lunes, 4 de junio de 2012

History of communication until print invention


Hello! On my second post we can see the project that explain the history of the comunications until print invention:
History of communication until print invention


The prehistory
During prehistoric times (5.000 B.C) man communicated using grunts, sounds, hand signals and body movements. Ancient people were searching ways to record the language, they painted on the walls of the caves (rock art) and they use signals and symbols to recognize their tribe.

Egypt
As human knowledge was developed, it became necessary to write to transmit information. In Egypt, discovered a new way to record the language, which was the pictograph (wedge-shaped writing engraved on a clay tablet) thanks to the tables, the information could be transported long distances by horse. The Egyptian people, also found a material called papyrus (material extracted from plants, they were very thin).
The discovering of the alphabet
In 1,500 BC in what is now Palestine, the set of symbols was developed to describe individual sounds, and these symbols formed the alphabet, putting them together forming words. This first alphabet was called Cyrillic was an adaptation from the Greek alphabet. The Latin alphabet was developed on the western countries.
Parchment, paper and print discovering

Later, was invented the parchment, which was obtained preparing both faces of a strip of animal skin.

This type of communication was becoming increasingly complex on having tried to move the information to big distances, and normally repeaters' use was done.
The Romans (430 A.C) used torches, in the top of the mountains to communicate in times of war. In many occasions, the enemy, could see the information (decipher), and this way the concept of the codification was introduced.

Meanwhile, in China, around 105 A.D. Paper was discovered.
In the middle of the 15th century, the German inventor Johann Gutenberg used mobile types for the first time in Europe to stamp the Bible. Thousand years later, when this technology came to Europe, it provoked a great demand of books (using a new machine called screw-press).
Thanks to the press (1438) and his diffusion in the European continent, there could be stamped steering wheels and rudimentary forms that they contributed to the decrease of the illiteracy.