Category Communication

I have heard that listening is very important in communication. How can I improve my listening skills?

Listening is the first step in good communication. Speaking is the second step. According to me there are three kinds of listening. I would like to call these as three dimensions of listening.

First, there is factual dimension. At this level language is merely a statement of fact. For example, when someone informs us that it rained last weekend or that a company has increased its profits by 10 percent, we listen to statements of facts. Listening to such facts does not require much subtlety; anyone with a certain amount of attention can do that.

The second dimension of language is the intention. At this level one has to listen to more subtle intent behind what a speaker says. When a boss tells a subordinate, “I appreciate your coming to the office on time today,” she is conveying a different message from what the mere words would communicate. The subordinate who listens well reads the message as, “I do not appreciate your coming late to the office every other day”. Intentional listening requires greater attention and energy on the part of the listener.

The third and the most subtle dimension of language is the transformational dimension. Language has a certain alchemy that can transform the heart and mind of the listener. This transformation comes about in the listener through a process known as empathy. When listening is very deep, the listener is in touch with the spirit behind the speaker’s words. He listens with his heart behind his ears. The focus of the listener is not merely on the words or the intention behind them but on the raw energy of the words.  

This last kind of listening is the most effective. Try it!

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Your voice is a very important tool of communication. The tone, the volume and the pinch off your voice communicate a lot more than your words. A baby attracts much more attention by crying aloud ‘Wah’. The baby’s power of ‘wahs!’ is greater than an adult’s power of words.

Your voice conveys a lot when it is deep and deliberate. By the force of our habits and social conditioning we begin to believe that we can speak in only one type of voice. As a matter of fact you can vary your tone and voice-type with a little practice. In the privacy of your study you can deliberately change your voice by imagining you are a different person. Movie actors often practice speaking in different voices. Here is a voice-enhancing exercise prescribed by my teacher Justin Cohen that will help you develop your voice:

1. Sit in a relaxed upright position or lie down
2. Breathe deeply and slowly. While breathing in, your abdomen should expand. As you breathe out, it should contract. Your chest and shoulders should remain still.
3. Now, each time you inhale, allow the air to slightly vibrate your vocal chords so that they let out a soft deep sound like-Ahh!
4. While remaining relaxed, push the air out a little harder allowing the sound to grow louder and longer.
5. Now close your mouth and feel the air vibrate against your lips in a humming sound. If you are relaxed enough, your lips will tingle.
6. Finally, open your mouth and let the voice out with a little more volume. You can notice your body vibrating faintly like a washing machine.

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               Computers that are connected to a telephone line incorporate a device called a modem. It turns signals into a form that can be transmitted along the telephone line. The name ‘modem’ comes from the term Modulator-Demodulator. The device modulates, or changes, the digital signal from a computer into an analogue signal, which is the type of signal that travels along telephone lines. The modem decodes or demodulates the signals it receives back so they can be read by the computer.

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               Mobile phones, which are properly called cellular phones, allow calls to be made wherever the caller happens to be. They are called cellular phones because a territory is divided up into a series of small areas, or cells, each with a small radio station. When a call is made, the telephone sends a radio message to the base station, which in turn passes it to a mobile phone exchange. Here the signal can be routed to the ordinary telephone system, or transmitted back to another mobile phone. Mobile phones use low-powered microwaves to send and receive messages to and from the base station.

               Television pictures, radio and telephone communications are bounced off satellites to cover the greatest possible area of the world. Satellites orbiting the Earth must travel at high speed to escape being brought down by the Earth’s gravity. As the Earth itself is spinning rapidly, there is a point above the Earth’s surface where the orbiting speed of the satellite can be matched with the rotational speed of the Earth. At this point —35,900 kilometres above the Earth — the satellite appears to stand still and is said to be in a geostationary orbit.

Geostationary satellites can be positioned right over the areas where they are needed. They can also be used as spy satellites, because they remain constantly over a region of interest.

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               Television cameras break a picture into electrical signals, separating them into three colours (red, blue and green) and turning them into coded messages. Sound is recorded and coded at the same time. The coded pictures and sounds are transmitted by radio waves, electrical cables or optical fibres to the receiver. Inside a television receiver the signals travel to three electron guns — one for each colour. The electron guns emit streams of electrons, which are directed at a fluorescent screen. Magnets bend the electron streams so that they scan back and forth from top to bottom, exciting the phosphors in the screen and producing a colour image. They scan so quickly that our eyes see the images as a continuous picture.

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           Telecommunications is the passing of messages and information over long distances by means of electrical signals. These signals may be carried along wires, like telephone, telegraph and fax messages, or by radio waves.

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               Telephones transmit speech messages along wires by means of electrical signals. Telephones were invented as long ago as 1876.The handset of a telephone includes a loudspeaker and a very small microphone, which contains granules of carbon. When you talk into the microphone the sound waves of your voice cause a metal diaphragm to vibrate, and it presses against the carbon granules. The vibrations vary depending on the sounds. They change the very small amount of current flowing out along the wires to the receiver of another telephone.

               When the electric current carrying the signals reaches the receiver handset, the same variations in the current run through an electromagnet. This causes another diaphragm to vibrate in the earpiece, accurate reproducing the sound of the speaker’s voice.

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               We exchange ideas and messages by communication. Humans, as well as other animals, communicate visually and by sounds. Some animals also communicate by means of smells that convey messages. Humans differ from all other living things because we can communicate by means of symbols. These are compressed pieces of information, such as written letters or numbers that actually communicate very complex ideas.

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Tubes are present inside a conventional television set. In these tubes the images are broken down into small pixels with the help of a beam of electrically charged particles. The beam sends information about the colour and brightness of each pixel to a chemically luminescent layer on the rear of the screen. The electron beams light up the pixels on this layer depending upon the speed. They become blurred to form a picture for our eyes. Along with the fat-bellied tube televisions, there are also televisions with flat screens that have been improved very rapidly. 

Pictures can ‘run’ only because our eyes cannot register more than 20 pictures per second. If we see more than 20 pictures, they look very similar but differ only in minor things; our brain perceives them as moving. Flip books or cartoon films work on this principle. The movements could not be recorded with cameras for a longtime because the exposure times were too long. The first serial photography succeeded in 1872. The British photographer Eadweard Muybridge captured a running horse with 30 cameras. He mounted the finished pictures on a disc, which was rotated in a device. Through a viewing hole you could see a running horse. Later individual photos were recorded with just one camera on a single film. This was the birth of the cinema. 

In a camera obscura, which is a Latin word meaning ‘dark chamber’, light enters a dark room or a closed box through a small hole. If the hole was small enough, a very faint inverted image would be seen on the opposite wall. At the end of the 13th century, astronomers made use of this to observe the sun. In this way they could study its hot surface, without having to look directly at it. Today, we buy a special pair of goggles to look at the sun.

‘Nano’ is derived from the Greek word ‘nannos’, which means ‘dwarf’. Everything that starts with the word ‘nano’ is usually diminutive. Nano-robots are not bigger than a thousandth of a millimetre and can be even smaller. For instance, 1 nano-metre is a thousandth of a thousandth of a millimetre. Nano-robots help doctors in difficult operations. The research that is being carried out on magnetic nano-robots suggests that they can be released in the blood and can attach themselves to cancerous growths. If a rotating magnetic field is applied to the body of the cancer patient, the small magnetic robots in the cancerous tissue would start rotating. As a result, the cancerous growth would heat up and die. 

Sojourner, the small exploration vehicle that landed on Mars in July 1997, was controlled by the ground station of the American space authority NASA. Commands were sent to the Sojourner from there. It was asked to travel over the surface of Mars, take photographs, soil samples, and lots more. There were glitches too. On the first day, Sojourner collided with a rock because it was travelling too fast. And sometimes the computer onboard ‘rebooted’ so the robot ‘forgot’ what it was supposed to do.

Like all sounds, speech also consists of sound waves. The mouthpiece of the telephone has a microphone, which converts the spoken sounds into electrical current. The transmission of electric current is done through wires. In the earpiece, the electric current is converted back to sound waves. Earlier, the wires were made of copper, but today telephonic conversations are transmitted through glass fibre cables or even via satellite connections. Telephone calls over long distances were earlier possible only through telephone operators. Since 1970, however, we can make overseas calls directly. The telephone was invented by Graham Bell, who applied for its patent in 1876.

