The modern communications era began with the invention of the electromagnetic telegraph in 1832. Since then, a huge number of developments in theory and technology have brought us to where we are today. We now have the Internet, Mobile Telephony and Digital Telly. But why doe we do things the way we do? The theoretical developments that underpin modern communications came form the work of people such as Kotelnikov, Shannon, Cioffi, Ungerboeck and Forney. The technological developments came from people in the Electronics industry whose names are less well known. The nature of communications channel varies enormously from one situation to another. The optical fibre channel is radically different from the cellular wireless channel which in turn is radically different from the DSL channel. Very different solutions are required for all of these situations yet there is a common theory underlying them all. This talk will give an overview of the challenges that faced communications engineers over the last 177 years and look at the wide variety of solutions that they came up with. There will also be a sneak preview of the future.
