Newsletter of the Mercurians, in the Society for the History of Technology
Volume 10 No. 1, November 1997
Book Reviews
Tube
Media and Revolution
Antenna: Spread Spectrum
Editors' note: Histories of communication technologies typically focus on how people have developed technologies in order to communicate better-more quickly, more efficiently, more broadly, more profitably, and so on. In the last issue of Antenna, Jim Reeds wrote about how telegraphy codes facilitated communicating faster (coded messages were shorter, so took less time to travel along a wire), more efficiently, and more profitably (shorter messages cost less). In the November 1996 issue of Antenna, Dr. William W. Ward reviewed the National Cryptologic Museum in Maryland. He had originally provided the present issue's cover photograph of SIAGBA to accompany his review; while we regret having had to delay sharing this enigmatic image with our readers, we are glad to have it to use now. We thank William W. Ward and Robert Price for their contributions and advice in helping us put the material on these two pages together.
The articles by Ward and Reeds started us thinking about the importance of blocking communications, of securing communications, and of communicating despite attempts at blocking, or jamming, signals, all of which are done using the techniques and technologies of something called spread spectrum. The origins of spread-spectrum communication go back at least as early as the 1920s, and interested readers can seek out the following resources:
· David Kahn, "Cryptology and the Origins of Spread Spectrum," IEEE Spectrum 21, no. 9 (September 1984): 70-80.
· M. K. Simon, J. K. Omura, R. A. Scholtz, and B. K. Levitt, "The Historical Origins of Spread-Spectrum Communications," chapter 2 in Spread-Spectrum Communications Handbook (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994), pp. 39-134.
· Robert Price, "Further Notes and Anecdotes on Spread-Spectrum Origins," Transactions on Communications, vol. COM-31, (January 1983): 85-97.