History Of Communication

Since the beginning of time, people have had the need to communicate with one

and other. The most common type of communication is speech, but you could not talk to

someone who lived 20 miles away. Then written language was developed, people marked

symbols on paper, stone, or whatever was available. Then hundreds of years passed, and

people who wanted to share their ideas with people had to do allot of writing, until

someone thought to make a writing machine. This machine is called the printing press.

Gutenberg's invention of the printing press is widely thought of as the origin of

mass communication-- it marked Western culture's first viable method of disseminating

ideas and infomation from a single source to a large and far-ranging audience. The story of

print is a long and complax one. It may be too much to claim that print was the single

cause of the massive social, political and psychological changes it is associated with.

However, print did wield enormous influence on every aspect of European culture. Some

historians suggest that print was instrumental in bringing about all the major shifts in

science, religion, politics and the modes of thought that are commonly associated with

modern Western culture.

Gutenberg foresaw enormous profit-making potential for a printing press that used

movable metal type. Despite their rapid growth in numbers, secular scribes simply could

not keep up with the commercial demand for books. Gutenberg also saw strong maket

potential in selling indulgences, the slips of paper offering written dispensation from sin

that the Church sold to fund crusades, new buildings and other projects devoted to

expanding its dominance. In fact, press runs of 200,000 indulgences at a time were

common soon after the handwritten versions became obsolete.

There were many different innovations since the first hand operated printing press.

The Stanhope press, which was widely used for many years, still used a hand-operated

screw to press print and paper, but it could print up to 250 sheets an hour. A considerable

improvement was the Colombian press. In this press, the typical screw method was

eliminated, and replaced with powerful hand levers.

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...the negative side, wars are waged more easily, the scope of human conflict has been

extended along telephone lines, the multi-generational household has been broken-up as

living alone is no longer an experiment in isolation, and the time-space continuum seems

to be compressed faster than previously thought possible (Brooks, 1976). On the other

hand, the invention of the telephone has resulted in the rapid and diffuse dissemination of

technical and scientific information, saved lives through links to emergency services, made

possible the modern city through telephonic connections, increased the speed and ease

with which information changes place, and accelerated the rate of scientific and

technological change and growth in industry (Brooks, 1976).

Since the invention of the printing press, communication over distances has

become much more feasable. The invention of the the telephone, computer, and the

internet has made such an impact on our society. Now we are able to view tremendous

multitudes of information from our own living room. The history of modern

communication is still ongoing, and will continue to progress far into the future.