The Way People Communicate

Before and during World War Two, the government of Nazi Germany controlled all information the German people received. The government controlled all radio broadcasts and newspapers. The people of Germany only heard or read what the government wanted them to hear or read. It was illegal for them to listen to a foreign broadcast.

After World War Two, a new invention appeared -- television. In industrial nations, television quickly became common in most homes. Large companies were formed to produce television programs. These companies were called networks. Networks include many television stations linked together that could broadcast the same program at the same time.

Most programs were designed to entertain people. There were movies, music programs and game programs. However, television also broadcast news and important information about world events. It broadcast some education programs, too. The number of radio and television stations around the world increased. It became harder for a dictator to control information.

In the nineteen fifties, two important events took place that greatly affected the communication of information. The first was a television broadcast that showed the East Coast and the West Coast of the United States at the same time. A cable that carried the pictures linked the two coasts. So people watching the program saw the Pacific Ocean on the left side of the screen. They saw the Atlantic Ocean on the right side of the screen.

It was not a film. People could see two reporters talk to each other even though a continent separated them. Modern technology made this possible.

The other event happened on September twenty-fifth, nineteen fifty-six. That was when the first telephone cable under the Atlantic Ocean made it possible to make direct telephone calls from the United States to Europe. Less than six years later, in July, nineteen sixty-two, the first communications satellite was placed in orbit around the Earth. The speed of information greatly increased again.

By the year nineteen hundred, big city newspapers could provide people with information that was only hours old. Now, both radio and television, with the aid of satellite communications, could provide information immediately. People who lived in a small village could listen to or watch world events as they happened.

A good example is when American astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon. Millions of people around the world watched as he carefully stepped onto the moon on July twentieth, nineteen sixty-nine.