oday's high speed computers and streaming video owe a thank you to yesterday's pioneers in electronic communication. Bill Gates, meet Samuel Morse. Samuel Morse was a painter whose picture of President James Monroe hangs in the White House today. An amateur scientist, Morse in 1837 created the first telegraph machine with the ability to send analog signals across a wire. He later developed the first "programming language", Morse Code. Although today's computers use digital signals, they both communicate by on/off pulses of electricity.
link the United States and eventually the world by electronic cable. In 1858 the Atlantic cable connected Europe to the US. For almost 100 years, cable like the one shown on the left of this image carried telegraph and eventually telephone signals around the world. The cable on the right is modern coaxial cable which eventually replaced the original. Today, of course, the Internet is connected mostly by thin-wire phone line and fiberoptic cable. The future of cable is unclear, but don't be surprised if satellite replaces most wire connections.
In those days, there were no rotary dials or push buttons as connections were physical made by human operators at switching stations. Scientists and inventors were soon creating other devices that relied on the physics principles of Samuel Morse and Alexander Bell. Instruments(right) such as calculators, stethoscopes, stock market tickers, microphones, and sorters began to appear by the turn of the 20th century. Another use for electronic devices was found during the beginning of the 20th century. Communication was important to the military. 
Germany, especially devoted a lot of effort to encryption(coded scrambling of messages). The small, brown, wooden box in the picture to the left is the German Enigma, a electronic device(computer??) capable of generating over 1 trillion coding patterns. The Germans thought these encoders would be a key to winning WWII. However, Allied forces developed decoders, like the BOMBE, the large metal contraption behind and to the left of the wooden box.
Have you heard this story a few times in your educational career. Again, it was those Russkies and that little metallic ball to the right, ol' Sputnik. That little 2 foot satellite scared the science right into American schools and corporations. In 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower created the Advanced Research Projects Agency, or ARPA. this organization of brilliant scientists launched the US's 1st satellite within 18 months and began to focus on communication technology and computer networking.
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak created the Apple 1 computer(left). It was a kit computer. You purchased the inner workings and made your own case. Mainframe computer companies like IBM did not believe the PC market would catch on. Well, silly them. Today, over 1/2 of the homes in America(and other developed countries) have a networked computers in them. The final ingredient was mass participation. The stage was set for the creation of the Internet and the World Wide Web.