Communication is a process that started perhaps even before we knew how to write or spell the word “communication “. Communication is perhaps dated back to the advent of life itself . What evolved from simple body language or ancient pictorial messages carved on rocks metamorphosed into rather evolved channels of communication like the telephone, television and off course th world wide web that brought the world as close as it could get! Although various complex theories and principles exist, communication can be simply defined as a process by which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, sings , or behavior. (Obviously the term is not limited to human beings because animals have their own modes of communication tool!)
Here is an attempt to trace back the origins of communication.
Body Language: A friendly handshake , a gracious smile or even a warm hug. Body language is communication through simple body gestures. The time of emergence of body language cannot be precisely or accurately calculated or calculated. However the use of body language as means of communication has always been compared to communication modes used by animals.
Speech: The available fossil evidence hints that modern adaptations for speech appeared somewhere between 1.5 million and 500,000 years ago. The dynamics of evolution of speech acquisition is complex since it is influenced by factors like culturally transmitted sounds and genetic evolution.
Writing: The history of writing dates back to the various writing systems that evolved in the Early Bronze Age (late 4th millennium BC) out of Neolithic proto-writing . The evolution of writing is said to have evolved from proto-writing which means pictorial messages /symbols/ scribbles that cannot be called “ actual writing “. For convenience we will classify the evolution of writing into the following sub – categories:
Symbols
Cave paintings
Of the Pyramid Texts. The Indus script developed over the third millennium . either as a form of proto- writing, or an archaic mode of writing . The Chinese script is said to have originated independently ,around the 16th century BC.
The Alphabets: The Egytians were the first to come up with an alphabetical system around 2700 BC which consisted of 22 heiroglyphs. Each hieroglyph began with a single consonant of their language, plus a vowel (or no vowel ) to be supplied by the speaker. Initially , these glyphs were used as a guide for pronunciation of the logograms, to mark grammatical intonation and the record foreign names . This script passed on to many other civilization and inspired different alphabetical systems like the Phoenician alphabets , Arabic scripts , Hebrew, Latin alphabets , Italic alphabets, Glagolithic alphabets or the Cyrillic alphabets.
Tele-communication: The semaphore or the optical telegraph system was an apparatus for conveying information by means of visual signals. The system used towers with pivoting blade or paddles, in a matrix. Information was encoded by the position of the mechanical elements and the message can be interpreted by the position of the blade. Although the mention of the idea of a semaphore has been recored in the name of an English scientist Robert Hooke , the idea was put to practice in France during the 1700s. when an engineer called Claude Chappe covered France with a network of 556 stations over a distance of 4,800 kilometers.
Other Benchmarks in the History of Communication:
Invention of the Radio: Although the construction of the radio is based o Michael Faradays laws of electromagnetic induction, which Faraday proposed in 1831, it was William Henry ward, who implemented the principles and successfully got himself a patent for radio development in 1872.
Invention of the Telephone: Although there were several disputes surrounding the claim to the invention of the telephone . Although the Italian scientist Antonio Meucci, was acknowledged by US Congress on 11th june 2002 for his contributions to the invention of the telephone, it is Alexander Graham Bell who patented the telephone as apparatus for transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically.
Invention of the Television: The answer is highly debated, although it is known that a Scottish inventor, John Logie Baird, was the first one to publicly demonstrate television on 26 january 1926, in his laboratory at Soho district of London. However it was an American engineer Philo Farnsworth who researched the television picture transmission and developed the dissector tube , which is the basic element of all current electronic televisions. In 1927, Philo Farnsworth became the first inventor to transmit a televisions image.
Invention of the first Computer: The first computer was called ENIAC, which is an abbreviation for Electronic Numerical integrator And Computer and was completely developed in 1945 at the lowa State University.
Invention of the Internet: The design of the Internet was formulated in 1973 and published in 1974. It took as many as ten years to bring the idea into reality and the internet was set up in 1983. Not many people know that the concept of internet was developed by an American computer scientist Vinton Cerf, as part of a project sponsored by the United States Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Definition of Communication :
In simple terms, communication can be defined as actions whereby ‘actors’ impart information to one another.
Communication dose not have to involve language and dose not have to be vocalized . Deaf peoples often communicate through gestures. Baby’s communicate basic wants through crying.
Communication dose not have to be intended . When we become emotionally aroused we often unintentionally communicate our intense feelings to others through subtle shifts in body language , physiological changes and even pheromones.
We used the word actors in our definition because animals can communicate with each other and with us. A cat can demand dinner just as forcefully as any human.
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