The history of wireless technology is an interesting one. It has been around for centuries, yet only in the last century that this technology become widely used and easily accessible. Wireless technology has had a profound and integral part in shaping society.
From mere day-to-day communication to business matters, the existence of wireless technology just cannot be separated in our modern society. However, this has not always been the case in the past. This article will talk about the history of wireless technology, which started from a morse code to something that has become part of our life.
When does it all started?
The history of wireless technology starts in the 19th century in the form of wireless communication devices that shaped history into a new era. In the year 1834, an inventor named Samuel Finley Breese Morse invented the code for telegraphy and was named after him. This telegraphy uses different signal lengths to encode characters known as “dot” and “dash”. This “dot” and “dash” encoded message then be sent via a wired medium and will then be interpreted by the receiving end by listening to the received sequence.
As time went by, plenty of experiments were made to further improve this telegraphy technologyー and by the year 1895, an Italian engineer named Guglielmo Marconi had invented the first ever wireless technology device in the form of the wireless telegraph. He first attempted to transmit and receive a coded message at a distance of 1.75 miles or approximately 2.8 kilometers near his home in Bologna, Italy.
In the year 1897, Marconi demonstrated his wireless technology in the form of radio transmission to a tugboat over an 18-mile path or approximately 28 kilometers over the English Channel. This resulted in the founding of the first-ever wireless company, Wireless Telegraph, and Signal Company, to which they then bought most of Marconi’s patents.
By the early 1900s, this piece of wireless technology was commonly used to send a message over a long distance, and at the year 1909, Marconi and Braun, fellow engineers that plays a significant role in improving wireless technology, shared the Nobel Prize for Physics for their contributions to the physics of electric oscillations and radiotelegraphy.
Going public
The development of wireless technology continued in the early 20th century. In 1921, the first radio broadcast was sent over the airwaves. This allowed people to listen to music and news from around the world and by the year 1922, The BBC broadcast its first news program.
This leap of development in wireless technology did not just stop at radio communication. Various applications such as in the form of radar, television broadcasting, as well as the early shape of the wireless telephone have also been invented around the 1930s which at the time, was used for police cars in New York City.
It took approximately 40 years and the first ever cellular phone was developed in 1973 by Dr. Martin Cooper of Motorola. He is the first individual who brought wireless telephone communication into the public domain followed by AT&T Bell Labs which in the year 1978, conducted their testing on mobile telephone systems based on cells. In this timeline, the development of satellites and the Global Positioning System, or is well known as GPS have also improved significantly.
Knocking on the door of mobile networks and internet era
In the next decade, around the early 1980s, the first generation of mobile networks, or is now known as 1G, was invented and it brought open wireless communication to the public from almost everywhere in the world. This was a major breakthrough as this was the time when society started to integrate calling and texting into their everyday life.
In another decade, precisely in the 1990s, the first World Wide Web or well known as WWW was developed which allows for information to be transferred and accessed even faster than before. Wireless technology has also become more advanced and the first ever Wi-Fi was also being developed, resulting in more accessibility for this technology to this date.
In another decade, precisely in the 1990s, the first World Wide Web or well known as WWW was developed which allows for information to be transferred and accessed even faster than before. Wireless technology has also become more advanced and the first ever Wi-Fi was also being developed, resulting in more accessibility for this technology to this date.
Technology that keeps progressing
Wireless technology has become far more mature ever since it was first invented to be integrated into morse code. The continuous leap of improvement has increased the quality of life in various sectors of our society and has shaped our everyday life throughout many centuries.
In today’s age, the current wireless technology that is still in its development is the integration of various devices to be able to communicate with each other by utilizing the internet known as the Internet of Things or IoT. By the time this wireless technology matured and got applicated in more sectors, our everyday life might be reshaped once again.
