Planet Broadband

Chapter 2. Broadband’s Birth

NETWORKS THAT ALLOW US to communicate thoughts, expressions, languages, ideas, and pictures across distances have been around for a long time. As early as the fourth century, B.C., people are believed to have employed crude forms of networking by shouting to one another from hilltops and towers with the aid of megaphones. In ancient Persia, messengers solved the limitations of voice by traveling on horseback to deliver information within a day from one city to the next. Over time, without wires, electricity, or circuits, humans developed increasingly clever ways to transmit messages across the land. By unleashing puffs of smoke up into the sky, native American Indians conveyed messages to their tribal brothers across ...