Unit 7 reading.
FROM SMOKE SIGNALS to Email : Keeping in Touch
From the Stone Age to the present, people have shown a desire to send messages to one another over long distances.
In ancient time, according to one story, a chain of fires on mountaintops was used to relate the news of the fall of Troy to people in Greece. In the past, native people in the Americas used smoke from fires to transmit messages. They developed a code in which certain combinations of smoke rising had special meaning. For example, two parallel columns of smoke indicated the successful return of a war party.
Almost anything that makes a noise has been used for signaling. Cyrus, an ancient Persian ruler, established lines of signal towers. At each one, people with powerful voices shouted a message to the next tower, and in this way, news and information was passed on through the kingdom. A kind of drum talk is still used in Central Africa today,although few who are not natives have been able to understand it. The sender used a drum that can produce a high or low tone. Because the local dialect alternates in these tones, the sender is able to simulate speech with the drums.
In modern times, people have communicated by letter, telegraph, and telephone. But no one method has become as widespread as quickly as the use of email. The first email message took place in 1971, and according to its sender, Ray Tomlinson, it was probably the following : "QWERTYUIOP." What was significant about that ?