For this Marconi received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1909 and history books would refer to him as “the father of radio”. Shipping companies began to see the usefulness of radio telegraph for passenger communication, navigation reports, and distress signals and began training their operators to use the radio. These men became known as “Marconi Men” and the Marconi Company radio became standard issue on large vessels including passenger vessels like the RMS Titanic. On the fateful night of April 14, 1913 when the RMS Titanic struck an iceberg it was a Marconi operator that summoned the RMS Carpathia to recue 700 survivors. (FCC, 2015) It should be noted that Marconi was not the only scientist working on the long-distance wireless telegraph. Nikola Tesla, who had just created the Tesla coils, realized that he could transmit and receive radio signals when tuned on the same frequency using his coils. According to PBS.org, “By early 1895, Tesla was ready to transmit a signal 50 miles to West Point, New York…But in that same year, disaster struck. A building fire consumed Tesla’s lab, destroying his work.” (Pbs.org, 2015) If Tesla would have been successful in his attempt to transmit his signal, he would have beaten Marconi by five …show more content…
Joseph Licklider, a psychologist and computer scientist, accepts a job directing a division of ARPA. He has his people start researching the possibility of time-sharing computers and sowing the seeds for the Internet. Moschovitis et al. reports that:
By 1968 Larry Roberts, the ARPAnet’s original architect, had devised an outline of the network. It would rely on machines he had dubbed IMPs (Interface Message Processors), which would connect the individual sites, route messages, scan for errors, and confirm the arrival of messages at their destinations… (Moschovitis, Poole, Schuyler, & Senft, 1999)(p.61)
In December 1969, the ARPAnet’s four-node preliminary trial run is a success and in two short years another twenty sites have joined the ARPAnet across the country.
By 1977 the Internet has arrived and exchanges its first message between three distinct networks. According to Moschovitis et al. (1999) “TCP was the tool that enabled distinct networks to communicate with each other.” (Moschovitis, Poole, Schuyler, & Senft, 1999)(p.90) The message travels 94,000 miles from a mobile unit, over the Atlantic Ocean via satellite link, and via radio link to an ARPAnet