The Telecommunication Portal

Earth station at the satellite communication facility in Raisting, Bavaria, Germany

Telecommunication, often used in its plural form, is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that feasible with the human voice, but with a similar scale of expediency; thus, slow systems (such as postal mail) are excluded from the field.

The transmission media in telecommunication have evolved through numerous stages of technology, from beacons and other visual signals (such as smoke signals, semaphore telegraphs, signal flags, and optical heliographs), to electrical cable and electromagnetic radiation, including light. Such transmission paths are often divided into communication channels, which afford the advantages of multiplexing multiple concurrent communication sessions.

Other examples of pre-modern long-distance communication included audio messages, such as coded drumbeats, lung-blown horns, and loud whistles. 20th- and 21st-century technologies for long-distance communication usually involve electrical and electromagnetic technologies, such as telegraph, telephone, television and teleprinter, networks, radio, microwave transmission, optical fibre, and communications satellites.

The early telecommunication networks were created with metallic wires as the physical medium for signal transmission. For many years, these networks were used for telegraph and voice services. A revolution in wireless communication began in the first decade of the 20th century with the pioneering developments in radio communications by Guglielmo Marconi, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1909, and other notable pioneering inventors and developers in the field of electrical and electronic telecommunications. These included Charles Wheatstone and Samuel Morse (inventors of the telegraph), Antonio Meucci and Alexander Graham Bell (some of the inventors and developers of the telephone, see Invention of the telephone), Edwin Armstrong and Lee de Forest (inventors of radio), as well as Vladimir K. Zworykin, John Logie Baird and Philo Farnsworth (some of the inventors of television).

With the proliferation of digital technologies since the 1960s, voice communication has been gradually supplemented by data. The limitations of metallic data transmission prompted the development of optics. The development of media-independent Internet technologies provided access to world-wide services for individual users without limitations to location or time. (Full article...)

Selected article -

Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the latter half of the 19th century after the commercialization of the electric telegraph, the telephone, and electrical power generation, distribution, and use.

Electrical engineering is now divided into a wide range of different fields, including computer engineering, systems engineering, power engineering, telecommunications, radio-frequency engineering, signal processing, instrumentation, photovoltaic cells, electronics, and optics and photonics. Many of these disciplines overlap with other engineering branches, spanning a huge number of specializations including hardware engineering, power electronics, electromagnetics and waves, microwave engineering, nanotechnology, electrochemistry, renewable energies, mechatronics/control, and electrical materials science. (Full article...)
List of selected articles

General images

The following are images from various telecommunication-related articles on Wikipedia.

Things to do


Here are some tasks awaiting attention:
  • Article requests: Start a new article, WikiProject Telecommunications
  • Other: Expand this portal

Selected biography -

Portrait, c.1890

Nikola Tesla (/ˈtɛslə/; Serbian Cyrillic: Никола Тесла, [nǐkola têsla]; 10 July [O.S. 28 June] 1856 – 7 January 1943) was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and futurist. He is best-known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system.

Born and raised in the Austrian Empire, Tesla first studied engineering and physics in the 1870s without receiving a degree. He then gaining practical experience in the early 1880s working in telephony and at Continental Edison in the new electric power industry. In 1884 he emigrated to the United States, where he became a naturalized citizen. He worked for a short time at the Edison Machine Works in New York City before he struck out on his own. With the help of partners to finance and market his ideas, Tesla set up laboratories and companies in New York to develop a range of electrical and mechanical devices. His AC induction motor and related polyphase AC patents, licensed by Westinghouse Electric in 1888, earned him a considerable amount of money and became the cornerstone of the polyphase system which that company eventually marketed. (Full article...)

Did you know (auto-generated) -

Topics

Subcategories

Category puzzle
Category puzzle
Select [►] to view subcategories
Telecommunications
Telecommunications by continent
Telecommunications by country
Aviation communications
Broadcasting
Businesspeople in telecommunications
Telecommunications companies
Computer networking
Data transmission
Telecommunications economics
Telecommunications engineering
Telecommunications engineers
Telecommunications equipment
History of telecommunications
Telecommunications images
Telecommunications infrastructure
Communication interfaces
Interference
International telecommunications
Internet
Interstellar communication
Telecommunications lists
Military communications
Mobile telecommunications
Network access
Optical communications
Telecommunications organizations
Telecommunications policy
Telecommunications in popular culture
Privacy of telecommunications
Radio
Telecommunication services
Telecommunications standards
Telecommunications systems
Telecommunications techniques
Telecommunication education
Telecommunication industry
Telecommunication theory
Telecommunications for development
Teleconferencing
Teledildonics
Telegraphy
Telematics
Telemetry
Telephony
Teletraffic
Television
Telecommunications stubs

Associated Wikimedia

The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:

Discover Wikipedia using portals

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.