out of thin air. The various networks on which they were dependant were built on the shoulders of engineering giants dating back as far as the early 1800s when light was used for communication using heliographs. If we include the smoke signals of native Americans who knows how far we could trace its antecedents? 

Names such as Maxwell, Babbage, Lovelace, Baudot, Erlang, Morse, Bell, Strowger and Flowers are some names from that past. Bell’s manual switches were replaced by Strowger step by step systems. Manual, Magnetic mechanical systems were replaced with electronic switching as technologies developed on silicon were developed. The backbone of most main networks now, are again in the form of fibre optic cable, based on laser light.

Older people of today can benefit from all these developments that were unthinkable when we were young.

Today were can get eBooks, magazines and newspapers using a PC, Tablet or smart phone for free from your library without leaving your house. We can communicate around the world by video with friends and family for free.  Streaming TV via broadband allows us to watch programs when we want to on demand. Social media can widen our viewpoint or confirm established prejudices. Podcasts can provide entertainment and information. The WWW provides access to the biggest source of knowledge that has ever existed. Heating systems and lights in our home can be controlled wherever we are in the world. Smart speakers and smart phones are more than their names imply. You can play games such as chess or draughts or violent interactive games such as COD, Red Dead redemptions GTA with players around the world.

All this and more are available to us NOW with more, as yet unknown, services to come. 

We can only use these amazing life changing services if we are aware of them? They come with benefits and risks and they are dependent on personal and private investment in the technology.

Perhaps there is some information in the following booklet that may help you in choosing and giving you access to some of the valuable services. 

I spent 33 years as a BT/PO engineer and manager helping to build and maintain the telephone systems on which the valuable lessons for the future were learnt and the modern systems developed. In a small way perhaps I helped keep a small brick in place of the vast worlds wide network that you now have at your fingertips should you choose to use it? 

Connections

Heleiographs were used during the days of the British Empire where sunshine was reliable.

A son of Empire namely Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem relating to this technology. It relates to communication by light long before the invention of the laser and an early form of communication tapping.

Here is the poem:

A Code of Morals

            Lest you should think this story true

                I merely mention I

                Evolved it lately. 'Tis a most

                Unmitigated misstatement.

 

Now Jones had left his new-wed bride to keep his house in order,

And hied away to the Hurrum Hills above the Afghan border,

To sit on a rock with a heliograph; but ere he left he taught

His wife the working of the Code that sets the miles at naught.

 

And Love had made him very sage, as Nature made her fair;

So Cupid and Apollo linked , per heliograph, the pair.

At dawn, across the Hurrum Hills, he flashed her counsel wise --

At e'en, the dying sunset bore her husband's homilies.

 

He warned her 'gainst seductive youths in scarlet clad and gold,

As much as 'gainst the blandishments paternal of the old;

But kept his gravest warnings for (hereby the ditty hangs)

That snowy-haired Lothario, Lieutenant-General Bangs.

 

'Twas General Bangs, with Aide and Staff, who tittupped on the way,

When they beheld a heliograph tempestuously at play.

They thought of Border risings, and of stations sacked and burnt --

So stopped to take the message down -- and this is whay they learnt --

 

"Dash dot dot, dot, dot dash, dot dash dot" twice. The General swore.

"Was ever General Officer addressed as 'dear' before?

"'My Love,' i' faith! 'My Duck,' Gadzooks! 'My darling popsy-wop!'

"Spirit of great Lord Wolseley, who is on that mountain top?"

 

The artless Aide-de-camp was mute, the gilded Staff were still,

As, dumb with pent-up mirth, they booked that message from the hill;

For clear as summer lightning-flare, the husband's warning ran: --

"Don't dance or ride with General Bangs -- a most immoral man."

 

[At dawn, across the Hurrum Hills, he flashed her counsel wise --

But, howsoever Love be blind, the world at large hath eyes.]

With damnatory dot and dash he heliographed his wife

Some interesting details of the General's private life.

 

The artless Aide-de-camp was mute, the shining Staff were still,

And red and ever redder grew the General's shaven gill.

And this is what he said at last (his feelings matter not): --

"I think we've tapped a private line. Hi! Threes about there! Trot!"

 

All honour unto Bangs, for ne'er did Jones thereafter know

By word or act official who read off that helio.

But the tale is on the Frontier, and from Michni to Mooltan

They know the worthy General as "that most immoral man."

 

Travelling on beams of light.

 

Light by means of laser beams now carry information around the world.

Previously Morse code and the Aldi’s lamp was a form of early light based digital communication with limitations on transmission speeds on the hands of the morse key operator. In wireless telegraphy this digital signal was superimposed on an analogue carrier signal. Analogue technology is now being replaced by digital which may in turn be replaced by quantum systems?