Don’t you think a book is much more interesting if it has lots of pictures? Pictures or illustrations also make it easier to understand things. The manuscripts of ancient times which were decorated with elaborate initials, miniature illustrations and borders were called illuminated manuscripts. Sometimes, these decorations were even made with gold and silver!Very early printed books were sometimes produced with spaces left for miniatures, or were given illuminated initials or decorations in the margin. Illustrated printed books began to appear in the late 15th century, in Germany and Italy. In earlier times, some books had been published from woodcuts, with text and illustration all carved on a single block. Early type-printed books were illuminated by hand. However, this was very expensive.  Although many early printed books, like the Gutenberg Bible, relied on hand-coloured illustrations, others quickly integrated the new printing, using moveable type for the letters, with the older woodcut traditions. Another early technique was etching, in which the lines of the picture were cut into a copper plate with acid. In either case, ink was spread over the carved illustration and applied to the paper

Typesetting is a presentation of text on paper or some other material, in a printed form. The word ‘type’ is used to denote a small block of metal or wood, bearing a raised letter or number on the upper end that leaves a printed impression when inked and pressed on paper. We know that by the middle of the 15th century, movable type had been invented in Europe by the German printer, Johann Gutenberg. By 1462, Gutenberg’s invention became accepted and the use of it spread throughout Europe.  Movable type is also called foundry type or hot type. In foundry type, each piece of type was cast into a precise size from metal which was an alloy of lead, tin, and antimony. Each piece contained a raised image of a single letter, number, or other character.  In setting type, letters were selected one at a time, and lined up in what was called a composing stick until it was almost full. Then, by using pieces of type with no face on them, spaces between words were adjusted to bring the line to the required length.  Each line of type was placed by hand in a larger box made especially for housing the type. The individually lines were laid out exactly like the page should look except that the type was backwards as if looking at it in a mirror.   The type was then inked and copies made directly from the type. When printing was finished, the type was taken apart, cleaned, and returned to the distribution box to be used again another time

The earlier flags of the Indian navy had the St. George’s Cross on them, and these were changed to an anchor within a frame surmounted by the state emblem, the Sarnath Lion.The navy blue Indian Naval Crest is also found in the flags of flag officers. Admirals fly a white flag with the red horizontal and vertical bars and the chakra in the middle. The flag of the vice admiral is similar to the Admiral’s flag with a red ball added. Rear Admirals, Commodores and senior officials all have their own flags too.   The Navy also its different badges for different positions, gunner, radar plotter, torpedo and anti-submarine officers, survey records, etc.

Many political and social movements use flags to get noticed, to attract more people, and to unify its members. The socialist movements use red flags to represent their cause. Anarchists use black flags to get attention.

While traveling by train, you might have seen railway men waving different colours flags at different times. Do you know what they mean? A red flag or a flag of any colour that is waved vigorously means only one thing…. STOP! A yellow flag tells the train driver to proceed with care, while a green, white or blue flag reassures him that it is okay to proceed.  A blue flag stuck on the side of a train means that it should not be moved because someone is working on it. A blue flag on a track means that nothing on that track should be moved. At night, the flags are replaced by lights of the same colour

Sports flags, in some form or other have been used in sports for years. They are used by officials to signify to the fans, other players and officials that a rule has been broken. They are also use to communicate drivers during motor sports, and with participants of water sports.  Soccer, rugby and football all have flags that are carried by the linesman and referees to signal when a rule has been broken. Other sports where flags are used are car racing, cycling and yachting rowing go –cart racing, and motorcycle racing. Fans of almost all sports wave flags in the stands to indicate support to their team. Many sports teams and organizations have their own flags. The most famous of these is the flag of the Olympic Games.

Flags have been in use since ancient times, and the oldest state flag still in use is that of Denmark. It has a white cross on a red background, and this cross was later adopted by other countries like Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland.The flag of Denmark is called the Dannenberg which means ‘the cloth of the Danes’ According to Danish legend, the flag fell from the sky on June 15, 1219, to the Danish king Valdemar ll. This makes it the oldest national flag in Europe still in use. The first recorded use of this flag was in the 1300s.

A flag in the air, and the word ‘flag ‘comes from an ancient Saxon word ‘flakken’ which means to fly or float in  the air. The word came into use between the 15th to the 16th centuries in various northern European languages. It signified a piece of cloth, bunting, or similar material that displayed the insignia of a community, an armed force, an office, or an individual.

Semaphore is a flag signaling systems. In this system the letters of the alphabet are signaled by waving a pair of hand-held flags in a particular pattern. The flags are usually square. They are red and yellow in colour and divided diagonally with the red portion on top.  The flags are held, arms extended, in various positions representing each of the letters of the alphabet. The pattern resembles a clock face divided into eight positions. Numbers are shown by special signals. Semaphore signals were used to exchange messages between other, but could see each other, but could not hear each other. They were used by railways to communicate with train drivers. Semaphore signals have generally given way to color light signals although there are still many places where semaphore signaling is in use.

Maritime flags are that flown at sea. A national flag flown at sea is called an ensign. There are strict rules and regulations for flying these flags.There is also a system for international maritime signal flags that represent numerals and letters of the alphabet. Each flag has a specific meaning when it is flown independently.

Cameras record images. Images that we see with our eyes are fleeting – one moment they are there, the next moment they are gone. These same images can be recorded and stored with cameras. But how is this done?   A still film camera is made of three basic parts – an optical element which is the lens, a chemical element or the film, and a mechanical element that is the body of the camera itself. Photography is adjusting and combining these elements in such a way that they record a crisp, recognizable image.Most of the inside of a camera is an empty space. The empty space is dark, because it is sealed off from the light outside. Light can only get in when a little door at the front of the Camera, known as the shutter, is opened for a very short time.The light passes through a lens which is a type of glass. The lens bends the light and ends up marking an image on the film at the back of the camera. When the light hits the film, the chemicals on the film change to capture the image. The film is then taken out of the camera and treated with other chemicals to make the image visible and permanent.

Storm warning signals are symbols and flags that give us information about sudden, violent and strong wind which is approaching, or a storm that has already formed. Other symbols caution us that a port is threatened by a storm, and of danger from hurricanes and cyclones. Storm warning signals also show the direction that a storm is taking, so that boats and ships can avoid these areas.  For people living in coastal areas, for fisherman and pilots, paying attention to storm warnings can save many lives. Storm warnings also play an important part in commerce, navigation and in farming

Deaf and dumb people many not be able to hear or speak, but that does not mean that they cannot communicate with others. Instead of talking as we do, they talk with their fingers and hands. We can also say that they communicate through a visual language. There are two kinds of deaf and dumb sign language. One method uses one hand, the other uses both hands. Different finger positions stand for different letters of the alphabet, and words are spelt out one letter at a time.Signs used by the deaf and dumb also represent ideas. Many signs use a visual image to convey an idea. For example, mimicking a pair of horns means a deer, or a trunk means an elephant.Sometimes, deaf and dumb people use facial expressions and other gestures in order to communicate faster. Nowadays, there are many techniques that teach deaf people to speak like we do. They also learn to read lips so that they can understand.

The first printed books looked very much like the manuscript books of earlier times. The printers modeled their type on handwriting, and even added decorations by hand.The Diamond Sutra, which is a Buddhist prayer on a scroll, made in China, is thought to be the oldest complete printed book. It was printed with woodblocks, and looks very much like a Chinese manuscript scroll.  The world’s first printed Bible is the Gutenberg Bible, which has 42 lines of text on a page. Gutenberg wanted his printed Bible to look just like a manuscript Bible, and modelled his type on German script. The decorations around the margins and the headings at the top of the page were done by hand after the book was printed and before it was bound.

