HOW ELECTROMAGNETICS REVOLUTIONIZED THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS INDUSTRY

Great Steemians, Welcome to my blog, trust we have been learning a lot and gaining enlightenment, personally I have been greatly enlightened and astonished by the quality of write-ups on both the informative and interactive level particularly on the Steemstem tag.

^{Electromagnetics: Wikimedia Commons Image under CCASA attribution 4.0}

In my previous write-up on communication principles, i made attempt to explain the behind the scenes of every form of communication, even live communication (physical interaction between 2 people) wasn’t excluded.

I am writing this post from Nigeria now, and I cannot begin to realize the hundreds of folks that would read this post, people from Germany, Spain, America, Ghana, South Africa whom i might not neccesarily meet in person or see their face would read this article and to an extent know about @lawkay’s blog on steemit and build (no matter how small) a mental picture about me. Our discord server has tons of wonderful personalities from different part of the world connecting with each other in real time.

Now that’s awesome but it wasn’t always so. Just follow through and get the gist.

The unconscious myth

You might not know this, but Telecommunication is not necessarily the use of Telephones and internet to pass information across from one point to another as telecommunications, because of advancement in technology when the term Telecommunications industry is mentioned, we start thinking of Telephone and internet service providers, while that is true, we need to realize that;

” Telecommunication is referred to as passing of information over large distances”.

Therefore, it is noteworthy to understand that the term Telecommunications is not a 21st-century term, rather a terminology used to refer to message signal to be transmitted over long distances.

The Evolution

Telecommunication has been in existence for as far back as 4th century in Greece during the first punic war, where they used a hydraulic semaphore system in transmitting information through long distances, the system was made up of a bucket at both ends of the transmission and receiving end.

Though the information was encoded by the water levels of the pipe at the receiving end, it was ultimately understood by the people at the receiving end. Semaphore signals (signals that involves a visual representation) was used to properly send messages), so certain water levels symbolized certain messages.

Another common means of telecommunication then was to send messages via smoke signals between two towns, all these systems were used in transmitting information from one end to another.

But came with lots of downsides, message signals weren’t passed across efficiently, misinterpretation of messages which could cause battle loss during wars, in fact it was impossible to pass message across in full details, message was transmitted strictly in codes, and this codes weren’t rich enough to convey every message contained in their language.

THE TELEGRAPH EVOLUTION

If there is one thing I have learnt in my short stay on this planet, it is that life is not static, because the human brain is not static, the human environment can never be static, innovations upon innovations were being made in the telecoms industry, to make carriage of information from one point to another effective therefore there had been certain notable improvements in the industry, one of such was the invention of the Electrical Telegraph in the 19th century.

The electrical telegraph transmits message signals via electric cables, at about 1830, the telegraph was used to carry information signals through larger distances instantaneously.

It was from that point information needn’t travel at the speed of vehicles or ships or even human legs, but at the speed of electricity, at that point though as stated in the last post on AC versus DC, the DC power supply was still effectual. The early telegraph was designed to have 16 black and white keys, and having 6 galvanometers at the receiving end, each of those keys had its dedicated cable which was configured to output a signal at the receiving end.

The output signal was interpreted with something developed by Michael Morse, the Morse code. Due to the fact that the Morse code wasn’t understood by all and you need to go to specified telegraph stations to send or get your messages, at that time though it wasn’t a problem, people were thrilled at the fact that the messages could be transmitted via long distances.

THE TELEPHONE LINES SEEMED LIKE THE BOMB

The Telephone line (using telephone wires to transmit information) was another major milestone in the telecommunication industry, now instead of sending and receiving messages in text format, through Morse code decoding, message signal could now be transmitted in voice format. It works just like the electric telegraph (through wires).

A prototype of how it works is depicted by a communications practical we conducted in the lab this week, when we connected a simple telephone system, we were already given the kits, the point of the operation was to get sound wave to travel through a tight cable, (the cable must be twisted) seeing that sound require a medium for propagation e.g. air water or earth, well sound in this case was designed to travel through a spring.

