Sending Messages

in the Early days

By Virginia,

Plaeton, Betty &

Jordan

Well did you know that the only bird that has ever been trained to send

messages were Pigeons?

Pigeons were used by Air Crews to send messages back to base. They

were also used by the army to also send messages back to base there

was once a special unit that dealt with the training of Pigeons for this

purpose. There was even a Pigeon awarded a Medal for bravery in

carrying messages. He was able to save 194 soldiers but could not save

himself. They would write their message on a soft piece of tissue paper

called flimsies then they would attach it to the bird’s leg then release it

until they came back. When the pigeon came back it entered a trap

door sending a bell down to the office. Someone would climb up, get

the message and set it to the main part of the loft and there they would

get their treat and reward.

HOW DID PEOPLE SEND

MESSAGES IN THE PAST?

The first way people sent messages were in bottles. They took a

glass bottle that was middle sized and wrote their messages on a

piece of paper. Then they would put it inside the bottle and

release it into the sea or river. The first recorded messages in

bottles were released around 310 BC by the Ancient Greek

philosopher Theophrastus as part of an experiment to show that

the Mediterranean Sea was formed by the inner Atlantic Ocean.

In the 16th century, the English navy, among others, used bottle

messages to send ashore information about enemy positions.

Queen Elizabeth I even created an official position of "Uncorked

of Ocean Bottles", and anyone else opening the bottles could

face the death penalty.

THE HISTORY OF

SENDING

MESSAGES

Semaphore flags are the system for transmitting information at a

distance by means of visual signals with hand held flags, rods,

disks, paddles, or occasionally bare or gloved hands. Information

is shown by the position of the flags, it is read when the flag is in

a fixed position. Semaphores were adopted and widely used with

hand-held flags replacing the mechanical arms of shutter for

signaling, in a method similar to semaphore, but by opening and

closing the sign, the Morse code which is represented by dots and

dashes are used to express the message. It was used in US Civil

War times. A signal corpsman commonly stood on a platform

about 6–10 feet off the ground, signaling to other units. The

bright orange red and white flag made a primary target for the enemy.

SEMAPHORE

FLAGS

It is a form of visual communication used over long distance. In Ancient China, soldiers along the Great Wall would alert each other of any enemy attack by

signaling from tower to tower. In this way, they were able to transmit a message as far away as 750 kilometers in just a few hours. Polybius, a Greek historian, came

up with a more complex system of alphabetical smoke signals around 150 BC. He invented a system of converting Greek alphabetic characters into number

characters. It was devised to enable messages to be easily signaled by holding sets of torches in pairs. This idea, known as the "Polybius square", also lends itself to cryptography and steganography. This cryptographic concept has been used with

Japanese Hiragana and the Germans in the later years of the First World War. Smoke signals are still in use today. In Rome, the College of Cardinals uses smoke signals to indicate the selection of a new Pope. Suitable cardinals conduct a secret ballot until someone receives a vote of two-thirds plus one. The ballots are burned

after each vote. Black smoke indicates a failed ballot; white smoke means a new Pope has been elected. In general smoke signals are used to transmit news, signal

danger, or gather people to a common area.

THE SMOKE

SIGNALS

We found our information from

Wikipedia

Kids info

And Google

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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