Questions tagged [communication]
[language] as used to communicate between humans in writing or in speech. Also the development of the [technology] used for it. (Consider adding those tags as appropriate.)
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How difficult was it to spoof the sender of a telegram in 1890-1920's in USA?
For my current genealogical research, I'm interested in how telegrams were sent inside the USA, in the 1890's through 1920's. I do not have copies of any actual telegrams that were sent or received; ...
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Where can I find a picture or physical description of the A3 scramble telephone system?
Who has a picture or physical description of the A3 scramble telephone system, which was used for speech privacy by Roosevelt and Churchill between 1940 and 1943. The system was most likely located ...
user61079
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Where was the AT&T radio station in 1942 in New York?
How did transatlantic telephony of AT&T work in 1942? Where was the radio station? In New York?
I am studying the A3 scramble machine Roosevelt and Churchill used, which was replaced with the ...
user61079
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What was the last conflict in which radio Morse code communications were extensively used?
It did not become possible to encrypt voice communications in practical ways in the field until well after WWII (during WWII, the state of the art was SIGSALY - a SIGSALY terminal weighed about 50 ...
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Are there examples of encrypted messages with deadlines?
I'm looking for historical records showing that parties using coded messages (from the Egyptians to the Romans to actors in the American Civil War, etc) would sometimes stipulate deadlines by which a ...
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Were crosses frequently used as communication while exploring?
Were big crosses/little crosses a common method of communication during the Age of Exploration?
I have read some sources, such as this, Robert and Roberts' book A History of New Mexico, and other ...
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Why did Roosevelt and Churchill use voice-based telecommunication, instead of simpler text-based options which were easier to encrypt?
Roosevelt and Churchill used an extremely sophisticated telephone encryption system, SIGSALY, to communicate during WWII. In fact, they did not use it all the time because apparently it changed the ...
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How did pagination come to be used?
I've been gathering some information around the history of printing and noticed that the Gutenberg Bible did not feature page numbering. It makes sense pagination was not used then, even if it might ...
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How was the 1849 "Proclamation to the People of California" announcing the formation of a Constitution communicated to the people?
The images below appear to be an official copy of the 1849 Proclamation to the People of California announcing the formation of a Constitution. It is signed by Secretary of State Captain H.W. Halleck (...
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What did the English people during the Peasants' Revolt know about the Ciompi Revolt?
The Ciompi revolt started in Florence in June 1378 and the Peasants' Revolt started in England in May 1381, just three years later.
Did the news about Ciompi Revolt reach England in three years?
Did ...
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Why did USSR lay down undersea communications cable between Petropavlovsk and Vladivostok?
Why not just use a land cable that goes around the Sea of Okhotsk? A land cable is safer, and tapping it is harder. I screen cap Google Maps.
I know the undersea cable is more direct, but did it ...
user8309
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Did they really have individual telephone wires going from a central tower to each customer in Sweden in the late 1800s? [closed]
In 1887, they built this relatively high (45 meters) "telephone tower" in Stockholm. It was apparently built to hold the wires for all the telephone subscribers/customers in Stockholm. (On the photo, ...
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How much did a transatlantic telegram cost in 1914?
How much did it cost to send a transatlantic telegram – if the specifics matter, say from New York to Berlin – in 1914? (Early 1914, before the war disrupted communications.) How much per word, and ...
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Why exactly did telegraphs have to use "STOP" instead of a period and "QUOTE" instead of a quotation mark? (Or special codes.)
I've seen/read numerous old telegraph messages. They contain a lot of spelled-out punctuation. Why didn't they simply have the most basic few characters as part of the code, or at least turn a "STOP" ...
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When was the first electrical intra-battlefield communication?
When was the first time a commander used, for example, the telegraph to communicate with and coordinate different parts of the same battlefield?
I know that the telegraph was used extensively for ...
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Was it common to address politicians by their first names / nicknames in the past? [closed]
To me, it seems like politicians are increasingly more frequently being called by their first name (Bernie, Hillary, Donald) or they're being reffered to in the name's more familiar form (Jo Swinson, ...
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Was it possible for a message from Paris to reach London within 48 hours in 1782?
I used to have a paperback copy of Diplomacy of the American Revolution by Samuel Flagg Bemis, but now I can't find it. I seem to recall that American diplomats in Paris in 1782 (Franklin, Adams, Jay) ...
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Are there examples of wrong / inaccurate translations that had a major impact?
Are there examples of wrong or inaccurate translations that had a major impact on the historic course of events (e.g. prevent a conflict from escalate)? And are there examples where the interpreter ...
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What did the Jews during the First Jewish-Roman War know about other anti-Roman revolts?
The first Jewish-Roman War started in 66 CE. When I read about it, it sounds so futile: you have a group of zealots (literally and figuratively) revolting against a professional army from the period's ...
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Revolutions of communication
Different from other revolutions which took place just once like Harari's
cognitive revolution
agricultural revolution
unification of mankind
scientific revolution
revolutions of communication took ...
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Communication lag during the Age of Sail: what if enemy claimed that peace agreement was signed?
In the past due to the communication lag the hostilities could proceed long after peace agreements were signed. This was especially severe for the overseas territories and ships. I'm somewhat more ...
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Looking for a documentary on history of communication
I am looking for a documentary on the history of communication technologies.
I found one particular documentary but I'm trying to figure out its title.
The actual video is in French and appears to ...
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Telegraph availability in Russia around year 1875
Were there any telegraph lines available in late 19th century Russia (let's say year 1875), which would go deep into mainland Russia?
I can find some mentions about Moscow telegraph station being ...
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What methods were used for onboard ship communication during WW2?
What methods/devices were used for communication onboard say a fighting ship during WW2?
