from the telegraph to internet2 and beyond: the technology of telecommunications from the civil war...

From the Telegraph to Internet2 and Beyond: The Technology of Telecommunications from

the Civil War to Star Wars

From the Telegraph to Internet2 and Beyond: The Technology of Telecommunications from

the Civil War to Star Wars.

GlobecomNovember 27 2006

Tom Minnis

Copyright 2006 Strategic Advisory Group

The Beginning of Datacom• 1840, Samuel Morse patents the telegraph• 1856 Western Union formed

– consolidation of independent telegraph companies– telegraph equipment shops merge into Grey &

Barton • 1861, Civil War, coast to coast telegraph• 1867 The first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable

laid• 1872 Western Union buys Gray & Barton, and

renames it Western Electric.


The Beginning of Telecom

• 1861 Philip Reis (Germany) describes The Telephone• 1871 Antonio Meuci files patent for Telephone • 1876 Alexander Graham Bell, Patents invention of the

telephone, March 10.• Western Union turns down telephone patents for $100,000• 1878 Bell forms the American Bell Telephone Company

and establishes 1st switching office in New Haven, CT January, 28

• Thomas Watson applies for first telephone ringer patent • 1881 John Carty, a Bell engineer, invents the two-wire

local loop Copyright 2006 Strategic Advisory Group

The Beginning of Radio

• 1887, Heinrich Hertz produces the first man-made radio waves

• 1888, Rotating field AC alternator invented by Nikola Tesla

• 1895 Marconi invents Radio (spark gap)• 1891 high-speed alternators as radio transmitters Reginald

Fessenden. investigated transmitting lower-frequency signals along telegraph lines to create a multiplex telegraph system

• 1902 Valdemar Poulsen of Denmark introduces the arc-transmitter


Mergers Spawn Big Business

• 1881, Western Electric joined the Bell system• 1891 Strowger Automatic Telephone Exchange produces

step switching equipment• 1886 Westinghouse Electric Company formed• 1892, General Electric Company formed by the merger of

Thomson-Houston and Edison General Electric.• Bell has controlling interest in Western Union and Western

Electric• 1899, American Bell Telephone Company changes name

to AT&T• 1908 Automatic Electric merge with Strowger Automatic

Telephone Exchange Copyright 2006 Strategic Advisory Group

Component Refinements

• 1904, John Ambrose Fleming invented the diode rectifier vacuum tube

• 1906, alternator-transmitter was perfected ready for public demonstration

• Lee DeForest announced the development of the first three-element vacuum-tube

• 1907, DeForest invented the electric amplifier using his triode• 1913 Western Electric developed the high vacuum tube• 1947 Transistor invented • 1958 Jack Kilby, Texas Instruments, developed the first integrated

circuit.• 1970 Ted Hoff at Intel develops the 4004, the first microprocessor.• 1974 April Intel 8080, August Motorola 6800


Organized Basic Research

• 1902 Morkrum Co, Joy and Sterling Morton fund R&D leading to the teleprinter with Charles and Howard Krum.

• 1907, Bell Labs splits away from Western Electric by John J. Carty and Frank Jewett

• 1908, Automatic Electric merge with Strowger Automatic Telephone Exchange

• 1917 GE buys the American division of Marconi and spins off RCA with David Sarnoff as manager.


Datacom changes from Morse Code to Baudot Code

• 1901 Baudot's code modified by Donald Murray and Western Union now known as the 'Baudot code', also known as the International Telegraph Alphabet No 2 (ITA2)

• 1910 First installation of Teleprinter between New York and Boston on a Postal Telegraph Company line using the start stop synchronization technique personally installed by Howard and Charles Krum of the Morkrum company

• 1925 Teleprinter machines came into common use • 1930 Morkrum Company and the Kleinschmidt Electric

Company was purchased by AT&T and renamed Teletype Corporation


Long Distance Telephone• 1915 First telephone call from Bell in New York to Watson in

San Francisco• 1929 First radio telephone service operated between Britain and

the US• 1930’s FDM comes into widespread use• 1935 First telephone call around the world. About 6700 telcos in

operation• 1947 First trial of PCM system• 1956 First Trans-Atlantic Telephone cable• 1957 TDM implemented, D1 channel bank starts deployment• 1962 Orbiting communication satellites were used to relay and

amplify telephone transmissions for the first time• 1980 First fiber-optic transmission systems were introduced in

Atlanta• 1988 First Trans-Atlantic fiber-optic cable went into operation • 1989 CCITT publishes SONET standards G.707, G.708, G.709


Common Control vs. Distributed Switching

• 1892 First installation of Strowger Automatic Telephone Exchange

• 1917 A. K. Erlang (Denmark) The beginning of Telephone Traffic Engineering

• 1919 The Bell System starts installing Step by Step switches made by Automatic Electric

• 1921 The Bell system installs the first Panel Switch• 1938 Bell introduces #1 crossbar central office switches• 1943 #4 Crossbar introduction• 1948 #5 Crossbar introduction• 1958 7 digit all number dialing phase in starts, January • 1960 AT&T installs first electronic switching system I in Morris,

