Articles In This Issue Page 1: Pat Farrell Page 7: The Way I See It Featuring: Cathey Meyer
Page 13: Associate Splotlight Featuring: Alamo Title
Page 22: Guest Column Featuring: Aly Crawford
SERVING SOUTH TEXAS Vol.XL, No. 2
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SURROUNDING AREAS FOR 40 YEARS www.realestatenewsline.com
Page 23: News Flash
February 2022
How Did This Come About? Pat Farrell / Contributing Writer
PRSRT STD U.S. Postage PAID San Antonio, Texas Permit #1416
It almost seems that today’s children were born with a smart phone in their hands and haven’t let it go since then. I have heard teachers complain that no matter how often they request that all phones be put away during class many students will only get them as far as their lap and then continue to look down at them so as not to miss a message. But children are not alone in this unwillingness to separate themselves from their handhelds, as it is not uncommon to notice almost everyone on the streets, in meetings and in restaurants staring at a phone that is either in their hands or on the table next to where they are sitting. Do you suppose many of these folks would remember a time when long distance communication was not so convenient or even possible? The major problem with information exchange in the past was that it required the individuals to be in a line of sight to be able to send and receive a message. Such was the case for the Romans during the Punic Wars as Polybius, a Greek historian, made note of in The Histories. That system consisted of two soldiers, each stationed far apart but in a spot where they could see each other and each had a torch and pot of water
with identical water levels in which floated a stick bearing numbers, each representing a specific message. When the senders torch so indicated each would remove the plug from the pot and let it run until the next signal when they would replace the pot’s plugs and find at which number the stick floated. The messages were numbered so when the stick floated at VII perhaps the instructions might be to “fall back.” It is obvious that with this system messages were limited to the few whose numbers would fit on the floating stick. Beyond those early years letter writing came into its own but with the delivery systems so dependent on others for its success there was still no way to speed up receiving a message. In 1825, Samuel F. B. Morse, who at the time was supporting himself painting, was in Washington D.C., three days travel from home, painting a portrait of the Marquis de Lafayette when his wife died at home of a heart attack after childbirth. He did not learn of her death for days after and arrived home after she was buried. This event is thought to have been the impetus for Morse to utilize the information he had gathered during the recent years regarding electromagnetism to develop the telegraph with the ability to send messages over a single wire and the subsequent formulating of his Morse code which facilitated communication over great distances and is still in use, to some extent today. Following upon that great step forward another inventor, Guglielmo Marconi who was born in Italy in 1874 to a wealthy Italian landowner and an Irish mother from the Jameson family of distillers was another inventor. As a young man Marconi became fascinated with Heinrich Hertz’s concept of “invisible waves” generated by electromagnetic interactions and was soon able to build his own device that could send signals at least a mile away. But, Italy had no interest in his invention so he took it to England where the response was overwhelming, After perfecting his device there
he was soon equipping ships traveling transatlantic routes with radio equipment which is later credited with being responsible for the distress signal from the Titanic that helped save the survivors. Over the ensuing years several inventors tried their hands at creating a device similar to the telephone but failed to file application for a patent until March of 1876 when both Elisha Grey and Alexander Graham Bell applied for a patent on the same day, but Bell followed through and submitted the necessary paperwork which secured the patent. It was March 10th of that year when Bell made his first phone call summoning Mr. Watson to “come here! I want to see you,” and in October of that year the first long distance telephone call was made between Cambridge and Boston, Massachusetts. It was Thomas Edison who invented the carbon microphone that was used in telephones from that point on and well into the 1980s. In 1926 the first transatlantic call was made between London and New York and also in that year we look back upon the words of another inventor, Nikola Tesla, who during an interview for Collier Magazine, was quoted as saying: When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do his will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket. Just as in the past there were many “firsts” that followed the invention of the telephone and all contributed in some way to the “smart phone” of today. And, although
many of those living today will have no real memory of Hedy Lamarr (born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler) beyond the fact that she was a beautiful Hollywood actress during World War II, few are aware that she laid the cornerstone for today’s Wi-Fi (Wireless-Fidelity). Lamarr, working with composer George Antheil created a secret communication system in which frequencies would be constantly changing, making it less likely that U.S Navy torpedoes would be detected by the enemy, but the Navy was not interested in the invention coming from an unrecognized female civilian inventor. It wasn’t until 1958 that others in the private sector found the information outlined in her patent to be extremely useful in other ways and the Navy finally adopted the system for use during the Cuban Missile Crisis in the 1960s. But, it wasn’t until the late 1990s and early 2000s that Lamarr was recognized for her work when she and Antheil were given appropriate awards and were inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame. It is easy to see that it was not the work of just those inventors whose names have become familiar to us because they were recognized for their accomplishments, but it was also the work of the great number of other people who contributed bits and pieces to furthering information exchange but whose names we have most likely never heard in connection with the development of the communication systems in place today, the Smart Phone. We must also recognize that creative minds do not stop working just because one facet of a need has been met so it is always good to be on the lookout for what comes next and what will replace that which has become so “essential” to us getting through our busy day. And, just to tease your interest in the future you should be aware that most of today’s efforts are being directed towards mechanisms the human brain can use to control those electromagnetic waves without the use of any device – like today’s Smart Phone.