Did they have an intercom type system so different areas could communicate directly? Were there ship-wide ...
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How frequently did the KMT use telegrams to communicate; from where (roughly) and to whom?
This answer to the Chinese Language SE question Historical: How was Chinese written in telegrams and early computers? says (in part):
Following is a telegram code "dictionary" used by Japan ...
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When was the first known international call between two heads of state or government?
A number of international phone connections were established a little before or just after 1900:
Paris - Brussels phone line in 1886
England - France cross-Channel telephone cable in 1891
Britain - ...
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How long did it take to get news of the sighting of the Spanish Armada from Land’s End to London?
When the Armada was sighted, fire beacons carried the warning from Land’s End (western tip of Cornwall) to the rest of the country (this link has some details on how the system worked).
"Armada ...
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Did the Iraqis really only use landlines during Desert Storm?
I remember reading somewhere -- I think it was in a CIA or NSA briefing paper -- that during Desert Storm, the Iraqis refused to communicate by radio because they were too scared of the U.S. ...
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In what period were signature rubrics used?
A rubric is a flourish embellishing a signature; it's both decorative and a security feature. At least with regard to European languages, signatures are still used but rubrics were, as far as I can ...
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Maximum speed of communication prior to Trans-Atlantic Cable? [closed]
It is for me hard to imagine that major events, like the end of a war, etc. could only be transmitted at the speed of a ship across of the Atlantic although we frequently read this. However, a ...
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What is the first known instance of gift-giving backfiring across cultures?
What is the first time known that two cultures, unfamiliar to each other, exchanged gifts in good faith, only to find that the other interpreted it differently? In other words, when did gifts first ...
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How did the primary means of communication between the British government in Delhi and UK change during WW2?
During WW2, India faced a lot of violence from the side of the Japanese. During the Burma campaign, the British would have (sometimes I suppose) asked the British government what was actually going or ...
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What was the first army to have a radio operator in combat units?
What was the first army that had a radio operator in combat units? By radio operator I mean someone who carried radio frequency communication equipment into combat and used it for communications ...
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Early 20th century naval communication
During the Discovery Expedition (1901-1904) to Antarctica, a pre-arranged message point was set up at Cape Crozier so that relief ships would be able to locate the expedition. What exactly was that ...
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How long did it take mail to get between Madrid and Mexico?
Spain administered its main colony Mexico from across the Atlantic. Ships crossed regularly between Cadiz or Seville and Vera Cruz (both capital cities are inland). At the time of Mexican independence,...
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How much did a telephone call cost in the USA around 1920?
I am looking for data on historic telephone call prices in the US between 1920 and 1930. What did it cost to make a call? I know that, back then different rates were charged based on the distance of ...
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How Bell turn backed electricity fluctuations to sound? [closed]
Even though I could get how Alexander Graham Bell turned sound vibrations into electrical fluctuation as said in this article on Telephone history I couldn't get how he turned back electricity ...
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Early Telegraph Systems
My understanding of telegraphs is that you can only send one message at a time over one cable, if that is not accurate then this question is pointless.
I am curious how telegraph communication was ...
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Was there ever an occurrence of diplomatic communication using food?
Is there an example in history where two leaders, or even just foreign travelers, who could not understand each other's spoken language, communicated by food?
I am not talking about very specific ...
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What was the range of people's social lives like, before the technology for long distance communications developed?
We know a lot about some famous people from letters they have written and received. It seems that a lot more communication with people who were important in their lives was written instead of face-to-...
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What was the largest empire in terms of time of communication between its two ends?
What was the largest empire in human history in terms of the time required to deliver a message from one end of the empire to the other? How long was this time?
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How long would a letter take to arrive in England from America in 1890?
As part of my story, a letter is sent from England to America in 1890. I was wondering if there was a way to work out how long it would take and perhaps the cost of writing and sending letters.
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What was the first broadcast television programme?
Was it The Queen's Messenger or The Man with the Flower in his Mouth?
IMDB claims that The Queen's Messenger was the first, but I've always understood it was The Man with the Flower in his Mouth. So ...
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What capabilities did Southern soldiers in the American Civil War have to get news about the North?
My great-grandfather was a Confederate cavalry soldier fighting under Johnson's remaining forces after Lee's surrender. In his diary, he writes on April 18, 1865, "Good news today. Lincoln has been ...
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Historically, how did people living in distant regions communicate?
For example, how did Marco Polo manage to communicate with the Chinese and the Mongolians during his travels?
Did he learn Chinese? Did he manage to find a Chinese translator somehow? Was there a ...
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The Purpose of Mystery Object 40.9.11
In the summer of 1915, a wireless telegraph station in Sayville, Long Island owned by the German company Telefunken was caught sending covert commands to U-Boats patrolling the Atlantic Ocean. The ...
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Was the communication between Spitfire and other fighters' pilots encrypted?
If machines like SIGSALLY were occupying so much space like in the picture above, were the pilots' communication encrypted or somehow obscured in order to prevent the enemy from eavesdropping on the ...
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How did the Allies communicate during World War II?
I was wondering how the allied (America and England, since France was occupied by the Nazis) communicated securely with each other in 1943. I know that the SIGSALY existed, but I am most interested in ...
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Were new forms of communication and media usually condemned similar to how television/video games are now?
I'm sure anyone who is reading this has read at least an article, blog, or book condemning the consumption of television and video games as harmful to children, the behavior of teenagers, intelligence ...
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Which was more revolutionary for its time: Television or Radio? [closed]
In terms of broadcast technologies, which was seen as more revolutionary for its time: television or radio? How was each technology utilized in terms of its intended purpose and audience/users in its ...
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