Geography discuss from the telegraph to the internet from the point of Essay

Geography discuss from the telegraph to the internet from the point of view of spaces and subjects of modernty - Essay Example As early as 3500 B.C., the Chinese people were busy using written alphabets and printing messages on paperlike material which was used to pass messages across long distances with the postal service that began around 900 B.C. This printed form of language was bound into books beginning around 100 A.D. The shortened form of books, newspapers, began appearing in the cities as early as 1450, but the typewriter wasn’t invented until 1714. All of these methods of communication were effective, even to pass messages across space and time, but they all required the human component to transport them in order to be effective. Joseph Henry invented the first telegraph in 1831 which broke this long-standing restriction, allowing messages to be passed as quickly as a signal could be sent over a wire. Alexander Graham Bell reasoned that if a single sound could be sent via wire, why not a range of sounds, such as a human voice? He perfected his telephone in 1876 and the wires were in place for the first transcontinental phone call to be made in 1914. Things pretty much remained the same on the communications front for a while as inventors explored the possibilities of other forms of communication such as radio, photography, cinema and television (Rowland, 1997). About the time that television was becoming household equipment, the first computers were becoming available for scientific use. As early as 1951, they were being produced and sold on the general market. However, computers as a communication tool didn’t really become an option until the advent of APRANET, the first form of a networked internet that was developed in 1969. These connections were made faster with the introduction of cable wire services in 1972 (Rowland, 1997). At this point, communications methods began speeding up, constantly changing and improving efficiency. In Japan in 1979, the