We explain what telecommunications are, their history and impact on society. In addition, we explain careers in telecommunications.

Telecommunications;5 Facts

The term telecommunication comes from the French word télécommunication , composed 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 until then used 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 radio navigation, GPS and telemetry. In almost all cases, these are systems equipped with:

In telecommunications, the use of orbiting satellites to provide communications links between various points on Earth Communications satellites provide telephone, television, and data services between widely separated fixed locations (eg, the switching offices of two different national telephone networks), between fixed locations and mobile users (eg.. shore stations and maritime vessels), and between mobile users (e g., aircraft and motor vehicles).

Thetechnique basically involves transmitting signals from an Earth station to a satellite Equipment on board the satellite receives the signals amplifies them, and transmits them to a region of the Earth. Receiving stationswithin this region’pick up the signals, thus providing the communications link.

An electronic system for transmitting still or moving images and sound to receivers that project a view of the images on a picture tube or screen and re-create the sound The effect of a television system is to extend the senses of vision and hearing beyond their natural limits.

Television systems are designed, therefore, to embrace the essential capabilities of these senses, with appropriate compromises between the quality of the reproduction and the costs involved. The aspects of natural vision that must be considered in a television system include the ability of the human eye to distinguish the brightness, colours, details, sizes, shapes, and positions of the objects in the scene-before it.

The aspects of hearing include the ability of the ear to distinguish the pitch, loudness, and distribution of sounds The television system must also be designed to override, within reasonable limits, the effects of interference and to minimize visual and aural distortions in the transmission and reproduction processes.

The particular compromises adopted for public television service are embodied in the television standards adopted and enforced in each country by the government agency responsible for broadcasting felevision technology deals with the fact that human vision employs many hundreds of thousands of separate electrical circuits, in the optic nerve From the retina to the brain, to convey simultaneously in two dimensions the whole content of the scene on which the eve is focused, whereas in electrical communications it is feasible to employ.

Only one such circuit (i.e., the broadcast channel) to connect the transmitter and the receiver This fundamental disparity is overcome in television by a process of image analysis and synthesis, whereby the scene to be televised is first translated into an electrical image, and the latter is then broken up into an orderly sequence of electrical impulses that are sent over the channel one after.the other

At the receiver the impulses are translated back into a corresponding sequence of lights and shadows, and these are reassembled in their correct positions on the viewing screen.

This sequential reproduction of visual images is feasible only because the visual, sense displays persistence, that is, the brain retains the impression of illumination for about 0 I second after the source of light is removed from the eye If.

Therefore, the process of image synthesis occurs within less than 0.1 second, the eye is unaware that the picture is being reassembled piecemeal, and it appears as if the whole surface of the viewing screen, were continuously illuminated By the same token, it is then possible to re-create more than ten complete pictures per second and to simulate thereby, the motion of the scene so that it appears to be continuous.

In practice, to depict rapid motion smoothly, it is customary to transmit from 25 to 30 complete pictures per second To provide detail sufficient to accommodate a wide range of subject matter, each picture is analyzed into 300,000 or more elementary details. This analysis implies that the rate at which these <jetails are transmitted over the television system exceeds 4,000,01 pci second To provide a system suitable for public use and alk’.> capable of such speed has required the full resources of modem electronic technology.

Types of telecommunications

There are many ways to classify telecommunications, depending on different elements. For example, we can distinguish between unidirectional communications, those in which the sender is always the sender, and bidirectional communications, in which the receivers eventually also occupy the role of sender, that is, there is feedback .

On the other hand, depending on the nature of their specific technology, we can differentiate between:

• Radio communications. This refers not only to the transmission of AM and FM radio waves from commercial stations, whose programming must be retrieved by the public on their radio sets, but also to shortwave radio sets, such as those used for navigation and military communications.
• Telephony. Graham Bell’s old-fashioned wireline telephony was replaced in the 20th century by a modern telephone industry that uses satellites and broadcast towers to send and receive electromagnetic signals of specific frequencies, which are then converted into sound waves by the equipment, thus recovering the speaker’s voice with minimal distortion and delay.
• Television. The great invention that revolutionized mass media in the 20th century has survived by adapting to the times, through satellite broadcasts or streaming over the Internet, to bring both audio and images to the receivers in every home, either live or delayed.
• Internet. Today, virtually everything is connected to the Internet, the vast network of computer networks that allows the reciprocal transmission of information over vast distances. It is an intricate network of computers that are reciprocally interconnected to share an immense volume of data of any kind, through fiberglass cables, coaxial cables or through radio waves (WiFi). The Internet allows for various services such as the World Wide Web , email , streaming services, etc.
• Fax. A technology that is no longer in existence, but which serves as an example. It consisted of using telephone lines to send a reproduction of an image taken from a text, in other words, something similar to a photocopier, but whose originals were far away. Since the arrival of the Internet, it was considered obsolete and abandoned throughout the world.

Telecommunications today play a vital role in most technological systems, whether in the commercial and financial sphere, or in the military, recreational or cultural spheres. Its effects have forever changed the way we relate and communicate with each other as human beings.

They have allowed the emergence of a more homogeneous culture (the “global” or 2.0 culture, for example), while also allowing new forms of commercial exchange and new services . It has quickly become one of the areas of greatest innovation , greatest demand and greatest capital in the contemporary world.