Badges can be part of our everyday life. When you go to school, you remember to pin your school badge on your uniform. Your father may also wear a badge when he goes to work. A badge is something that you wear to show who you are, to which institution you belong, or what your rank is. It may also be reward for something you have achieved, or a sign of your authority.Badges are of great importance in the military. Everyone wears one to show his or her rank, and also signify any special training received and record note worthy achievements. Policeman wears badges to show their authority, and members of a club may wear a badge to show that they belong to a particular club or group. Sometimes badges are worn as a sign of protest, and sometimes as sign of mourning, like the black badges worn when someone dies   Badges can be made of many different types of materials… cloths, metal, plastic, rubber or leather. Some badges are quite beautiful and collecting badges can be an enjoyable hobby.  

Flags are rectangular pieces of cloth with a distinctive design. They are always flown from masts or poles. National flags are symbols of a nation and must be always given respect. Flags are important in the military where they are used to coordinate actions of different units and avoid confusion. A ship at sea flies a flag to identify itself, and the navy uses flags extensively for signaling Originally, flags were used primarily in warfare. To some extent, they remain a symbol of leadership, serving for identification of friend and foe, and as rallying points. Flags are now also extensively used for signaling, for decoration, and for display.  A person who is chosen to carry a flag during any ceremony is called a flag bearer. It is a great honour to be selected as a flag bearer, whether it is your school flag, or the national flag.

                                                                                                                                                                                          Military Badges

Flags have long been used to identify a ship’s nationality and to convey clear messages. Flags of different patterns and colours form an internationally recognized code for the letters of the alphabet and each also has a meaning of its own when flown individually. They are shown below.

International code                                                                                                                                             

A: I am undergoing speed trials.

B: I have explosives on board.

C: Yes.

D: Keep clear, I am in difficulties.

E: I am altering course to starboard.

F: I am disabled.

G: I require a pilot.

H: Pilot is on board.

I: I am altering course to port.

J: I am sending a message by semaphore.

K: Stop at once.

L: Stop, I wish to communicate with you.

M: A doctor is on board.

N: No.

O: Man overboard.

P: (The Blue Peter): I am about to sail.

Q: Quarantine flag.

R: I have stopped.

S: I am going astern.

T: Do not pass ahead of me.

U: You are in danger.

V: I need help.

W: Send a doctor.

X: Stop, and watch for my signals.

Y: I am carrying mails.

Z:  I am calling a shore station.

Can you imagine the confusion on our roads if there were no traffics signs or signals? Traffic signs and lights are important in that they give directions to people, warn us of dangers, control speed, and enforce traffic rules. Traffic lights are usually placed at the intersection of roads. They indicate when it is safe to drive, ride or walk. Everywhere in the world, a red traffic light means ‘stop’ and green light means ‘go’.Road signs were the first traffic control devices to direct travelers on their journeys. Today, road signs have many different purposes. Some have arrows showing the direction in which to go. Others have a slash inside a circle – a warning that certain vehicles and certain actions are not allowed Road signs also remind us of the speed limit, and give details about the road surface. They tell us when schools, hospitals and petrol bunks are nearby, and indicate dangerous turns on the road. It is important that we all learn the meaning of these road signs and traffic signals, so that accidents can be avoided, and we can have safe and comfortable journrys.

Have you seen pictures of totem poles? They are large wooden poles that are beautifully carved with many symbols. The totem pole of the Red Indians, or American Indians, provided a means of communicating their stories, myths and legends. They were generally carved from giant trees, and were made up of an arrangement of symbols.The symbols on the totem pole told a story or recalled an event. These messages and stories tell us a lot about the Red Indians, their culture and their way of life. Some poles were erected to celebrate cultural beliefs; others were just an artistic presentation. Certain poles also contained graves within them. But whatever their purpose, totem poles with their huge size, subdued colours, and intricate carvings covered with magnificent symbols are both awesome and mysterious at the same time.

In America, the first newspaper appeared in Boston in 1690, entitled ‘public Occurrence’. But it was immediately suppressed, and all copies were destroyed. The first successful newspaper was the ‘Boston News Letter’, begun by postmaster John Campbell in 1704. But it had only a very limited circulation. By   the eve of the Revolutionary War, some two dozen papers were issued at all the colonies. Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania would remain the centres of American printing for many years.  By the war’s end in 1783, there were forty-three newspapers in print. The press played a vital role in the affairs of the new nation. Many more newspapers were started, representing all shades of political opinion.  The top five daily newspapers in the USA today are the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post. The total daily and Sunday papers amount to more than 2,300. This figure represents the highest number of newspapers, with the highest total circulation for any country in the world.

Every morning, without fail, the newspaper arrives at your home. But 400 years ago, there were no newspapers at all. During the Middle Ages in Europe, handwritten newsletters were circulated privately among merchants, passing along information about everything from wars and economic conditions to social customs and human interest The first printed forerunners of the newspaper appeared in Germany in the late 1400’s in the form of news pamphlets or broadsides. They often had highly sensational content. It was between 1605 and 1610 that publications with topical information began appearing on a fairly regular basis. These publications appeared first in Europe, and were the first true newspapers.  In the English – speaking world, the earliest predecessors of the newspaper were ‘corantos’, small news pamphlets produced only when some event worthy of notice occurred. The first successively published title was ‘The Weekly News’ of 1622.

When you started learning the alphabet, do you remember your teacher telling you how each letter should be pronounced? Alphabets are different from pictograms in that an alphabet consists of different letters, with each letter representing a sound in a language.  Words are made of different letters put together.An alphabet is the quickest and most efficient way to write. Just imagine… with only 26 letters you can write all the words in the English language! Of course, different languages have their own alphabets. The Greek alphabet is different from the Hebrew alphabet, just as the Hindi alphabet is different from the Malayalam one! The Roman alphabet, which is widely used to this day, was derived from the Etruscan and Greek alphabets. The letters of an alphabet are written in different ways in different languages too. Some are round, while some have square, or even triangular shapes. With some alphabets, the words and sentences are written from left to right, while, with others, they are written from right to left!

It is not known who invented the first pencil. The pencil was first documented in 1565 by Conrad Gesner, and it consisted of a piece of graphite inserted into a wood shaft. European craftsmen (woodworkers) were the first known pencil manufactures, and it wasn’t until the late 1700’s that manufacturing techniques similar to those practiced today were developed

Almost 2000 years ago, in 105AD, a Chinese court official named Cai Lun watched a wasp making its nest. He saw the insect chew up pieces of bamboo, and then mix it with its own saliva to produce a pulp. The pulp was next flattened into a sheet by the wasp, by using its legs. This sheet was used to line the wasp’s nest. Cai Lun copied the wasp, and made a paste of bamboo and water. He then flattened the paste into a thin sheet, dried the sheet in the sun… and paper was invented! Paper soon replaced papyrus and parchment as the most popular writing material. The Chinese used mulberry bark and bamboo to make paper, while the Europeans preferred linen and cotton rags. Nowadays, paper is made from the wood of fast growing trees such as pines, fir and spruce. Paper mills have sprung up wherever there is a good supply of water and wood, producing paper of every colour and texture imaginable. Today, the ever increasing demand for forests into pulp to feed the paper mills. So it is very important that we do not waste paper, and also that we learn to recycle and reuse it

The Indus Valley civilization was one of the greatest civilizations of ancient times. We get much of our knowledge about this civilization from over 2000 inscribed seals that have been discovered in good condition. The Indus people did not engrave inscriptions on stones or place papyrus scrolls in the tombs of their dead. All we know of their writing is derived from the simple inscriptions on their seals. The inscriptions are in the form of some 400 signs. The signs are the written language of these people.These seals tell us a lot about the way the people lived, the gods and goddesses they worshipped, the animals they reared and, other interesting bits of information about their culture

The people in the countries around the Mediterranean and the Chinese all started using signs as a means of writing at about the same time. the people of the island of Crete developed a script known as Linear B which has ideograms, numbers and signs.  The Chinese way of writing was very complex, and has over 50,000 signs! Fortunately, only a few thousand are needed for everyday life, but Chinese is still a difficult language to learn. It has changed very little during the last 4000 years, which means that modern scholars can still read the ancient texts.  The Chinese characters are made up of 26 different strokes, and the Chinese place a lot of importance on the art of fine handwriting. In fact, Chinese children spend a lot of time copying characters before they can write quickly and correctly!

