Communication has come a long way from the times when the beating of a drum or smoke from fire was used to convey messages or herald events. Today’s mobile ‘smartphones’ can connect us to people hundreds of miles away, and allow us to talk and exchange textual messages with them, connect to Internet, have compact cameras for video and still photography, provide GPS (Global Positioning System), and Wi-Fi (a trade name for WLAN or Wireless Local Area Network) facilities, besides many other forms of communication. They open a vast store of information, which was not possible just two decades ago.
The television, which could cater to a small local community initially, can now serve worldwide. Control signals now reach distant planets, millions of miles away, and set satellites in correct orbits sending accurate pictures from them. Sending human beings and animals in the orbit around the Earth, and then to the Moon was possible due to great progress made in wireless technology and other means of scientific communication.
The book describes the developments from early days of communication using smoke and drum signals, the use of light for signalling by the Greeks, the opto-mechanical signalling by the French, and the Semaphore in the 18th century during the reign of Napolean Bonaparte. It provides valuable information about the beginning of electrical signalling in the 19th century, the Morse Telegraph and the Telephone. The beginning of wireless, and the transition from wire to wireless through the efforts of Faraday, Maxwell, Hertz, Marconi, Sir J.C. Bose and others have also been delineated in a lucid manner. It focuses on the evolution and development of communication engineering and electronics, which led to the modern age of fast communication.
The book will be useful for the students, teachers and researchers in communication engineering and electronics. It will also help the professionals in these fields.
P.K. Sinha Roy graduated with Physics Honours in 1955, completed his M.Sc.(Tech) in Radio Physics & Electronics in 1958, and received the D.Phil. degree in 1969 in the same subject, all from the University of Calcutta. He joined Bengal Engineering College, Shibpur, Howrah (now BESUS), as a faculty member in 1961 after a brief service as Research Engineer at the Electronics Department of the famous Indian Statistical Institute, Baranagar from 1958 to 1960.
During his service he developed coursework and laboratories in the department, and completed D.Phil. work on ‘Threshold Logic’. He joined University of Ottawa, Canada as a Post Doctoral Fellow in 1970 on study leave. After his return to India in 1972, he continued Research and Teaching in B.E. College, and retired as Professor and Head of the Department of Electronics and Telecommunication in 1995. He joined the new Kalyani Government Engineering College, Kalyani, Nadia as Professor and Head, E&TC Department. Later, in 1998 he left Kalyani and joined the Institute of Engineering and Management, Salt Lake, Kolkata. He is still attached with the above Institute as Guest Professor guiding Research and Development. He was a Member IEEE, during 1971-72, and is presently a Life Member, ISTE (Indian Society for Technical Education).
