What Does Telecommunications Mean
We explain what telecommunications are, its history and impact on society. Also, careers in telecommunications.
What are telecommunications?
When we speak of telecommunications, we refer to the science and practice of the transmission of information through electromagnetic means , through the use of a set of specialized techniques and materials. Such information may consist of data textual, audio, video or a combination of the three.
The term telecommunication comes from the French word télécommunication , made up of the Greek prefix tele -, "distance", and the Latin word communicare , "to share." It was coined by the engineer and writer Édouard Estaunié (1862-1942) at the beginning of the 19th century, as a replacement for the term used until then for communication by electrical impulses: telegraphy.
Within the concept of telecommunications we can find today numerous technologies , from radio, television, telephony, computer networks and the Internet , to radionavigation, GPS and telemetry. In almost all cases, these are systems equipped with:
- An issuer. That encodes and transmits the signal through different media or channels .
- One or more receivers. They receive and decode the signal, and may in turn (or not) serve as transmitters.
- Repeaters, routers and switches. Which are devices designed to intensify, modify, channel or repeat the signal sent by the transmitter.
One can also speak of telecommunications engineering or, simply, telecommunications, to refer to the study of this type of technology, with a view to its management, improvement and innovation .
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History of telecommunications
The man tried has overcome distances to send and receive signals from very early times. For this he used smoke signals, instrumental sounds , human messengers or chains of fire signals.
However, only with the appearance of postal mail in its different versions, some older than others, did a true remote communication system appear . It was generally aimed at communicating with the king or the imperial metropolis, with its distant subjects or with its colonial territories .
For its part, the first rapid remote communication systems were created in the Modern Age , when thanks to the dominance of electricity , the way of using it to transmit simple messages, generally limited to one word, by means of the telegraph emerged.
Inspired by old optical versions that depended on encoding a message with symbols visible from a distance, in the first half of the 19th century the first forms of the electric telegraph were developed , revolutionizing the field of communications through Morse code.
This invention was consolidated in the following years as the great modern means of communication, especially in the United States, thanks to the expansion of the railways. It served as the basis for future inventions, such as the "talking telegraph" (telephone) or "wireless telegraphy" (radiocommunication).
In the last decades of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century, the telephone was developed , the invention of Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) and / or Elisha Gray (1835-1901). Furthermore, the experiences of scientists and inventors such as Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931), Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) and Aleksandr Popov (1859-1905) constituted a scientific and technological revolution in the area of telecommunications.
The invention of the first radio transmitter by Guillermo Marconi (1874-1937), gave rise to devices as diverse as the teletype or short wave radio transmitter, and in the 20th century to transistor radio and television . Never has the human being managed to communicate so much and over such long distances as from then on.
Finally, after the invention of computers and their incorporation into information exchange networks , new technologies were added: modems, sonar, microwaves, telecommunications satellites , cellular telephony, WiFi and other contemporary modes of transmission of information. information digitized by electromagnetic waves.
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Types of telecommunications
There are many ways to classify telecommunications, according to different elements. For example, we can distinguish between unidirectional communications, those in which the sender is always the sender, and the bidirectional ones, in which the receivers eventually also occupy the role of sender, that is, there is feedback .
On the other hand, taking into account the nature of its specific technology, we can differentiate between:
- Radio communications. It not only refers to the transmission of radio waves in AM and FM from commercial stations, whose programming must be retrieved by the public on their radio devices, but also to short-wave radio devices, such as those used for navigation and radio stations. military communications.
- Telephony. The old Graham Bell wireline telephony was replaced throughout the 20th century by an entire modern telephone industry, which uses satellites and broadcast towers to send and receive electromagnetic signals of specific frequency , which the device then converts into sound waves, recovering the speaker's voice with minimal distortion and delay.
- TV. The great invention that revolutionized the mass media in the twentieth century, has survived by adapting to the times, through satellite broadcasts or streaming through the Internet, to bring both audio and images to the receiving devices in each home, either live and direct, or delayed.
- Internet. Today practically everything is connected to the Internet, the great network of computer networks , which allows the reciprocal sending of information over enormous distances. It is an intricate network of reciprocally interconnected computers, to share an immense volume of data of any nature, through fiberglass cables, coaxial cables or through radio waves (WiFi). The Internet enables various services such as the World Wide Web , email , streaming service, etc.
- Fax. A technology now extinct, but that serves as an example, and that consisted of using telephone lines to send the reproduction of an image taken from a text , that is, something similar to a photocopier, whose originals were nevertheless far away. Since the advent of the Internet, it has been considered obsolete and abandoned throughout the world.
Impact of telecommunications
Telecommunications today play a vital role in most technological systems, both in the commercial and financial spheres, as well as in the military, recreational or cultural spheres. Its effects have forever modified the way we relate and communicate among human beings.
They have allowed the emergence of a more homogeneous culture (the “global” or 2.0 culture, for example), at the same time that they have allowed new forms of commercial exchange and new services . It has quickly become one of the most innovative , demanding and capital - intensive areas in the contemporary world.
Career in telecommunications
The study of telecommunications is carried out from very different approaches, each one represented in a university degree or a similar degree, which includes degrees as different as they are, among others:
- Telecommunications engineering
- Web developer
- Higher technical degree in computer networks
- University technician in telecommunications
The telecommunications study has a clear technological profile, oriented towards applied science and electronic, industrial and materials engineering.