The TPS-3714 kit shown includes a telephone set where an end to end connection was established, by connecting the telephone to a power supply (a 9V DC battery in this case) speaking to into the microphone causes a change in the current in the telephone circuit, transmission of that current signal is done through wires and cables, and on getting to the other end, the current there is decoded.

An output sound is released through the earphone, in the era of telephone wires, only few use the telephone lines and to do that you needed to connect to the cable like you were connecting to power supply. Funny Right.

THEN THE REVOLUTION HIT!!! [ELECTROMAGNETISM]

Every invention and innovation to improve thing in the telecommunication industry was lit, however the major revolution in that sector, for large distance message signal transmission, message was transmitted through a material medium, e.g Conductors and cables, this simply meant accessing this technology was highly expensive to start with, therefore only limited to the elite few, because of this internet wasn’t a possibility at that time, the possibility of failure due to cable wear in transmission, couldn’t be avoided.

Wireless communication was the answer, ability to communicate without the use of cables was needed and electromagnetism was the best suit for that, while The electric telegraph was somewhat prevalent, there had been ongoing knowledge in the field of electromagnetism, electromagnetic waves were used to propagate communication signal via boundless medium.

The electromagnetic wave responsible for this broadcast is the Radio Waves. The radio waves are the first in the electromagnetic, spectrum having larger wavelength.

Radio waves are naturally occurring in space due to certain nuclear reaction in the stars, in a more artificial sense, a radio wave can be generated by using your transmitter and a receiver, the transmitter produces the radio wave and is broadcasted for propagation (in most cases electromagnetic waves like radio waves require no medium for propagation).

To produce an electromagnetic wave for propagation, when current flows through a wire, an electromagnetic wave is generated around it, the transmitter of a radio wave is therefore made up of such a circuit, however in this case, the electromagnetic wave generated is designed to be at the specified frequency with constant frequency and wavelength as seen in the electromagnetic spectrum.

That is one of the main things that makes e-mag waves differ from each other, for peer to peer communications using electromagnetic waves.

ELECTROMAGNETICS IN YOUR CELLPHONE

Your cell phone is a minimized version of a radio wave transmitter and receiver, this means that the hardware (Your phone itself) in conjunction with the software (Service provider) fused together to make peer to peer communication with the use of radio waves possible. While on call, your mobile phone generates and receives radio wave almost at the same time (NOTE THAT ALL ELECTROMAGNETIC WAVES TRAVELS AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT).

When you speak to a friend over the phone, installed on the phone is a transducer. The sole aim of the transducer to convert any form of energy into electrical energy. Well that’s a topic for another day, what the transducer simply does is to convert voice (sound wave) into an electrical signal

(Recall in previous post where we spoke extensively about the encoding of communication signals).

After the sound has been encoded into an electrical signal, it is then ready to be transmitted as an electromagnetic wave, but mind you, we speak of radio waves. Radio waves in practice cannot travel through so long distances without attenuation (disturbance).

That’s where those big cell mast you see on your street comes in, the cell mast is installed by service providers, and is used to relay and broadcast in more specific terms to your friend's cell phone. On getting to your friend's phone, it converts the radio waves back into sound which can be heard.

CONCLUSION

I will conclude this write up with a question, seeing that the number of mobile service network subscription as at 2014 was about 7billion and the fact that in less than 20 years, between 1988 and 2003 over 210 nations of the world and still rising is connected via internet with a large percentage of each households in each country having access to the internet, all this happening without the need of at least a single communication cable connected per user, Would you agree with be that the knowledge of electromagnetism was more of a Revolution than an evolution?

REFERENCES

For further enlightenment feel free to click any of this links;

https://www.electronicshub.org/applications-of-electromagnetism/

http://www.microwavejournal.com/articles/24759-history-of-wireless-communications

The internet

How your cell phones work

How to make a radio wave

How radio waves are produced

The electromagnetic spectrum

What are radio waves on livescience.com

^{If you write STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) related posts, consider joining #steemSTEM on steemit chat or discord here. If you are from Nigeria, you may want to include the #stemng tag in your post. You can visit this blog by @stemng for more details.}

^{You can also join us at Promo-Mentors, to improve your blogging skills. Join our discord channel and meet awesome mentors who are willing and ready to shape your writing skills.}

---