The Tech That Ignited the Communication Revolution

The Tech That Ignited the Communication Revolution The 19th century saw a revolution in communications systems that brought the world closer together. Innovations like the telegraph allowed information to travel over vast distances in little or no time, while institutions such as the postal system made it easier than ever for people to conduct business and connect with others. Postal System People have been using delivery services to exchange correspondence and share information since at least 2400 B.C. when the ancient Egyptian pharaohs used couriers to spread royal decrees throughout their territory. Evidence indicates similar systems were used in ancient China and Mesopotamia as well.   The United States established its postal system in 1775 before independence had been declared. Benjamin Franklin was appointed the nations first postmaster general. The founding fathers believed so strongly in a postal system that they included provisions for one in the Constitution. Rates were established for the delivery of letters and newspapers based on delivery distance, and postal clerks would note the amount on the envelope. A schoolmaster from England, Rowland Hill, invented the adhesive postage stamp in 1837, an act for which he later was knighted.Hill also created the first uniform postage rates that were based on weight rather than size. Hills stamps made the prepayment of mail postage possible and practical. In 1840, Great Britain issued its first stamp, the Penny Black, featuring the image of Queen Victoria. The U.S. Postal Service issued its first stamp in 1847. Telegraph The electrical telegraph was invented in 1838 by a Samuel Morse, an educator and inventor who made a hobby of experimenting with electricity. Morse wasnt working in a vacuum; the principal of sending electrical current via wires over long distances had been perfected in the previous decade. But it took Morse, who developed a means of transmitting coded signals in the form of dots and dashes, to make the technology practical.   Morse patented his device in 1840, and three years later Congress granted him $30,000 to build the first telegraph line from Washington D.C. to Baltimore.  On May 24, 1844, Morse transmitted his famous message, What hath God wrought?, from the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., to the B O Railroad Depot in Baltimore. The growth of the telegraph system piggybacked on the expansion of the nations railway system, with lines often following rail routes and telegraph offices established at train stations large and small across the nation. The telegraph would remain the primary means of long-distance communication until the emergence of the radio and telephone in the early 20th century. Improved Newspaper Presses Newspapers as we know them have been printed regularly in the U.S. since the 1720s when James Franklin (Ben Franklins older brother) began publishing the New England Courant in Massachusetts. But early newspaper had to be printed in manual presses, a time-consuming process that made it difficult to produce more than a few hundred copies. The introduction of the steam-powered printing press in London in 1814 changed that, allowing publishers to print more than 1,000 newspapers per hour. In 1845, the American inventor Richard March Hoe introduced the rotary press, which could print up to 100,000 copies per hour. Coupled with other refinements in printing, the introduction of the telegraph, a sharp drop in the cost of newsprint, and an increase in literacy, newspapers could be found in nearly every town and city in the U.S. by the mid-1800s. Phonograph Thomas Edison is credited with inventing the phonograph, which could both record sound and play it back, in 1877. The device converted sound waves into vibrations that in turn were engraved on a metal (later wax) cylinder using a needle. Edison refined his invention and began marketing it to the public in 1888. But early phonographs were prohibitively expensive, and wax cylinders were both fragile and hard to mass produce. By the turn of the 20th century, the cost of photographs and cylinders had dropped considerably and they became more commonplace in American homes. The disc-shaped record we know today was introduced by Emile Berliner in Europe in 1889 and appeared in the U.S. in 1894. In 1925, the first industry standard for playing speeds was set at 78 revolutions per minute, and the record disc became the dominant format.   Photography The first photographs were produced by Frenchman Louis Daguerre in 1839, using silver-plated metal sheets treated with light-sensitive chemicals to produce an image. The images were incredibly detailed and durable, but the photochemical process was very complicated and time-consuming. By the time of the Civil War, the advent of portable cameras and new chemical processes allowed photographers like Matthew Brady to document the conflict and average Americans to experience the conflict for themselves. In 1883, George Eastman of Rochester, New York, had perfected a means of putting film on a roll, making the process of photography more portable and less expensive. The introduction of his Kodak No. 1 camera in 1888 put cameras in the hands of the masses. It came pre-loaded with film and when users had finished shooting, they sent the camera to Kodak, which processed their prints and sent the camera back, loaded with fresh film. Motion Pictures A number of people contributed innovations that led to the motion picture we know today. One of the first was the British-American photographer Eadweard Muybridge, who used an elaborate system of still cameras and trip wires to create a series of motion studies in the 1870s. George Eastmans innovative celluloid roll film in the 1880s was another crucial step, allowing large quantities of film to be packaged in compact containers.   Using Eastmans film,  Thomas Edison and William Dickinson had invented a means of projecting motion picture film called the Kinetoscope in 1891. But the Kinetoscope could only be viewed by one person at a time. The first motion pictures that could be projected and shown to groups of people were perfected by the French brothers Auguste and Louis Lumià ¨re. In 1895, the brothers demonstrated their Cinematographe with a series of 50-second films that documented everyday activities like workers leaving their factory in Lyon, France. By the 1900s, motion pictures had become a common form of entertainment in vaudeville halls throughout the U.S., and a new industry was born to mass-produce films as a means of entertainment. Sources Alterman, Eric. Out of Print. NewYorker.com. 31 March 2008.Cook, David A., and Sklar, Robert. History of the Motion Picture. Brittanica.com. 10 November 2017.Longley, Robert. About the U.S. Postal Service. ThoughtCo.com. 21 July 2017.McGillem, Clare. Telegraph. Brittanica.com. 7 December 2016.Potter, John, U.S. Postmaster General. The United States Postal Service An American History 1775 – 2006. USPS.com. 2006.History of the Cylinder Phonograph. Library of Congress. Accessed 8 March 2018.

