Digitalization was introduced by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who developed the transformation from arabic numbers to binary strings. For example, the arabic number 26 could be decoded to the digital string ‘I I 0 I 0’. Here the adjectives ‘digital’ and ‘binary’ are used synonymously for a two-state variable, although ‘digital’ just means countable (from Latin digit for finger). Early applications of digital information transfer had been signal techniques (light on/off) for the use of the Morse alphabet, which was invented by Samuel F.B. Morse in 1835. The Morse Code allowed the transport of binary signals by telegraph. The invention of the telegraph ‘arose more or less independently from each other in the US, Germany and England, but resting on a common foundation of technical knowledge’ (Calvert (2000)). In Europe, Samuel Thomas von Soemmering (1809), Baron Schilling von Canstedt (1820), Carl Friedrich Gauss and Wilhelm Weber (1833) developed telegraphs. Schilling von Canstedt had already used a binary system for signal transmission, whereas the telegraphs of Gauss and Weber used four states. The binary system proved to be less vulnerable to poor signal quality. In the following years, a revised system of the Morse alphabet became standard. After the telegraph had been invented the technology started to ‘go global’. The first fully-functional transatlantic telegraph cable was completed in 1866. A cable from England to India followed in 1872. Pacific Line completed a worldwide net of telegraph lines in 1902.
Digitalization and Digital Revolution