We know that the first form of writing was in the form of pictures of animals, people and objects. These were called pictograms, and they first appeared about 3000 BC. It was easy to read this type of writing since it was easy to recognize the symbols. But it was also a little confusing, because these pictures could not always express ideas or actions fully. So, ideograms or symbols to express thoughts and actions were developed. For example, a picture of a pair of legs walking can mean ‘go’.In time, these symbols changed their shape into signs that did not look much like the real thing… but they kept their meaning. In ancient Indian civilization for example, there were over 400 signs that represented things, and names of people and places

Can you imagine what it would be like if there was no writing? We would have to pass on information only through spoken words, and remember everything in our heads! There would be no books from which we could learn, and we would not be able to communicate with people far way.Writing is a method of putting down information so that it can be stored, and passed on to others. No one person invented writing. It evolved gradually from the need to keep accounts or record events. Writing took many different forms over the ages, from simple picture writing to modern scripts. It was done on different types of materials too… on rocks, clay, pottery… and of course, paper.

The ding-dong theory holds that speech arose because there is a mysterious connection between sound and our senses. People react to stimuli in the world around them by spontaneously producing sounds. For example, a nursing baby produces a sound similar to ‘mmmmm’ as it drinks milk, and this sound eventually became the word ‘mama’!

When you are surprised or hurt you make sounds like ‘OH!’ or ‘OUCH’. Some people believe that the sounds we make when we are angry, frustrated, sad or happy were the starting point for the development of language. This is called the ‘pooh-pooh’ theory about how language began… but to be frank, many people ‘pooh-pooh’ this theory!

Have you noticed how people use their hands to emphasize a point when they are speaking? The gesture theory about the origin of language states that man first started using gestures to communicate. These gestures began to be accompanied by sound that eventually developed into a language.We do know that American Indians used an elaborate system of gestures to communicate with each other. However, most people believe that speech and gestures developed together. There is really no proof that gestures came before speech, so the gesture theory is not accepted by many.

We all know that when a dog barks, it goes ‘bow-wow’. But how does that explain the origin of language? According to the bow-wow theory, language began as imitations of the sounds made by animals and other natural sounds. Thus the word ‘moo’ describes the noise made by a cow, while ‘meow’ sounds just like a kitten’s cry, and ‘plop’ sounds just like a drop of water falling!But this is just a theory, and many people do not agree with it.

The first men probably started using grunts and other sounds to communicate with each other. Gradually, specific sounds began to be used to denote specific things or actions. As man evolved, his brain became larger. The first time this happened was about 1.8 million years ago. He was now able to use two or three words to express himself. However, in this early form of language, there was no grammar or syntax.  About 500,000 years ago, another step in the evolution of man took place, and man’s brain became even larger. This enables him to remember more words, and also to develop some form of grammar with which these words were to be used. This was the beginning of human language as we know it

Have you heard a baby trying to speak? It just makes noises that sound like ‘goo’ and ‘gaa’. Well, the very first sounds made by early man were probably similar to the sounds made by babies!Human beings probably learned to make sounds by imitating animals. This sound making ability was then passed on from parent to child by mothers making soothing sounds to their babies. Babies learned to repeat those sounds, which sound just like grunts and gurgles to us.Gradually, certain sounds developed into specific meanings to those using them. Over hundreds, and perhaps thousands of years, man developed the ability to communicate through recognizable noise… and ‘speech’ as we know it today became the first form of communication between human beings

Predicting the future may sound like fun, but it is quite a risky business. Many of the predictions made in the middle of the last century about what life would be like today have not come true. At the same time, many things that were not predicted have happened! Could anyone have imagined in 1940 that mobile phones would spread like cobwebs all over the world  . One thing we can be sure though… the future will be different from what we see today. Air travel will probably be the most usual mode of travel for the common man. We will live in ‘Smart Homes’ with appliances that think and anticipate our needs… and may be evenGoing for holidays to other planets!  Electronic paper, home newspapers, wrist phones, holograms movies, pocket sized televisions, wall sized TV screens, interplanetary chats… the possibilities for the future of communications are mind boggling

It requires a lot of skill for a puny man to control a mammoth elephant. Mahouts have learned the skill to make the elephants do his bidding by uttering a command or by a gentle prod with his hands or legs. A rained elephant will turn to the left, when the mahout prods him gently with the toe of his right leg. If the repeats this manoeuvre with his left leg, prodding it to turn right, then the elephant will turn right. If he uses both his big toes to prod the elephant forward, then it moves forward. If the bottom portion of his bare leg is pressed backwards, the elephant takes it as an instruction to move backwards.Mahouts use about 20 words to give commands; they are a mixture of English, Urdu and Malayalam. Lots of elephants are brought from Bihar; they prefer their mahouts to talk to them in the national language-Hindi

 An alarm clock is something that helps you wake up in the mornings, but an alarm call by animals means something quite different! It is a sound made by animals when they sense danger and want to warn others of it. Birds have loud alarm calls that warn other birds that an enemy is near. Different species have different alarm calls, but the meaning of all calls is clear-WATCH OUT! DANGER!’

When you think of frogs, the word ‘croak’ comes to mind. Well, the Malaysian Tree frog is a very smart frog. It knows that in the noisy rainforest of Malaysia, its croaks will not be heard above the calls, shrieks and hoots of other animals.So what does the female tree frog do when it wants to attract a male? She taps with her toes on the leaves of a tree. The vibration is too delicate for human’s man to feel or hear. The male frog though, can feel the taps. He knows that the female is trying to attract him. The male frog will come rushing towards her.  The beating of feet by the female tree frog is, therefore, an important form of communication that is necessary to ensure reproduction.

Wouldn’t it be lovely if your pet dog or cat could talk to you? Well, the fact is that though animals have voices, tongues, lips, teeth, and a nose like we do, they can only make noises and not talk. Even when a parrot repeats things that you say, it is not talking. It is just copying the sounds that you make.The reason may be that only humans have a larynx or voice box that is slung low, so that it can resonate to produce something more than a grunt or a meow. It may also be that our brains are more evolved… in any case; the ability to communicate through speech makes human beings different from animals                                                                                                  

We know that animals communicate. But why do they communicate? The first reason is to warn off other animals from their territory. Through their communication, they challenge rivals and establish their superiority. The courting ritual of animals is carried out through their communication. Some animals display body parts to show they are ready to mate or to attract the opposite sex. Others stand or walk in a particular way, while still others release particular scents. Many animals have characteristic mating calls that are unique to the species, thus allowing them to mate only with members of their own species.Animals also make “food calls” that attract a mate, their babies or their friends to a food source. Some signals are made to warn other members of their group of a threat. There are also some signals that are used to modify the meaning of signals that follow, or came earlier. In short, communication helps animals to co-ordinate the vital functions of their lives …mating, gathering food, hunting, caring for their young, marking their territory, and defending themselves

Animals transmit messages animals and signal each Other in many ways. Facial expressions and body language convey a lot of meanings. The way an animal stands or holds its ears tells its rival or another animal in the group something about its intentions. Many animals also exchange visual signals.Similarly, animals convey messages through the sounds they make, and the scents they release. Animals often anoint their territories with scent marks that other animals can read as they pass by. So, animals are really very clever at transmitting messages without talking like we do!

Zoo semiotics is a very long word indeed, isn’t it? But it actually has quite a simple meaning. It means the study of the different ways in which animals communicate with each other.We all know that animals cannot talk, but this does not mean that they do not communicate with one another. They have several different ways of communicating, and this communication affects the behaviour of other animals around them. Zoo semiotics studies all this, and this science which is more than 40 years old, was founded by a distinguished American professor, called Thomas Sebeok

To be honest, no one knows exactly who invented the alphabet or when it was invented. One thing is likely though… the alphabet was not invented suddenly on one fine day. It probably evolved gradually from earlier forms of writing.  It is generally felt that the people living around Syria and Palestine were the first to use the alphabet. The origins of the English alphabet can be traced back to the Semitic alphabets developed by the people who lived on the Eastern shores of the Mediterranean. A 3600 year old sandstone sphinx has letters of the Semitic alphabet inscribed on it. When joined together, the letters from the name of the goddess Baalat. A 3000 year old tablet excavated in Syria proves that the people living there during that time developed an alphabet that represented the sounds of their own language. This alphabet has 30 letters, and a special sign to divide one word from the next.The Phoenicians also developed an alphabet of 22 letters, and since they were great traders, their alphabet influenced the development of writing in different parts of the ancient world.

