Category Internet

A telephone works by sending and receiving electrical signals that represent sounds, including the human voice. When the required number is dialled, a signal passes to the called telephone, causing it to ring, buzz, flash a light, or even vibrate to attract the attention of the person using it. When the telephone is picked up or switched on, a connection is made, and a conversation can take place.

Messages reach the right telephone by means of a dialled number. Pressing the keys of the telephone causes different electrical pulses or varying tones to pass to electronic equipment at the telephone exchange. This “reads” the pulses or tones and routes the call to the correct area and telephone.

The Transmitter of a telephone serves as a sensitive “electric ear.” It lies behind the mouthpiece of the phone. Like the human ear, the transmitter has an 14 eardrum.” The eardrum of the telephone is a thin, round metal disk called a diaphragm. When a person talks into the telephone, the sound waves strike the diaphragm and make it vibrate. The diaphragm vibrates at various speeds, depending on the variations in air pressure caused by the varying tones of the speaker’s voice.

Behind the diaphragm lies a small cup filled with tiny grains of carbon. The diaphragm presses against these carbon grains. Low voltage electric current travels through the grains. This current comes from batteries at the telephone company. The pressure on the carbon grains varies as sound waves make the diaphragm vibrate. A loud sound causes the sound waves to push hard on the diaphragm. In turn, the diaphragm presses the grains tightly together. This action makes it easier for the electric current to travel through, and a large amount of electricity flows through the grains. When the sound is soft, the sound waves push lightly on the diaphragm. In turn, the diaphragm puts only a light pressure on the carbon grains. The grains are pressed together loosely. This makes it harder for the electric current to pass through them, and less current flows through the grains.

Thus, the pattern of the sound waves determines the pressure on the diaphragm. This pressure, in turn, regulates the pressure on the carbon grains. The crowded or loose grains cause the electric current to become stronger or weaker. The current copies the pattern of the sound waves and travels over a telephone wire to the receiver of another telephone. For more modern phones that have a telephone answering service, the sound wave is captured on a recording device which allows for the operator of the phone to playback at a later time.

The Receiver serves as an “electric mouth.” Like a human voice, it has “vocal cords.” The vocal cords of the receiver are a diaphragm. Two magnets located at the edge of the diaphragm cause it to vibrate. One of the magnets is a permanent magnet that constantly holds the diaphragm close to it. The other magnet is an electromagnet. It consists of a piece of iron with a coil of wire wound around it. When an electric current passes through the coil, the iron core becomes magnetized. The diaphragm is pulled toward the iron core and away from the permanent magnet. The pull of the electromagnet varies between strong and weak, depending on the variations in the current. Thus, the electromagnet controls the vibrations of the diaphragm in the receiver.

The electric current passing through the electromagnet becomes stronger or weaker according to the loud or soft sounds. This action causes the diaphragm to vibrate according to the speaker’s speech pattern. As the diaphragm moves in and out, it pulls and pushes the air in front of it. The pressure on the air sets up sound waves that are the same as the ones sent into the transmitter. The sound waves strike the ear of the listener and he hears the words of the speaker.

Semaphore is a means of signalling using pairs of flags. Different flag positions stand for different letters and numbers. Semaphore signals are useful when the signaller is within sight of the receiver of the message but too far away to call out. It was widely used between ships sailing near each other in the days before ship-to-ship radio.

In programming, especially in UNIX systems, semaphores are a technique for coordinating or synchronizing activities in which multiple processes compete for the same operating system resources. A semaphore is a value in a designated place in operating system (or Kernel) storage that each process can check and then change. Depending on the value that is found, the process can use the resource or will find that it is already in use and must wait for some period before trying again. Semaphores can be binary (0 or 1) or can have additional values. Typically, a process using semaphores checks the value and then, if it using the resource, changes the value to reflect this so that subsequent semaphore users will know to wait.

Semaphores are commonly used for two purposes: to share a common memory space and to share access to files. Semaphores are one of the techniques for interprocess communication (IPC). The C programming language provides a set of interfaces or “functions” for managing semaphores.

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The layer of the Earth’s atmosphere called the ionosphere can reflect some radio waves back to Earth. This is used for sending messages over fairly short distances, but for messages to travel further across the Earth, the radio signals can be bounced off a satellite, orbiting almost 36,000km (22,000 miles) above the Earth’s surface. Several satellites, in different orbits, are required to give coverage over the whole globe, and different satellites are used to reflect signals for different media, such as telephone messages and television pictures.

