Communication In The 1700s

In the past three hundred years communication has changed so much that sometimes it is hard to imagine. We have gone from hand written, hand delivered letters in the 1700’s to text messaging and face time. Humans naturally strive to make things better, to find easier ways of doing things. Communication has gone from only spoken messages to, written, typed, and then electronic.

In the 1700’s most communication was done through letters that were hand delivered and could take up to two weeks to go about a hundred miles (World of Influence, 2001). There was never a garonte that your letter would make it to its final destination. It was not unheard of for people to make mulitipal copies of their letter in hopes that at least one copy would make

it to its final destination. In 1753 history was made when Benjamin Franklin was appointed Postmaster of Philadelphia (World of Influence, 2001).
In January of 1829 communication was changed dramatically when W.A. Burt created the typewriter (Gibson, n.d.). Now instead of writing a person could use a typewriter to create a more professional looking letter, it made it much easier to write books and longer forms of communication.
The blind community made great advances in January of 1829 as well.

Louis Braille created a form of written language made of small raised bumps on paper so that people who could not see or possibly hear could learn and read (Gibson,

n.d.).
Samuel Morse created the telegraph system in the 1830-40’s.

It worked by sending a series of electrical signals, also known as the Morse code. It became very popular and widely spread means of communication (Gibson, n.d.). After the telegraph, Alexander Grandbell (Gibson, n.d) invented the telephone.

In 1939 the very first computer was created by Professor John Vincent Atanasoff and Cliff Berry. It was not the type of computer we are used to though, that type of computer didn’t make an appearance until 1982(Timeline of computer history, 2001). After the first computer was created communication took off like a rocket.

In 1997 social media started with the site Six Degrees, which let users create a profile and become friends (Hendricks, 2013). After social media became popular the world of communication opened up into ways that are hard to imagine sometimes. Now a person can talk to someone on the other side of the world and it sounds/looks as if they are right beside them. In the last 300 years there has been so much change to communication, it is hard to believe there will be just as much, in not more change in the next 300 years. People will not even remember what it was like to write letters and mail

them.