The cuneiform script was created by the Sumerians around 3000 BC. It is one of the earliest known forms of writing.Cuneiform writing began as a system of pictographs. Over time, the pictorial representations became simplified and more abstract. Cuneiforms were written on clay tablets, on which symbols were drawn with a blunt reed called a stylus. The impressions left by the stylus were wedge shaped. This gave rise to the name cuneiform, which means ‘wedge shaped’.The records in cuneiform script that were kept by priests of this time have helped us to learn a lot about this ancient civilization.

The writing of ancient Egypt is in the form of pictures called hieroglyphs, which means sacred carvings. They can be seen today mainly in temples, tombs and other sacred monuments. A hieroglyphic symbol is a picture of an object that stands for a word, idea or sound used by the ancient Egyptians. There are over 700 hieroglyphic symbols. For example, the hieroglyph for ‘writing’ or ‘scribe’ is formed as a brush, a pigment bag, and a palette.  For everyday work, scribes used a more joined-up version like handwriting. It is called hieratic, and it was written quickly. Later, an even faster form of writing called demotic was developed.Writing in Egypt was done by scribes, who were trained professionals. They wrote on paper made of papyrus reed, and used thin reed brushes or reed pens to write. These pens were split at the end to hold ink. Making papyrus was a long and laborious process, so student scribes learnt the art of writing on bits of pottery. They were very cheap, and required no special preparation.Scribes were very important people in ancient Egypt, since only a few people could write. They held positions of great honour, and were well rewarded for their work.

We know that early man first started communicating through speech. However, he had no means of storing information, keeping accounts or recording events. The first step towards inventing writing was when man began to draw pictures of things he saw… mostly animals and birds, trees and flowers, the sun and moon.A giant step forward was taken when man learned to make pictures that represented not just an object, but a word in spoken language. The Sumerians of Mesopotamia were the first to do this over 5000 years ago. Later, the ancient Egyptians and Chinese also developed a form of picture writing.The next step was when each picture or sign stood for a single sound instead of for a whole word. This was the beginning of the alphabet. The Mediterranean people, the Hebrews and Phoenicians were the first to use an alphabet. In fact, the word ‘alphabet’ comes from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, ‘alpha’ and ‘beta’.The Phoenicians were great sea traders, and they needed a simple and efficiency way of keeping accounts. So about 3000 years ago, they developed a system of 22 pictures that stood for the sound of consonants in their language … sound like ‘k’. ‘b’ or ‘f’.  The Greeks later added signs that represented the vowel sounds like ‘a’, ‘e’, ‘i’, ‘o’, and ‘u’. Over 2000 years ago, the Romans developed the Roman alphabet which is still in use. Man first started to write on stones or trees using sharp objects. Later, he used reeds to write on clay tablets. The ancient Egyptians also made a kind of paper from reeds called papyrus. During the middle Ages in Europe, people wrote on parchment which was made by splitting animals skin into thin layers. They used quills made with goose or turkey feathers to write. Paper and ink as we know them today, came much later

You have all heard about marathon races, in which the participants run across very long distances. This game was first held to honour the memory of an ancient Greek soldier, who made a heroic long distance run just to communicate a message. It happened in BC 490. In that year Greece fought with Persia at the town of Marathon. The mighty Persians were miraculously defeated by the comparatively weak Greek army. A Greek soldier named Pheidippides was sent from Marathon to Athens (capital of Greece) to announce the victory. It is said that he ran the entire distance of 40 km without stopping, but moments after proclaiming his message to the city he collapsed dead, from exhaustion.

Have you seen men trying to move a fallen tree or some other heavy object? They will make sounds like ‘Heave! Ho!’ or ‘Yo! Yo!’ According to the ‘Yo Heave Ho’ theory, language arose from the noises made by people who were engaged in a joint effort to do something like lifting a rock or moving a tree trunk.The people who put forward this theory say that as people worked together in a group, their physical effort produced rhythmic grunts, which over time, became chants, and then language.

A slit gong is a type of drum that is hollowed out from a single log. The instrument is played by hitting the log with a stick.The walls of the log are not of the same thickness throughout. Different sounds are produced by hitting the log at different places. Sometimes, the slit gong is placed on a stand so that it vibrates more freely. The bigger the log, the louder the sound. Sometimes, the sound can be heard 8 kms away!  The slit gong was also one of the earliest instruments of communication. Messages sent from one village to another, would often be passed on by the drummer in the second village to another village further away. These ‘talking drums’ could therefore send messages for kilometres and kilometres in every direction.

The txalaparta was an instrument of communication that was used by the Basque people of Spain. Just as the Africans had their talking drums, these people have the txalaparta.The txalaparta was made of wooden planks leaning over logs. When hit with a special stick, it would produce a sound. The tone would vary according to where the instrument was hit. The Basque were thus able to send messages by producing different sounds on the txalaparta. Today, the txalaparta is no longer needed for communication. However, it is still widely used as a musical instrument.

The earliest form of art that has been found is cave art. It is found on the walls of caves around the world from Europe and Asia to Africa and Australia.Cave art consists of pictures, mostly of the animals hunted by early man. The first pictures were probably drawn with charcoal. Later, clay, lime and charcoal were ground into a powder, and mixed with water or animal fats. So, the pictures became more colourful and life-like. Early artists made brushes with animal fur, feathers, twings, and moss. Sometimes they used just their hands to draw the pictures.Cave art represents one of the first attempts of man to communicate by means other than speech, and is therefore, an important milestone in human development

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Tha-ki-da… the –ki-da…tha! Rat-a-tat-tat… don’t you just love the sound of different types of drums?Did you know that early man used drums as a means of communication? In Africa, New Guinea and tropical America, people used drums to send messages to other tribes who were far away. Such drums were of-ten called ‘talking drums’. They could warn a tribe that a stranger was approaching, or could convey a message from one person to another. Of course, you had to understand the meaning of different beats to understand what the drums were trying to tell you!Drums played an important role, not just in communication, but also in cultural and religious rituals as well.                                

Do you know what holograms are? They are three-dimensional images created by the intersection of two beams of light. Laser beams project these images that look exactly like the real thing. You can see the sides, top, bottom and even the top of an object.You don’t have to wear any special glasses nor need any special equipment see these holograms. Some holograms even appear to move as you walk past them and look at them from different angles. Others change colours or include views of completely different objects, depending on how you look at them. Holograms have other surprising traits as well. If you cut one in half, each half contains whole views of the entire holographic image. The same is true if you cut out a small piece — even a tiny fragment will still contain the whole picture. On top of that, if you make a hologram of a magnifying glass, the holographic version will magnify the other objects in the hologram, just like a real one. A team of researchers at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Centre have already developed the first true, three-dimensional, holographic movie. It is quite possible that a special projector will be developed that will allow you to watch holographic movies at home too. But you would have to wait a few years, for this.

 Digital paper is another mind boggling invention for future communications. It looks and feels like ordinary paper, but it is made up of millions of microscopic nano computers which can communicate with a worldwide communication network, change colour, display different pictures at different times, and even act as a speaker!Digital paper will interact with you. It can recognize your handwriting, and understand what you say. It can even be folded up and put in your pocket when you don’t need it!

Very soon, people will be wearing their mobile phones on their hands in the form of a watch or bracelet. In fact, a product has already been developed that is not only a phone in a watch, but it can also change into standard handset shape! This mobile is called the Wristomo and is an ultra modern mobile which features email and Web access.You might have seen people using their mobile phones to take, send and receive pictures. In the future, a camera phone will allow users to display the images on their own bodies. These phones are already being developed in the form of chokers, charms and chains. Fantastic, isn’t it?

