Exhibits showing how people communicate. Credit: BITM, Kolkata
Human communication technologies have evolved from smoke signals and messenger pigeons to mobile phone calls and Snapchat. An exhibition at a museum in Kolkata charts their development.
The artefacts on display at the Birla Industrial and Technological Museum (BITM) are laid out in four thematic sections — Transmit, Broadcast, Swadesh Connect and Tether. BITM Director Subhabrata Chaudhuri explains that the objects are described by stories that reveal their societal impact through the ages.
The ‘Transmit’ section showcases devices that transmitted data in Morse code via long-distance cables. Named after its inventor Samuel Morse, the code uses dots and dashes that represents each letter in the English alphabet. Morse sent the first electrical message from Washington to Baltimore in 1844 and by1866, telegraph lines spread across oceans. One line had been laid across the Atlantic Ocean from US to Europe.
Next to the Morse code machines sit teleprinters that were used to send and receive printed data via cables, improving the speed and delivery of messages between offices. But, how to transmit human voices across vast distances? The ‘Tether’ section showcases how telephones revolutionised communication by instantly sending voices along wires.
This section tells the story of how Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant Thomas Watson discovered that sound could be transmitted over a wire. Watson was trying to loosen a reed that had been wound around a transmitter when he plucked it by accident. The vibration produced by that activity travelled along the wire into a second device in the other room where Bell was working.
Bell’s intuitive response was: “Mr Watson, come here — I want to see you.” Watson showed up and declared that he had heard and understood what Bell said. This was the first voice transfer along a telephone line. Among other exhibits are a desk model and wall-hanging telephones. A replica of Bell’s liquid transmitter that dates back to 1876 is also on display.
As time unfolded, humans wanted to connect as they roamed. The ‘Broadcast’ section captures the milestones achieved in wireless communication.
It started with Guglielmo Marconi’s first radio message across Bristol Channel from Brean to Lavernock in Wales on May 13, 1897. The message: “Can you hear me?” was received loud and clear. With radio, one could remotely contact others and entertain listeners.
With innovative leaps in the field of communications across the West, the British brought the latest technologies to India. The ‘Swadesh Connect’ captures key events pre-Independence in science in India. These include the achievement of physicist, Sisir Kumar Mitra, who pioneered radio research in the country. Jagadish Chandra Bose’s wireless receivers form an important display in this section.
The pre-independence era is also represented by ‘Chicago Motwane Radio’, a public address system developed by Nanik Motwane, a young volunteer of Indian National Congress. The system consists of a microphone and loudspeakers, used by political leaders since 1930.
The exhibition is based on the human need to communicate, says Aditi Ghose, education officer at the BITM. “From hieroglyphs of yesteryears to emoticons of today – only forms and functions changed,” she says.
