Telegraphs

The Telegraph was a way to communicate to people from a long distance without the use of Pigeon Post. Before the making of the Telegraph civilizations like the Greek and Chinese used signals using smoke or beats from a drum.

The disadvantage of this was that the weather would affect the effectiveness that these signals would work including the Semaphore. The Semaphore held a series of hilltop stations, on these stations movable hands would be situated to make signals like letters or/and numbers. The stations would also have a pair of telescopes so that they would be able to see the signals being made from other telegraphs.

And because these signals visuality were weakened by weather others methods were created so that effective long distance communication could be produced. In the 19th century electricity was introduced and many inventions had been made using this new resource, one of these inventions were the Electronic Telegraph.

The research done by Sir William Cooke, Sir Charles Wheatstone, Samuel Morse, Leonard Gale and Alfred Gale had been used to create the electronic Telegraph. Sir William Cooke and Charles Winstone created a telegraph system which used five magnetic needles which would point to panels of letters or numbers, this used an electrical current. This telegraph system was later used for railroad systems in Britain.

Samuel Morse although had created another telegraph system using a single circuit telegraph which would function when the operator key would be pressed. When the key was pressed it would send an electrical signal to a receiver. To use this telegraph all it needed was a key, a battery, wire and a line of poles between stations for the wire and receiver.

This was later called Morse Code this was named after Samuel Morse. Letters and numbers were sent using codes like dots and dashes. The codes were marked by marks on a piece of paper which would be translated into english by the telegraph operator. But when time passed the operators were able to hear the code and translate the code by hearing the clicking of the telegraph and thus a receiver was made for the telegraph which created noises which made listening to the code easier.

Pigeon Post

Pigeon Post

Pigeon post is the process of sending pigeons to transport messages to other people or parties. Pigeons were chosen for these tasks because they had the natural ability to find it’s way home when it was sent to transport a message.

Before the making of telephones and telegrams Pigeon Post was used to send messages to others. Pigeon Post was believed to be first used by the the Persians. This though was carried on through the ages by the Romans, Mughals and the Greeks. The Persians were the first to train birds these of course included pigeons. These were their means of communicating to faraway lands.

To send messages the senders placed their message or messages in a plastic capsule to protect it from weather conditions e.g. rain and is then tied to the leg of the pigeon. When a pigeon is sent it is also sent with another bird carrying the same message because one might fail to deliver their message due to predators like falcon etc. Usually the pigeons used for these jobs are Rock pigeons or Racing pigeons, these birds are called Carrier Pigeons a.k.a Homing Pigeons.

The use of homing pigeons in todays modern day life are plenty for example if there were a day when the communication technology would break down then what would we do? Then what would you do ? Pigeons maybe the only reliable natural way of communication. This is also cheaper than sending messages through mail because the only thing it costs is pigeon food is that too much to ask?