To understand what Vo Wi-Fi is, you first have to understand two other terms… VoIP and Wi-Fi.VoIP which is the short form for Voice-Over-Internet Protocol is a facility that allows you to talk to people anywhere in the world through the Internet. Wi-Fi, on the other hand provides low cost Internet access through wireless networking. Places from which you can access this wireless network are called Wi-Fi ‘hotspots’.Wi-Fi has a lot of advantages. Wireless networks are easy to set up, and are inexpensive. If you’ve been in an airport, coffee shop, library or hotel recently, chances are you’ve been right in the middle of a wireless network. Many people also use wireless networking to connect their computers at home, and an increasing number of cities use the technology to provide low-cost internet access to residents. Most recently, the ‘next big thing’ has been to merge Wi-Fi with VoIP, producing one of the oddest terms you’ll ever see, Vo Wi-Fi! This stands for Voice over Wireless Fidelity. This simply means a Wi-Fi based VoIP service – or in even more general terms, a wireless based VoIP system.VoIP over Wi-Fi (Vo Wi-Fi) has great potential as a means of reducing telephony costs.

Micro Media Paper is the electronic paper of the future. It will allow entire books to fit on a single sheet using futuristic printing technologies that will allow super cheap colour screens to be produced. In fact, a company called Lunar Design is planning to bring out these ultra thin mini colour screens that would work on replaceable batteries and which can be controlled with touch sensitive buttons

Have you ever thought about a friend just a moment before the phone rang? Then, when you picked the phone up, it was the same friend you had just thought about! Is this a coincidence, or could it, perhaps, be a form of communication? Some scientists believe this phenomenon to be a form of communication called telepathy. In telepathy, there is direct transference of thought from one person to another, without using normal sensory channels.  The term telepathy was coined by Fredric W.H. Myers, in 1822, from Greek words tele and patheia. ‘Tele’ means ‘remote’ and ‘patheia’ means ‘to be affected by’.  The field which studies certain types of paranormal phenomena such as telepathy is called parapsychology. They believe that telepathy is a type of communication, which we haven’t completely explained yet. They are studying various reports about telepathy. But a technique, which shows statistically significant evidence of telepathy on every occasion, has yet to be discovered. This lack of accurate and reliable evidence has led sceptics to argue that there is no scientific basis for the existence of telepathy at all. In short, there is no consensus about telepathy. Para psychologists argue that some instances of telepathy are real. Sceptics say that instances of what seem to be telepathy are explained as the result of fraud or self-delusion.

Morse code enables letter to be sent, letter by letter, using a system of long and short signals, produced by depressing the key of an electric buzzer or any other continuous tone sound source or by flashes of light from a flashlight or even by puffs of smoke. Dots in the key below represent short signals. Dashes long one.

Sonar waves help us to ‘see’ by using sound. A sonar device fitted on a ship sends out sound waves that travel through water. When thesesound waves strike an object, they are reflected back. The reflected waves are received by the ship, and can be used to ‘draw’ an image of the object and its location on a computer screen.Did you know that the word SONAR stands for Sound Navigation and Ranging?

Morse code was a system of signaling in which letters and numbers were sent as short electrical signals which formed dots and long electrical signals which formed dashes.The Morse code was invented by Samuel F.B. Morse, a painter and founder of the National Academy of Design. He conceived the basic idea of an electromagnetic telegraph in 1832, and produced the first working telegraph set in 1836. This made transmission possible over any distance. The first Morse Code message, ‘What hath God wrought?’, was sent from Washington to Baltimore.

What will television of the future be like? It is quite possible that screens will grow larger and larger even as they grow thinner and thinner. TV sets will have liquid crystal displays like the screens of a hand held computer game. At the same time there will a stunning increase in the number of televisions per household, as small TV displays are added to clocks, and maybe even coffee cups! Who knows… television may even be placed inside books and, before long, books will evolve into no more than hundreds of small flat-screens stapled together!

We know that Marconi was the first person to build a machine that could produce radio waves by making a powerful electric spark. His radio set could send messages, but the first radio broadcast occurred on Christmas Eve in 1906, and was made by Reginald Fessenden, a Canadian engineer, from Massachusetts in US. Wireless operators on ships at sea were the first people to hear this broadcast. They were amazed to hear a human voice coming from their instruments as someone spoke. Then a women’s voice rose in song! Many of them called their officers to come and listen, and soon, the wireless rooms were crowded. Next, someone was heard reading a poem. Then there was a violin solo… and then a man made a speech   In this first broadcast, Fessenden himself played ‘Holy Night, Silent Night’ on the violin. He also read Christmas story from the Bible (Book of Luke) and played a phonograph recording of Handle’s ‘Largo’. It was truly a Christmas Eve to remember!

Phone lines are not used only for conversations. If you have a videophone, you can actually see who you are talking to, as the phone lines are used for faxes through which you can send pictures, photos, and letters. Computers also use phone lines for an Internet connection, with which you can browse and chat for hours!

Handling of mail often exposes postal workers to dust, especially when the mail bags are opened. Sometimes, dangerous chemicals may be split, and there are also electrical hazards that workers have to face. So postal systems have always been interested in mechanizing post offices. Between World War 1 and II, many postal systems introduced conveyor belts to move mail between handling points. The letter sorting office at Mount Pleasant in London was one of the most highly mechanized in the world Gradually, machines were introduced to prepare mail, and sort small letters from the bigger ones. There were also machines to stamp the date on letters and to put them neatly into sacks In modern, mechanized sorting systems, workers sit at a keyboard while letters are mechanically passed in front of them. Approximately fifty to sixty letters each minute are processed by the operator. Based upon the code entered by the operator, the letters are segregated into different bins, and then removed, bundled and dispatched by the postal workers

Only one country is permitted to issue postage stamps without including their country’s name. This is Great Britain. It was the first country to issue postage stamps in 1840. In place of its country’s name, Britain is allowed to include an image of its ruling monarch.

As postal systems developed, and the volume of mail they handled increased, many problems cropped up. To begin with, the cost of transport was high, and it was also difficult to calculate the exact cost of letters sent to other countries.Delivery was often slow, and this resulted in people using other means to send their messages. Many illegal postal services sprang up, causing financial losses to official postal systems. Gradually, these problems were overcome. The introduction of the postage stamp by Henry Bishop did away with uncertainties regarding that should pay the cost, and regularized charges. Since the day and month were also printed on the steps, unnecessary delays could be checked Today, we have speed post which guarantees 24 hours delivery to most places. We have come a long way indeed from the days when it sometimes took weeks for an urgent letter to reach us!

In 1680, a merchant named William Dockwra organized the London Penny Post, which delivered mail anywhere in London for just one penny. He also introduced the practice of postmarking letters to indicate when and where they had been posted.The penny post had seven post offices, and 400 collection boxes throughout London. Letters were delivered ten or twelve times a day in the centre of London, and four or five times in the suburbs. However, the penny post became so successful that the government took control of the operation in 1682, and absorbed it into the Post Office. From then on, charges gradually increased, and letters were no longer delivered for a penny.

Today, the postman delivers your letters to your doorstep, but it was not always like that. In the early part of the 19th century, envelopes were not used. Instead, a letter was folded and the address placed on the outside of the sheet. The customer had to take a letter to the post office to mail it, and the addressee had to pick up the letter at the post office. In big cities in the USA, mail would be delivered home if you paid the carrier. In 1863, free city delivery was instituted in 49 of the largest cities in the USA. By 1890, 454 post offices were delivering mail to residents of United States cities. It was not until the turn of the century, however, that free delivery came to farmers and other rural residents

You might have seen your parents give a letter to someone who is going abroad so that they can pass it on to your relative who lives there. Well, in earlier times, when there were no postal services, this was how letters and messages were sent. This method of using travelers to deliver messages to other places developed into a system known as post riders.So we can say post riders were a horse and rider postal delivery system that existed at various times and various places throughout history. Post riders collected and delivered mail over the course of their route, meeting with other riders at scheduled times and scheduled places. Letters and parcels would be exchanged and forwarded to the next place by the riders. In this way, messages could pass a considerable distance

Airmail is mail that is transported by aircraft. It arrives more quickly than mail that comes by road or ship, which is called surface mail. Airmail also costs more to send. If you want to send an urgent letter overseas, you have to send it by airmail. If you send it by ship, it could take weeks. In the case of airmail, the letter would reach its destination in days.

