Can you score 100 on this tech history quiz?
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- Опубликовано: 14 окт 2024
- Ask any of the underpaid and underqualified people working inside this AT&T store what the letters AT&T stand for. They won't know. Do you?
Yes and if that AT&T employee is particularly clever--or smarmy--they may say something like "AT&T stands for integrity and customer service." No no no. What you want them to tell you is just what the LETTERS AT&T stand for. They'll stare at you as if you just asked the stupidest question ever. And working in a phone store, they've heard some stupid questions.
So, never mind them. Do YOU know what the letters AT&T stand for? Is it:
American Tech & Telephone
Amherst Telecommunications & Technology
American Telephone & Telegraph
So, that's right, it's. . . TELEGRAPH. Telephone and Telegraph. Before smart guys figured out how to send the human voice over a wire--the Telephone--they had figured out--around 1832--how to send blips over a wire. Clicks. Specifically, two different kinds of clicks, a long one and a short one. Somebody took the alphabet and made up a code for each of the letters, involving sequences of these clicks. So messages could be spelled out and sent, over a wire, one letter at a time. What was the name of the person who thought up this code?
Ashley Thornwhistle
Samuel Finley Breese Morse
Hillary J. Squarepants
Well, it's got to be the middle one, right? --- Who would make up a name like that? So yes, it's the middle one, Morse.
And what do we call his code? Is it...?
Samuel Code
The Hammurabi Code
Morse Code
Now if you don't know this one, I guess this stuff is all new to you. You could work at AT&T! ---
It's Morse Code, of course.
And the system for sending this Morse Code over wires was called Telegraph. Telegraph is a word concocted from two Greek words, the first of which, "tele-" means "far off, at a distance." The second word, "graph," is a word that means writing. So "telegraph" means "writing at a distance." Like a letter, but faster.
What the Greeks originally meant by this word "graph" or "graphia" was:
Cartoon drawings of political figures with exaggerated features
To scrape or scratch on a clay tablet with a stylus
A quill pen
Yes, this is a hard one. The correct answer is --- the scraping and scratching on a tablet. And it came to mean the process of writing or recording something.
So in the 19th century world, telegraph was high tech. All of electronics, as we know it, traces its roots back to the telegraph.
Then in 1875 there was a Scotsman up in Canada who figured out how to send the human voice over a wire... a kind of "acoustic telegraph." That guy's name was:
Alexander Graham Cracker
Alexander Golden Grahams
Alexander Graham Bell
Annnnnd --- That's right, it was Bell who invented what came to be known as the telephone. You knew that one. Telephone. There's that Greek again. "Tele" for distance, and "Phone" for voice or sound. And so as "telegraph" is writing at a distance, "telephone" is voice at a distance. ((phone rings, double ring)) We can all be grateful that it was Bell who invented the telephone. Why be grateful it was Bell? Because his cousin was working on the same idea and if the cousin had been first, instead of Bell, then the sound a telephone would make when somebody called would be very different. What was the cousin's name?
Mortimer Graham Siren
Phineas J. Shriek
Gertrude Piercingwhine
Yes, that was ENTIRELY a trick question, based on nothing more than a pathetic quest for laughs.
So we see that communication over a wire was a really big deal in the 19th century. About the highest-tech thing going. But there was a dream beyond that. Smart guys and gals dreamed of communicating at a distance WITHOUT wires. And the pioneers in this effort, like Heinrich Hertz in 1886, succeeded in getting pulses of electricity to go through the air without wires.
Hertz thought this breakthrough meant which of the following:
Electrical distribution could be done without wires OR
Radio broadcasting could be achieved OR
Nothing. He thought it meant nothing.
And the answer is: When Hertz was asked what practical applications might be made of his discovery, he answered --- that it was of no use whatsoever. Nothing.
But it wasn't nothing. It triggered experimentation by scientific types around the world and was the basis of what they soon began to call radiotelegraphy.
But they may as well have named it Infectuous Mononucleosis. The public was no way going to use the name "radiotelegraphy." The name that caught on with the public was. . .
Wirefree
Wireless
Mono
--- Yes, it was wireless. And that's what radio was called in the early days, wireless. The word "radio" comes from the Latin word "radius," meaning "beam." Radio was not a word used alone at first. It was used as a part of which word combination?:
Radiophone
Radio-telegraphy
Radio-receiver
And the answer is --- all three! Boy, this is a tricky quiz.
Thank you for the awesome early radio history lesson!...Wonderful when someone identifies and connects the historical dots so well!!...should be a requirement for all AT&T employees!!!
