Telecommunication, often used in its plural form or abbreviated as telecom, is the transmission of information with an immediacy comparable to face-to-face communication. As such, slow communications technologies like postal mail and pneumatic tubes are excluded from the definition. Many transmission media have been used for telecommunications throughout history, from smoke signals, beacons, semaphore telegraphs, signal flags, and optical heliographs to wires and empty space made to carry electromagnetic signals. These paths of transmission may be divided into communication channels for multiplexing, allowing for a single medium to transmit several concurrent communication sessions. Several methods of long-distance communication before the modern era used sounds like coded drumbeats, the blowing of horns, and whistles. Long-distance technologies invented during the 20th and 21st centuries generally use electric power, and include the telegraph, telephone, television, and radio.
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...)
Optical fiber is used by many telecommunications companies to transmit telephone signals, internet communication, and cable television signals. Researchers at Bell Labs have reached a record bandwidth–distance product of over 100 petabit × kilometers per second using fiber-optic communication.[better source needed] (Full article...)
Image 2Around 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 3Historical marker commemorating the first telephone central office in New York State (1878) (from History of the telephone)
Image 5Australian 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, circa 1960s. (Click image for a high resolution view, with readable callsigns.) (from History of broadcasting)
Image 6Antonio Meucci, 1854, constructed telephone-like devices. (from History of the telephone)
Image 7Baird in 1925 with his televisor equipment and dummies "James" and "Stooky Bill" (right) (from History of television)
Image 8An early Smart TV from 2012 running the discontinued Orsay platform (from History of television)
Image 9Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1856–1894) proved the existence of electromagnetic radiation. (from History of radio)
Image 20"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 37Actor 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 38
Bell prototype telephone stamp Centennial Issue of 1976
Image 45The British Broadcasting Corporation's landmark and iconic London headquarters, Broadcasting House, opened in 1932. At right is the 2005 eastern extension, the John Peel wing. (from History of broadcasting)
Image 57The 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 58First television test broadcast transmitted by the NHK Broadcasting Technology Research Institute in May 1939 (from History of television)
Image 60The 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 61Artist's conception: 21st-century videotelephony imagined in the early 20th century (1910) (from History of videotelephony)
Image 63In 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 a build an effective crystal radio receiver. (from History of radio)
Image 67The "Kerbango Internet Radio" was the first stand-alone product that let users listen to Internet radio without a computer. (from History of broadcasting)
Image 68RCA 630-TS, the first mass-produced television set, which sold in 1946–1947 (from History of television)
Image 69AT&T Picturephone (Mod II) fully enclosed in its housing, control pad at bottom (courtesy: Richard Diehl) (from History of videotelephony)
... that a Ramadan television show featured riddles, music, choreographed dance routines and "fantastical narratives"?
... that the day employees of Boston television station WLVI received new business cards, they learned the station would be sold and they would lose their jobs?
... that Lucy Feagin founded the Feagin School of Dramatic Art in New York City, where talent scouts for radio, screen, and stage were always present to watch her senior students' plays?
... that US radio regulators sought to shut down Ohio station WEBE, which was said to operate from the owner's bedroom using "parts of a questionable nature"?
... that Uncle Waffles learned how to DJ during the COVID-19 lockdowns, and then retired from being an Eswatini TV presenter once her music career took off?
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