We live in modern times, with computers and email and internet. But how modern is that really? Actually all of that are historical inventions, done very long ago. II mean, displaying text on a color LCD 25" wide screen, using the latest software, that's no invention. The invention was on-line displaying text at all, which comes from another place on the planet. Oh boy, and that was done ages ago already.

Sending electronically coded text, was first done in 1832, before the invention of the electron tubes. When Mr. Marconi invented the Morse code, this was a break through. Morse is what information technology calls a tri-state code. So not digital, but three conditions. If you analyze how Morse works, you will note it is a genius system, dealing with the problems of a bad signal path in a great way. Original Morse worked with "pips" only. They could transmit a "radio" signal all over the world, without radios or electron tubes! How did that work? Very easy. A man named Hertz discovered the LC resonator effect. (So a coil in parallel with a capacitor). He just let flow DC current through the coil, and when switching that off, something happened. He found there was a short and very powerful resonance burst. Imagine he found that out when electricity was unknown. The resonance was in the range of a few hundred kilohertz.

This method was used for transmitting electronically coded texts. At the receiving end, there was a crystal receiver. So that was the same LC, connected to a huge antenna. If the sender would send a burst, then at the receiving end, that would generate a small HF signal. Enough to rectify this with crystal detector (first solid state diode). This small DC voltage was passed on to a head phone, and you would hear a tick. The distances between the ticks was "small" for a "dot" and large for a "stripe". Also you could send nothing which is a "space". You can send it with any baud rate you like, because the (human) receiver would synchronize with the sender.

Later, in 1891 they created extremely powerful generators of RF signals, by just making an AC generator like an electric alternator, and drive that at 3000 rpm with a gear box and a steam engine. This way they could create a long wave RF frequency, latest models giving a few hundred kilowatt of energy. Mind you electron tubes were still unknown. The limitation with these that the alternator maximum rpm allowed a frequency of maximum 8000 meter wavelength. The bigger they were, the lower the maximum frequency. Still for it's time a great machine, and they could overcome very large distances with it via air.

For better electronic processing with automatic (relay based) equipment, the ASCII code was invented,. It is still used in today's computers as method to save and transmit text.

Look what I found here.   This is the telegram alias of the Neuberger company.   Click on the picture and you'll see they nicely reserved the alias "Voltmeter",  and used that back in 1935!

Here is some history about email, when you're interested

We all know what AOL means, but do you also know when America went online? It was in 1858 when the first sea cable between Europe and America was successfully installed. So from now on voice and data transmission was possible over this line. Unfortunately it worked only a few weeks, and the cable got leaky and stopped working.

Around 1922, an email system was established in any post office on the world. For an amount of 25$ you could have a short message being send to anybody who has a telex receiver in his company, or otherwise have it send to his nearest post office, where it would print out automatically, and then was send to the receiver by normal mail, the same day, or privately hand-carried there for some extra charge. The official rate of the Berlin Post office 1922 was: 1 DM per word, plus 10DM basic charge.

In 1938 all German government sites were internally inter-connected by Telex. It worked like today's email, only the employees had no personal email system on their desk, but they had to go to the TELEX lady, who send it for them.

Somebody writing an email in the post office 1951, using a Telex machine

Here is a picture of a Telex machine, and it does all you computer does now, when you write a text-only email.

On the right side you see a something like phone but it's a dial only. You had to dial the number of the receiver. This is like the email address. A switching system, similar to telephone switches would direct the transmission to a machine at the receiver end. (Technology was the same as for phone calls). Then when the connection is made, you can start to type the message, which is send by ASCII to the receiver, and printed out automatically. (See the paper roll at the top). It already used ASCII code, still used today for "text" mode emails. What you see pictured here is a modernized version of Mr. Gauss' invention of 1832.

Believe it or not, but when I started working for Hewlett Packard as a sales engineer, we still had a system like this installed, to be compatible with customers who used it for sending orders. We used it until 1992.

So if you think, the big difference between now and then is, that you can send pictures too by email, and not only text, then read this. Pictures were transmitted over (some) distance at first by Mr. Nipkow, who scanned a picture in a mechanical way, and showed the result of that on a projector screen which could be as far away as the line would carry the electronic signal. The first official electronic transmission of a picture into some other part of the world was in 1930 from Berlin to Nanking, China. The signal was send by short wave Radio transmission.

Hewlett Packard had a worldwide internal email system called HP-Desk, developed in the 1970's, and ran on the HP150 personal computer. (the first office PC on the world)

1986 model HP150 computer

The HP150 was the first personal computer, before the "IBM PC". It worked with something like MSDOS, and was a bit scientific.

The data connection was by a modem connection, and for the user it worked the same as today's email. I got one on my desk first in 1986, and I was so amazed being able to send an EMAIL to any HP employee worldwide. I was a major competitive advantage, because almost no company had that. You could send text,  and add files. Just NO difference whatsoever with today's email,  only it was in good old "computer green" no color display.  A manager could use it at home too. When you visited  another HP office, you could do your email there if you wanted.  They spied on you too.  Your manager could read your email, by just using YOUR Email name, and HIS Password. Most managers didn't tell the employees. My manager was a very honest person, and he was so upset that this was possible at all, that he warned me for it. I did not believe it was possible, so he just opened my email with HIS password, and it worked in the read only mode. He realized that HIS manager could read HIS email too, which he though was disgusting. Later this was forbidden practice, because Email was by German law defined then as "postal". So they had to obsolete this remarkable hidden feature.

On the top of my HP150 was the first inkjet printer of the world. It was invented by Hewlett Packard I was told. Well was it really? Here is a publication in the "NZZ" Neuer Züricher Zeitung from.... 1943.