Perspective: Evolution Of The Telephone
It was not so long ago that Alexander Bell invented the telephone. A clumsy looking device now looking back. The device was a break through of momentous proportions. Suddenly, you could speak to someone miles away and they even recognized your voice. Thus was the birth of local and transatlantic telecommunications as we know it today. It has been quite an evolution from those early days to now cellular phones which by and large are wireless.
Land lines
The instrument sizes have been transformed also. The bulky “fridge” so named is no longer around, gone also well almost is the rotary dial and in Jamaica the call boxes on the streets and in stores etc.
Picture shows call box which are extinct in Jamaica and likely most other places. They came standing alone or mounted like this one on walls etc.
Sizes of cell phones
Then there is the thinness, the weight, the multiple other associated uses of the technology for taking and sending pictures right in the Palm of your hand. Banking even occurs through cellphones today. The use is endless. You can also see the person you are talking to through a specially designed application called “app” for short. Periscope is a new technology for transmitting video over a cell platform.
Social media network like twitter, instagram, facebook etc. is fast replacing the gossip column in your NEWSPAPER and the dictionary, Bible, encyclopedia as we once knew it. It is a digital revolution. Gone electronic and speeded up to microsecond speeds.
1967
When I entered the telecommunications industry in 1967 as a trainee technician in Jamaica W.I. there was the rotary dial phone, electromechanical switches, like the two motion selector switches. Then that gave way to the crossbar and then the electronic switches … multi fibre cable gave way to fibre optic technology, cell tower took over. By the time I left the industry ten years later the evolution was mind boggling, to say the least. Not all the old technology is go some still are around
In picture shown there is a touch screen android technology cellphone device and beside it is a basic keypad type cell phone.
They,vary in price, style, features etc.
One think is for sure, the pigeon carrying a message, morse code, the telegram on fixed wires are being phased out if not almost outdated completely. It has been a serious and rapid evolution. This is quite a limited perspective of how the phone industry has evolved in a few decades.
Hopeton O’Connor-Dennie is Senior International Correspondent & Photojournalist for Vision Newspaper Canada.
