Category Communication

A ringing cell phone can be a nuisance to others in some places like a theatre or at important meetings. A pager is very useful then, because it alerts you that someone is trying to contact you by vibrating silently. How does a pager work? If you want to page your friend, you must first dial the number of his paging service provider. You will then be connected to a computerized terminal which instructs you to key in your telephone number, and then press the ‘star’ key on your phone to complete the message. The paging terminal routes the signal to a radio transmitter. If your friend’s pager is switched on, and within the radio transmitters range, it will recognize the coded signal sent by the radio transmitter. The pager then converts the signal into data, and alerts your friend with a beep or vibration. You number will be displayed on his pager, and he can then call you back whenever it is convenient to him.

You can walk into nearly any office today, big or small and you will find a fax machine. Connected to a normal phone line, a fax machine allows you to copy send and receive documents instantly. The word ‘fax’ is the short form for ‘facsimile’ which means ‘an exact copy’. The fax machine works like a combination of a telephone and photocopier. The user places the paper with a picture or message into the document feeder of the sending machine. He then dials the telephone number of the receiving fax machine.An optical scanner in the sending machine records the variations between light and dark areas of the document. These variations are recorded as dots arranged in a series of rows or columns. A photo-electric cell converts the dots into electronic impulses which are transmitted through telephone wires to the receiving machine.The receiving machine converts the electrical impulses back into a series of dots. The decoded signal is sent to the print mechanism of the receiving fax. A duplicate of the original picture or message appears like magic!

Our lives have been completely changed with the invention of the telephone. No one person can really be credited with inventing it, though Alexander Graham Bell is acknowledged as the father of the modern telephone. Simply described, the telephone is a system which converts sound, specifically the human voice, to electrical impulses of various frequencies. These electrical frequencies are then turned back to a tone that sounds like the original The foundation for today’s telephone was laid in 1831, when an Englishman Michael Faraday, proved that vibrations of metal could be converted to electrical impulses. A practical telephone was actually invented independently by two men working in the United States, Elisha Gray and Scottish – born Alexander Graham Bell. Incredibly, both men filed for a patent on their designs at the New York patent office on February 14, 1876, with Bell beating Gray by only two hours!According to the famous story, the first fully intelligible telephone call occurred on March 6, 1876, when Bell, in one room, called to his assistant in another room. ‘Come here, Watson, I want you.’ Watson heard the request through a receiver connected to the transmitter that Bell had designed.

 They do, in order to make their task easier. The angler fish, for example, has a fleshy growth dangling from its forehead in front of its jaws. This is a form of visual communication which deceives smaller fish into thinking that the growth is food. When the smaller fish attempt to take a bite of the growth… SNAP…the angler fish gobbles them up! 

 Those of you who have seen gulls near the beach would have heard them communicating by screeching at each other. In a colony of gulls, all the little chicks will be crying at once and a mother gulls learns to identify the call of her own chicks.However, gulls use body language a lot in order to communicate with each other. The position of the head, and the way it stands, signals a gull’s intentions. An upright posture indicates that it is likely to attack. Sometimes, a gull will lower its head and pull at grass when it is feeling aggressive.

 Elephants have many ways of communicating with each other. They use the trunk, the ears, the tail, body language and naturally their voices too.The way an elephant holds its trunk tells other elephants whether it is going to attack or defend itself. Elephants also touch and smell each other with their trunks to find out where the other elephant has just been, what it ate and how it feels. Elephants are capable of cornmunicating through their senses and through smells. They express joy and excitement by flapping their ears. The sound of ears beating on the skin is picked up by other elephants as a message to get in touch. The elephant’s tail is used to probesorroundings which they cannot see.Elephants can communicate with each other over great distances using their voices and hearing. Fellow elephants who know each other with quiet rumbling or purring which reminds one of a running diesel engine. Calves bellow loudly for their mothers when they feel lost. Anxious, attacking and attacked elephants  It is also known that elephant’s converse over great distances using infrasound which are low frequency sounds that human beings cannot hear. So, the next time you see an elephant standing frozen, with its head raised and ears sticking out, don’t disturb it…it is listening to a message that you cannot hear!