Today, the postman delivers letters to every home. In the past though, the post was a privilege enjoyed only by kings and emperors. They used runners to carry messages to other rulers and to their commanders during times of war. A king would have a message inscribed on a clay tile and send a runner to take it to anotherHowever, the ancient Egyptians though did have a kind of postal system and so did the ancient Chinese. The early postal systems depended upon post houses that served the carriers of messages or mounted messengers. The Romans created the most highly developed and dependable system in the ancient world. This system could deliver messages 270 kilometers in 24 hours

You can say that wireless communication is communication that requires no wires! To put it more accurately, it is communication that takes place through the air, using radio waves or infrared light. There is no need for cables or telephone lines for wireless communication. Wireless communication systems use devices called transmitters to generate radio waves. A microphone or other device converts sound or other data into electrical impulses. The transmitters change the impulses into radio signals that can be sent across great distances. Radio receivers pick up these signals, and turn them back into the original sound or messages.Wireless communication has also become a part of our daily life. It is used in our radios, televisions, mobile phones, remote controls and security systems. Wireless communications are a rapidly growing segment of the communications industry, and have mind boggling applications for the future.

You must have heard of planes and ships being located by radar, but what exactly is radar? It is a scientific method to detect and locate moving or fixed objects by using radio waves. In fact, the full form of the word ‘radar’ is ‘radio detection and ranging’. Radar can detect the distance, height, direction and speed of objects that are much too far for us to see. It does this by sending radio waves towards an object, and receiving the waves that are reflected from an object. The time it takes for the reflected waves to return from an object tells us how far away it is. The direction from which the reflected waves return tells us where the object is located.Radar can find anything from tiny insects to huge mountains. It is extremely useful as it works at night too and is not affected by the weather. In fact, it is used by weather departments to make forecasts. Radar is used to control the movement of aircraft and ships, and even to catch your father if he is over speeding!

A ringing cell phone can be a nuisance to others in some places like a theatre or at important meetings. A pager is very useful then, because it alerts you that someone is trying to contact you by vibrating silently. How does a pager work? If you want to page your friend, you must first dial the number of his paging service provider. You will then be connected to a computerized terminal which instructs you to key in your telephone number, and then press the ‘star’ key on your phone to complete the message. The paging terminal routes the signal to a radio transmitter. If your friend’s pager is switched on, and within the radio transmitters range, it will recognize the coded signal sent by the radio transmitter. The pager then converts the signal into data, and alerts your friend with a beep or vibration. You number will be displayed on his pager, and he can then call you back whenever it is convenient to him.

You can walk into nearly any office today, big or small and you will find a fax machine. Connected to a normal phone line, a fax machine allows you to copy send and receive documents instantly. The word ‘fax’ is the short form for ‘facsimile’ which means ‘an exact copy’. The fax machine works like a combination of a telephone and photocopier. The user places the paper with a picture or message into the document feeder of the sending machine. He then dials the telephone number of the receiving fax machine.An optical scanner in the sending machine records the variations between light and dark areas of the document. These variations are recorded as dots arranged in a series of rows or columns. A photo-electric cell converts the dots into electronic impulses which are transmitted through telephone wires to the receiving machine.The receiving machine converts the electrical impulses back into a series of dots. The decoded signal is sent to the print mechanism of the receiving fax. A duplicate of the original picture or message appears like magic!

Our lives have been completely changed with the invention of the telephone. No one person can really be credited with inventing it, though Alexander Graham Bell is acknowledged as the father of the modern telephone. Simply described, the telephone is a system which converts sound, specifically the human voice, to electrical impulses of various frequencies. These electrical frequencies are then turned back to a tone that sounds like the original The foundation for today’s telephone was laid in 1831, when an Englishman Michael Faraday, proved that vibrations of metal could be converted to electrical impulses. A practical telephone was actually invented independently by two men working in the United States, Elisha Gray and Scottish – born Alexander Graham Bell. Incredibly, both men filed for a patent on their designs at the New York patent office on February 14, 1876, with Bell beating Gray by only two hours!According to the famous story, the first fully intelligible telephone call occurred on March 6, 1876, when Bell, in one room, called to his assistant in another room. ‘Come here, Watson, I want you.’ Watson heard the request through a receiver connected to the transmitter that Bell had designed.

 They do, in order to make their task easier. The angler fish, for example, has a fleshy growth dangling from its forehead in front of its jaws. This is a form of visual communication which deceives smaller fish into thinking that the growth is food. When the smaller fish attempt to take a bite of the growth… SNAP…the angler fish gobbles them up! 

 Those of you who have seen gulls near the beach would have heard them communicating by screeching at each other. In a colony of gulls, all the little chicks will be crying at once and a mother gulls learns to identify the call of her own chicks.However, gulls use body language a lot in order to communicate with each other. The position of the head, and the way it stands, signals a gull’s intentions. An upright posture indicates that it is likely to attack. Sometimes, a gull will lower its head and pull at grass when it is feeling aggressive.

 Elephants have many ways of communicating with each other. They use the trunk, the ears, the tail, body language and naturally their voices too.The way an elephant holds its trunk tells other elephants whether it is going to attack or defend itself. Elephants also touch and smell each other with their trunks to find out where the other elephant has just been, what it ate and how it feels. Elephants are capable of cornmunicating through their senses and through smells. They express joy and excitement by flapping their ears. The sound of ears beating on the skin is picked up by other elephants as a message to get in touch. The elephant’s tail is used to probesorroundings which they cannot see.Elephants can communicate with each other over great distances using their voices and hearing. Fellow elephants who know each other with quiet rumbling or purring which reminds one of a running diesel engine. Calves bellow loudly for their mothers when they feel lost. Anxious, attacking and attacked elephants  It is also known that elephant’s converse over great distances using infrasound which are low frequency sounds that human beings cannot hear. So, the next time you see an elephant standing frozen, with its head raised and ears sticking out, don’t disturb it…it is listening to a message that you cannot hear!

Experiments conducted by scientists seem to prove that dolphins do have a sort of language of their own. Dolphins appear to communicate with each other using an assortment of squeaks, whistles, and clicks. It is thought that they are warning each other of danger or if Food is nearby, but we are not yet certain exactly what they are saying. Some scientists have also discovered that dolphins can be trained to understand quite complicated commands given to them.

When a honeybee finds a big garden of flowers brimming with honey, how does it let its friends know about it? It hurries back to the hive, and does a little dance!Honey bees communicate with each other by dancing. The purpose of the dance is to alert other bees where nectar and pollen are located. The dance explains direction and distance to  The honey bee performs two types of dances…the round dance and the waggle dance. The round dance is performed for food sources close to the colony and the waggle dance used for food sources that are far Other bees attending these dances somehow-no one knows exactly how- learn the distance, direction, and odour of the flower patch. Once they have this information, they too fly directly to the flower patch in search of pollen and nectar

If you have seen a peacock spread out its feathers and dance, you will agree that it is a magnificent sight. But have you ever thought why it does this? The reason is quite simple… it wants to attract the female of its species which is known as a peahen! Dancing by the peacock is also an act to impress the peahen in front of him

Pheromones are chemicals released by living organisms to send messages to individuals of the same species. Pheromones play an important role in ensuring the reproduction of a species. They also serve to warn other members of the species of danger, to mark out territory, and to indicate food  When an ant is disturbed, it releases a pheromone that can be detected by other ants several centimetres away, causing them to run about as they work to remedy the Certain ants, as they return to the nest with food, lay down a trail of pheromone. This trail attracts and guides other ants to the   Some pheromones are deposited with the urine or faeces of an animal to mark its territory and warn away intruders. This is why you see dogs urinating on lamp posts!

Most of the time, animals communicate with their own species. This is especially true of mating signals, since animals must be able to communicate with their own species to mate and reproduce. A male elephant seal, for example, will give a loud roar that tells female seals where to come ashore for breeding. Communication within the species is also important in the case of caring for the young. A mother gull must be able to recognize the calls of her own chicks so that she can find them in a thickly populated gull colony, and feed them.But communication also takes place between different species. This is especially true of species living in the same area. Recognizing the warnings given by another species can be very helpful in avoiding danger. In Africa, grazing animals pay close attention to the keen eared zebra. If a zebra suddenly starts running, the other animals know that an enemy is approaching, and will flee too.