A communications satellite is an artificial satellite that relays and amplifies radio telecommunications signals through a transponder. It basically creates a communication channel between a source transmitter and a receiver at different locations on earth. Communications satellites are used for television, telephone, radio, internet, and military applications. There are currently 2,134 communications satellites in the earth’s orbit and these comprise both private and government organizations. Several are in geostationary orbit 22,236 miles (35,785 km) above the equator, so that the satellite appears stationary at the same point in the sky. The orbital period of these satellites is the same as the rotation rate of the Earth, which in turn allows the satellite dish antennas of ground stations to be aimed permanently at that spot; they do not have to move along and track it. Since the high frequency radio waves used for telecommunications links travel by line of sight, they get obstructed by the curve of the earth. What these communications satellites do is they relay the signal around the curve of the earth thus making possible communication between widely removed geographical points. Communications satellites use a wide range of radio and microwave frequencies. To avoid signal interference, international organizations have regulations stating which frequency ranges (or bands) certain organizations are permitted to use. This allocation of bands reduces the chances of signal interference.

A group of satellites working together is called a satellite constellation. Two such constellations are supposed to offer satellite phone services (mainly to remote areas), are the Iridium and Global star systems. The Iridium system has 66 satellites. It is also possible today to provide discontinuous coverage using a low-earth-orbit satellite that can store data received while passing over one part of earth and transmitting it later while passing over another part. The CASCADE system being used by Canada’s CASSIOPE communications satellite is an apt example.

A satellite in orbit has to operate continuously over its entire life span. It needs internal power to be able to operate its electronic systems and communications payload. The main source of power is sunlight, which is harnessed by the satellite’s solar panels. A satellite also has batteries on board to provide power when the Sun is blocked by Earth. The batteries are recharged by the excess current generated by the solar panels when there is sunlight.

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Modern communications have affected our lives in numerous ways. Being able to pass information down telephone wires or via satellites means that some people can work from anywhere in the world and still keep in constant touch with their offices. A surgeon in Arizona, via a satellite link, can assist a colleague in Beijing with a complicated operation. News can travel halfway around the world as quickly as it can reach the next town. Perhaps the biggest effect of communications has been to make us all feel that the world is a smaller place, and that we need to be concerned about its future and the futures of people thousands of miles away.

The Internet has turned our existence upside down. It has revolutionized communications, to the extent that it is now our preferred medium of everyday communication. In almost everything we do, we use the Internet. Ordering a pizza, buying a television, sharing a moment with friend, sending a picture over instant messaging. Before the Internet, if you wanted to keep up with the news, you had to walk down to the newsstand when it opened in the morning and buy a local edition reporting what had happened the previous day. But today a click or two is enough to read your local paper and any news source from anywhere in the world, updated up to the minute.

Technology has improved communication, especially in recent years. We’ll always have so much information readily available at our fingertips. Writing letters to relatives living hundreds of miles away is so old-school! Instead, you can talk to them through a video call or instant messaging. This change in communication has completely changed relationships all over the world.

Services like Facebook and Twitter have also become a big part of our everyday lives. These sites allow people to see a lot of information and photos at once and are enjoyable by design. When you upload a photo to the Internet, it doesn’t simply go away. It stays for a long time. This means you can use technology to store memories that are important to you, like family photos.

With modern technology, we can live much healthier lives. Those who have fitness trackers can see how active they are. Seeing that can encourage us to be even more active. Some fitness trackers like the Apple Watch even gamify health with competitions and points!

New technology can help create cures and medicines. Someone who is sick in modern times is much more likely to be cured than someone in past times. Modern technology can automate just about anything, from turning on a light to ordering a pizza. With automation, we can do so much more in such a small amount of time. For example, you can use your voice to start the coffee maker while you’re still getting dressed.

Only a few hundred years ago, the fastest way that a piece of news could travel was to be carried by a person on horseback. Messages sent overseas could only travel as fast as the fastest sailing ship and were at the mercy of the wind and weather. The development of steam locomotives and steamships made it possible for information to move around the world more quickly, but it still had to travel physically from one place to another, as a letter. The breakthrough came with the invention of the electric telegraph and messages in Morse code. The message was sent down a wire in bursts of electric current. Today, images of written documents, sound recordings or television pictures can be flashed around the globe in less than a second by means of satellites and radio communications.

It seems like advancements in technology and changes in communication always go hand in hand. When science was working to introduce new tools to let distant people contact each other, the landlines replaced telegraph and subsequently, cell phones replaced landlines. When the Internet arrived, it not only brought revolution in the sales industry but also opened new doors of personal communication. When science was looking for more convenient ways to send messages, e-mails replaced postal emails and social media replaced text messages. So it would not be wrong to say that technology has been shaping the communication industry for over a hundred years.

Previously, there were not much mediums of communication and today we are completely overwhelmed with the disparate mediums, thanks to the ever-changing technology! From Facebook to Instagram and skype to Whatsapp, we now have the limitless database of communication tools that have brought us closer to the entire world. All these communication mediums have also impacted our lives in different ways. For example, it’s true that Smartphones have brought us closer to our friends and relatives living in distant places, but at the same time, they have also made our society somewhat impersonal. Although they have helped increasing workplace engagement and productivity, they have also given rise to certain security and privacy issues.  While some of these issues are relatively minor, but some may have profound effects on the lives of users.

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