IL • 1964 Telephone numbering plan defines country codes, area

codes, and local numbering systems• 1965 AT&T introduces stored program controlled switching #1

ESS. Copyright 2006 Strategic Advisory Group

Common Control vs. Distributed Switching

• 1970 AT&T introduces its #2 ESS electronic switch• 1972 Automatic Electric introduces the #1 EAX ESS• 1976 Northern Telecom demonstrates the DMS-10 IDDD international direct dialing introduced • 1979 Northern Telecom installs first production DMS-100 local central office

switch • 1980 Signaling System 7 begins deployment• 1982 5ESS introduced• 1999 Lucent installs last #4ESS switch in Atlanta, GA. A total of 145 #4ESS

machines were installed in the AT&T Long Lines network with several more installed for regional (RBOC) use.

• 2002 Last known Step-by-Step switch in North American public switched network is replaced with a digital (DMS-10) switch in Nantes, QC Canada. This switch was probably the last fully electro-mechanical switch in the North American PSTN

• 2003 Sprint Local (EMBARQ) begins replacement of traditional Nortel DMS-100 digital time-domain circuit-switched telephone switches with new Nortel Communications Server packet-based softswitches.


Datacom changes from person talk to computer talk

• 1938 Western Union first FAX machine • 1939 Teleprinter 75 words per minute!• 1944 Teleprinter 100 words per minute!• 1957 Teleprinter 300 words per minute• 1958 AT&T introduces datasets (modems) for direct connection • 1963 The American Standard Code for Information Exchange

(ASCII) • 1964 Paul Baran publishes “On Distributed Communications:

Introduction To Distributed Communications Networks” out of the need for the command and control of ICBM’s to survive a nuclear attack and thus provide deterrence of a first strike. A survivable network is needed to make MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) a creditable deterrent.

• 1967 Larry Roberts at the Advanced Research Projects Agency publishes a paper proposing ARPANET.

IBM BSC Binary Synchronous Communication BiSync computer to computer protocol


Computers need to talk faster

• 1969 APRANET started between Stanford and UCLA• 1973 Ethernet invented Xerox Parc Bob Metcalfe TCP/IP first described The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is introduced • 1974 Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) introduced• 1976 X.25 networks implemented IEEE 802.3 standardizes Ethernet• 1981 Hayes introduces 300-bps modem• 1983 TCP/IP deployed in the ARPANET which define INTERNET• 1986 NSF introduces its 56kbps backbone network• 1987 Bellcore introduces the Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line

(ADSL)


More Computer Talk

• 1989 NSF ups its backbone network from 56kbps to T-1 • 1992 WWW invented, CERN physicist Tim Berners-Lee. One-millionth host connected to the Internet, doubling every year!• 1993 Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) established The NSF network backbone jumps from T-1 to T-3. The Internet browser MOSAIC is introduced (ADSL) standardized using the discrete multitone technology• 1994 Netscape Internet browser is introduced• 1997 IETF MPLS Working Group formed• 1998 Half the subscriber lines were being used for data

connections• 2002 GMPLS starts evolving


A new industry is created

• 1972 AT&T turns down buying ARPANET• 1974 Dataphone Digital Service DDS Gary Kildall establishes Digital Research Inc and CP/M as the first PC

operating system. CP/M also serves as the basis of all modern DOS versions including the Caldera DR DOS and other derivatives including PC-DOS from IBM, and MS-DOS from Microsoft Caldera successfully Sues Microsoft for copying CP/M to make DOS

• 1975 Bill Gates and Paul Allen establish Microsoft Popular Electronics features the MITS Altair 8800 computer which is

considered the first personal computer.• 1976 Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak establish Apple Computer Alan Shugart, IBM, introduced the 5.25-in floppy• 1981 IBM introduces its PC in August• 1982 Sun Microsystems established• 1984 Bell System is broken up


Attempts at converging voice and data networks

• 1968 AT&T starts development of the Integrated Digital Services Network (ISDN).

• 1984 Frame Relay first presented to the CCITT • 1990 Frame Relay becomes popular with the addition of

Local Management Interface (LMI) by: Cisco Systems, StrataCom, Northern Telecom, and Digital Equipment Corporation.

• 1995 VOIP introduced by AVAYA with their MultiMedia Communications eXchange (MMCX)

• 1996 Multi-service ATM network specification released


Government Control And Taxation

• 1934 Communications Act. Congress creates the FCC• 1936 Rural Electrification Act• 1956 Hush-a Phone decision Consent Decree, AT&T agrees to license its patents to

others, stick with Telecom only and keep WE• 1967 Carterphone Decision• 1984 January 1, DIVESTITURE of AT&T

– AT&T Long Lines, 23 Bell Operating Companies (BOCs), which coalesced into 7 regional BOCs BellSouth, NYNEX, Ameritech, Bell Atlantic, US West, Pacific Telesis, Southwestern

• 1985 FCC decisions related to registration of CPE for T-1 and sub-rate digital services


from the telegraph to internet2 and beyond: the technology of telecommunications from the civil war...

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