Animals communicate with one another in different ways. The sounds made by an animal, its behaviour and the way it looks at another animal are three   important means of Taste and odour, electrical impulse and touch are also used to attract or drive away another animal. Sometimes an animal uses a combination of different mediums to get its messages across most effectively.

Smell is probably the most common basic means of animal communication. Even the most primitive animals react to odours given off by their own, or other species.Animals may use scents, to mark out territorial boundaries, to attract mates, to warn off intruders and predators or, in some cases, to attract prey. Animals of all kinds rely to a great extent on their hearing ability in order to succeed and survive, and this is called acoustic communication. Among mammals, generally speaking, small animals squeak, and large ones rumble. The acoustic communication signal most frequently heard by humans is, of course, bird song. The largest of all animals, the whales, appear to be experts in the art of communication by sound, with each whale of the same species having its own favourite ‘songs’ which it repeats at intervals.Visual signals may take the form of gestures and displays, facial grimaces, body posture or mimicry. Each species has its own way of using its facial expressions, body language, gestures and body markings to communicate effectively.At another level, animals may communicate a simple message through the art of mimicry. The markings on the wings of the peacock butterfly look like large eyes to frighten off its enemies. The same is true of the harmless hoverfly that resembles the wasp.

When a monkey makes faces at you, do you know that it is trying to communicate with you? Visual communication may take the form of facial grimaces, gestures, body language, displays, and even markings on the  A peacock’s extravagant display of feathers is a form of visual communication. The male rabbit will use the white underside of its tail to attract the attention of a female, while the female may use the white of her tail as a visual signal for her young to follow when she is leading them to the safety of the burrow.Dogs and wolves make use of body language, as do cats, monkeys and many other animals. The attitude of the tail when two wolves meet will indicate which of the two the superior is. Horses will hold their ears or tail in certain positions to signal pleasure or alarm. 

 It is true that animals cannot talk like we do, but they do make noises that other animals can understand, even if we can’t!Birds do this when they chirp and sing cats when they meow and purr, and dolphins when they click and whistle. Many of these noises translate to simple phrases like ‘I’m hungry’, ‘I’m angry’, ‘feed me’ and ‘leave me alone’.Other animals use signals and sign language to talk to each other. Bees do a complicated dance to tell other bees in which direction to go to find food. Howler monkeys will howl to tell other monkeys to keep off their territory, and some birds sing both to attract mates and defend their Will we ever be able to understand what animals are saying? Maybe, one day. It’s possible that, in the future, we’ll have computers so powerful that they’ll be able to decode the dolphin clicks even to translate Cuttlefish into English! 

If you rub your kitten under the ear, it will make a purring sound. Do you know why? Cats purr to let you know that they are feeling good! Sometimes, though, when they are hurt, they purr to comfort themselves.

 In short, purring is a cat’s way of communicating, and when a healthy cat purrs, it is a sign that it is happy and at peace. 

A special kind of postal system, which existed in the princely states of Travancore and Cochin, in Kerala, was known as the ‘Anchel’. It was introduced by a British officer Colonel John Monroe in 1811. He was the Resident of the English East India Company in Travancore and their political agent in Cochin. He was also the Dewan of Travancore State. In the beginning, the Anchel service was used to carry only royal implements, government letters, and flowers as offering to the Sree Padmanbhas swamy Temple at Thiruvananthapuram, owned by royal family of Travancore. Later, the system was opened to the public for a fee of one chakram (copper coin used in Travancore. One rupee was equal to 28 chakrams).

            The Anchel office was headed by an ‘Anchel Pillai’ (the post master). Each Anchel sepoy had to carry the postal articles for a fixed distance, and then hand it over to another person. It was like a relay race.

            The Anchel sepoy used to run with a metal rod fixed with bells, in his hand. The rule was that when people heard the sound of these bells they had to make way for him. Postal runners were allowed to occupy the centre of the road, and any obstruction made to the postal runners was considered a serious offence.

            The Anchel system continued even after the Travancore and Cochin states were brought together to form the Travancore Cochin States in 1949. In 1951, the department of Anchel was merged with the Central Government’s Postal Department

How does the letter that you send reach its destination? In early days, mail was carried by riders on horseback. Sometimes, boats and carriages would also carry parcels and letters. Fees had to be paid in person to the carrier, both by the person sending the mail, and the person receiving it.

        In 1858, letter boxes were introduced ob streets. People did not have to go to the post office to mail their letters or pay fees. Free delivery of service was also started by 1863. Letters and parcels were carried by train to different cities and later on, to villages in rural areas as well. The coming of railways really increased the efficiency of the postal systems, and made delivery much faster. Today, railroads, automobiles, and airplanes are all used by the Post Office to bring your mail to you as fast as possible.

The Pony Express was a fast mail service crossing the North American continent from the Missouri River to the Pacific coast. Messages were carried on horse-back relay across the plains, deserts, and mountains of the Western United States. Compared to earlier delivery services, the Pony Express was very fast.

            In 1861, telegraph wires connected New York and San Francisco, and the Pony express riders went out of business. But their courage and determination to deliver messages through rain and snow, sleet and ice, over the toughest mountain trials and harshest desert have become legendary.

Today, when you want to send your friend a message, you just send a letter. But 3000 years ago, King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba exchanged messages by carrier pigeons. These are specially trained pigeons which will find their way back home when they are released. The Egyptians and the Persians first used carrier pigeons 3,000 years ago. They also were used to proclaim the winner of the Olympics.

Carrier pigeons served many purposes during the war, racing through the skies with airplanes, or even being fitted with cameras to take pictures of enemy positions. But one of the most important roles they served was as messengers. First an important message could be written on a piece of paper. Then, that paper neatly folded and secured in a small canister attached to a pigeon’s leg. Once the pigeon was released, it would try to fly to its home back behind the lines, where the message would be read and transmitted to the proper

Probably the most famous of all the carrier pigeons was one named Cher Ami, two French words meaning ‘Dear Friend’. Cher Ami flew 12 important missions to deliver messages. Perhaps the most important message he carried was the one that saved the lives of over 200 American soldiers, though he was badly wounded by enemy fire.

Computers play an important role in communication. Large companies use a network of computers to run their business. When people cannot meet in person to discuss matters, they can use video conferencing to share ideas even if they live in different continents. Video conference is a system where computer networks, telephones and video cameras are used to let people see and talk to each  E-mail is also an important tool of communication if you have a computer and an internet connection. E-mail is nothing more than sending and receiving messages through your computer. People use e-mail for business, to keep in touch with friends and relatives, and to work on a project with someone a hundred kilometres away. The internet is also used for communicating in chat rooms and newsgroups. You can chat with a friend who is far away by typing or even speaking to him as you would do with a  New ways of using computers for communication are being developed at a fast pace. In addition to using videophones to speak to, and see people for way, cars can now find routes to avoid traffic jams, and even give you directions to reach a particular place. ships and trains, planes and spaceships, all depend on computers in one way or the other

Did you know that your computer can be connected to another computer in Africa or America? This is possible because of a giant network called the internet that connects computers through phone lines, cable and satellite links. If you take an internet connection, your computer becomes a part of this network.  An internet connection will allow you to communicate with other users all over the world through electronic mail or email. You can also get access the World Wide Web, which is a vast store of information. You can download this information on to your own computer, copy it and print it. The World Wide Web has many sites that give you news and entertainment too.  So, we can say that the three main uses of the internet are communication, research and ‘publishing’ on the World Wide Web. The Web allows for the display of still images, moving video, audio and text in any combination. The fact is that once you start using the internet, you will find that ‘browsing’ or ‘surfing’ the internet is a very good way to learn a lot… and have a lot of fun as well, for you can play many exciting games on the internet

Most deaf people learn to lip-read. There is an internationally recognized sign language also. Below you can see the sign language of the alphabetical system using one hand.