Donald Trump Quotes From the 2016 Election

Donald Trump Quotes From the 2016 Election Donald Trumps campaign for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination was occasionally perplexing,  often controversial but  always entertaining. Theres a reason some news organizations relegated coverage of the ultrawealthy businessman to its entertainment pages. The milestones in Trumpss campaign, though, were the outrageous and controversial comments he made with the intention of generating news coverage - whether positive or negative. As the old saying goes: All publicity is good publicity. Indeed, Trumps popularity rarely suffered and often surged following many of these remarks. Trumps Most Outrageous Statements During the 2016 Election Heres a list of Trumps 10 most outrageous and controversial statements on the campaign trail for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. 1. Picking a Fight With the Pope Its not every politician who will take on the Pope. But Trump isnt your  average politician. And he had no trouble taking a shot at the man admired by tens of millions of Catholics and Christians across the worlds. It all started, though, when Pope Francis was asked about Trumps candidacy in February 2016. Said the Pope:  Ã¢â‚¬Å"A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian.† Not a Christian? Trump didnt take kindly to the Popes remarks  and said the pontiff would believe differently if ISIS were to attempt violence against the Vatican. â€Å"If and when the Vatican is attacked, the pope would only wish and have prayed that Donald Trump would have been elected president,† Trump said. 2. Blaming Bush for Terrorist Attacks Trump was jeered during a February 2016 Republican presidential debate when he attacked former President George W. Bush, who was in office during the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Its a line of attack hes used many times. You talk about George Bush, say what you want, the World Trade Center came down during his time. He was president, okay? Dont blame him or dont blame him, but he was president, the World Trade Center came down during his reign, Trump said. 3. Banning Muslims From Entering the U.S. Trump enraged when he called for  Ã¢â‚¬Å"a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what’s going on† in December 2015. Wrote Trump: Without looking at the various polling data, it is obvious to anybody the hatred is beyond comprehension. Where this hatred comes from and why we will have to determine. Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life. If I win the election for President, we are going to Make America Great Again.   Trumps call for a temporary ban following a claim that he witnessed Arab Americans cheering the fall of the World Trade Center towers in New York City after they were attacked on Sept. 11th, 2001.  Ã¢â‚¬Å"I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down. And I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering,† Trump said, though no one else saw such a thing. 4. On Illegal Immigration Another of Trumps controversial remarks of the 2016 presidential campaign came on June 17, 2015, when he announced he was seeking the Republican nomination. Trump managed to infuriate Hispanics and further alienate his party from minorities with these lines: The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems. Thank you. It’s true, and these are the best and the finest. When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people. 5. On John McCain and Heroism Trump got under the skin of the Republican U.S. senator from Arizona by questioning his status as a war hero.  McCain was a prisoner of war for more than five years during the Vietnam war. He also enraged other POWs with these remarks about McCain: â€Å"He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured? I like people who weren’t captured. 6. The Cell Phone Incident One of the goofiest things Trump did was give out the personal cell phone number for Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina during a rally there. Trump claimed the lawmaker had called him begging for a good reference to be on Fox. Trump, holding up Grahams number on a sheet of paper, read the number before a crowd of supporters and said: He gave me his number and I found the card, I wrote the number down. I dont know if its the right number, lets try it.  Your local politician, he wont fix anything but at least hell talk to you. 7. Mexico and The Great Wall Trump proposed building a physical barrier between the United States and Mexico and then forcing our neighbors to the south to reimburse us for construction. Some experts, however, said Trumps plan to make his wall impenetrable along the  1,954-mile border would be extraordinarily expensive and, in the end, is possible. Nonetheless, says Trump: I will build a great wall. And nobody does walls better than me. Very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border and I will have Mexico pay for that wall. 8. Hes Worth TEN BILLION DOLLARS! Not wanting to put too fine a point on his wealth, the Trump campaign announced in a July 2015 filing with the Federal Election Commission that: As of this date, Mr. Trump‟s net worth is in excess of TEN BILLION DOLLARS.† Yes, the Trump campaign used capital letters to stress his net worth. But we dont really know, and probably never will know, what Trump is really worth. Thats because federal election laws dont require candidates to disclose the exact value of their assets. Instead, they require office-seekers to provide only an estimated range of wealth. 9. Picking a Fight With Megyn Kelly Trump faced some pretty direct questions about his treatment of women from Fox News journalist and debate moderator Megyn Kelly in August 2015. After the debate, Trump went on the attack. You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her ... wherever,  Trump told CNN, apparently suggesting she was menstruating during the debate. 10. Hillary Clintons Bathroom Break Clinton was a few moments late getting back onstage during a December 2015 televised debate with her Democratic presidential rivals because she had gone to the bathroom. Yes, Trump attacked  her for it.  I know where she went. Its disgusting, I dont want to talk about it. No, its too disgusting. Dont say it, its disgusting, he told a cheering crowd of supporters.