A little too easy for me, but then I'm 72 years of age. Fun video.
Me too! Cheers you old coot!
With age comes Wisdom and knowing how to use it.......@@defaultuserid1559
Geez I'm old. This isn't aimed at my "demographic" lol.
I got 4 wrong... The American related questions. My excuse is I'm British!
I didn't realize that about Hertz , that he thought that his invention would signify nothing, I was thinking ALL the credit was going to go to Marconi
In the U.K. we will all sending dater and voice over glass fibre because all the copper cables are going be recovered
It a big mistake as our network will become vulnerable to cyber attacks.. The exchange as it is will support telephone for a minimum of 48 hours from battery and some infrastructure is monitored via copper. I have not learnt of any scheme to salvage copper. I have over the last thirty years only had one fault on my copper wire and that was because it was not designed to withstand an idiot with a hedge trimmer. With the World heading for potential problems we need the robust copper system to be ready as any first attack would be on the mobile networks and net which will create unrest and fear in the population. That is what I have seen written in 'War scenarios' in the 1980's although I am no longer in that circle and out of touch I believe it is still valid. Interesting fact, Morse code is making a comeback
“Pork radio” love it!
Tasty,... but fictional.
Good information
Well, I got it right. I was still using rotary phones as a kid. With how I see things going, I think we were better off in the old days than now. When I left home, I liked being out of touch, and no one could bug me like they do now.
American Telephone and Telegraph
Yes I do. But “telegraph” really isn’t used much anymore. But that’s because back in my day there was only one phone company, anyway. It had different divisions. Something most of us over 50 are going to know.
I thought it was Atlantic telephone and telegraph?
Tesla was the inventer ot Radio NOT Marconi, Tesla was granted the first U.S. patent on radio-related equipment in 1900
Did I SAY Marconi invented radio? No. That would be a most simplistic thing to say. Seems to me I talked about Hertz in the video. Did I HAVE to mention Tesla also in order to please you? Is that required? I mention Yogi Berra. What else do you want?
I always heard it was Atlantic telephone and telegraph
( Antonio Meucci, who I forgot about until I looked it up) and Elisha Gray also may have been the inventor of telephone. Well I got all of these correct without the multiple choice needed except for thinking AT&T Atlantic telephone and telegraph which I still do think it does... And for some reason I thought cbs predated NBC. So , one totes wrong 😊
AT&T store workers are not AT&T employees..they are authorized sales people.
What does that even mean? Any such distinction is meaningless to the customer as are corporate euphemisms like "sales associate" and "team member." Actually, they are less than meaningless, I believe, as they make the customer feel that there is some sort of wool being pulled over their eyes.
Really mess with the people at an AT&T store ask them about Western Electric 🙄
Sad day when they broke up the Bell System in 1984. Western Electric employees did an excellent job of installing new equipment in our central offices.
@macy-gu6vl Yes, they wrote the book 📖 on central office installation practices .in fact, when I started installing equipment, I looked at an old 3/3 DACS they had installed in the 80's and l followed how they laid the power for the different system l was installing back in mid 90's.
7/10
All of Tesla's patents were in Marconi's estate and had to be given back not too many years ago to the holders of Tesla's estate proving Marconi only copied Tesla and broadcast first the same thing happened a few years before that as an Italian inventor of the phone got his prototype which Bell refused to hook up to the local telegraph office's wires and he stole it and copied it and said it was gis invention again it had to be returned that inventors name is famor in Italy and their is a small museum avout him in San Francisco.
John you are correct and thank you for pointing that out. Marconi was a smart chap and did build and operated a very basic spark apparatus but not as smart as Tesla who developed kit but did not know how to market it. Marconi rented out gear 'black boxes' under the proviso that they were not opened, the reason was because some contained apparatus covered by Telsa and others patents. He also kept control by providing the equipment and operators on board Ship and made profit from Telegrams
. One reason why distress messages from the Titanic were left in the in tray.
Edison was worse he did not give credit to those he employed who had ideas, yes he made an interesting ticker-tape machine and by accident the phonograph but it was the guy's in Menlo park who had the brains. Marconi and Edison like Elon Musk knew an opportunity and how to market. Sadly Tesla fell foul by not understanding that the Bank wanted a return from their investment.
Tesla.......the most over rated human ever.
And then the Goverment aka FBI swooped in and took all of Tesla's notes & papers after he died, never to be seen again@@Woffy.
Voice over sounds like Allen Thair.
Google wants to know whether you mean Allen Thai or Allen Tahir?
@@collectornet Allen Tahir, .....thank you!