Chapter 4 - The Once And Future Digital Network
- Introduction
- The World Was Once Digital
- A Telegraph Is Digital [The telegraph is a digital technology because it transfers discrete clicks instead of a continuously varying signal]
- Morse Code
- Letters And Digits In Morse Code
- Users Did Not Encounter Morse Code
- It is possible to encode all letters and digits using only two basic code values: dot and dash
- A code used for message transmission defines a basic alphabet of characters that can be sent; the code can be useful even if it does not include all possible characters.
- A customer of a telegraph service never encountered or understood the underlying encoding scheme.
- Virtually Instant Communication
- Speed Is Relative
- The Telephone Became Digital
- Relevance To The Internet
- Binary Encoding Of Data On The Internet
Although the Internet uses a binary encoding for all data transferred, users usually remain completely unaware of the encoding.
References