The Modem Revolution

While today modems might be a commonplace household, this has not always been the case. Modems were originally developed in the 1950s for the US Air force. The modems were used to transfer and communicate data between two computers which was very significant because at the time the alternative to a modem was an analog phone which could only transmit data at the frequency of a human voice. The name modem is a contraction of modulator-demodulator because, when transferring data the sending modem modulates the data into a signal which can travel through a phone line and the receiving modem demodulates the data back into its original form. Modems had many uses especially within militaries, but commercial use was not yet one of them. This was until the late 1970s when personal computers entered the market.

While PCs existed since 1977, they only really began to become popular in the 1980s, and BBS became popular with it. BBS or Bulletin Board Systems were comprised of a personal computer, a modem, and some BBS software. They allowed users to connect to a network, where they could share files or simple messages with other users on the network. The BBS was essentially the predecessor of the World Wide Web.

Nowadays modems have become critical to many aspects of life, as their use is required to access the Internet, and the Internet is connected to pretty much everything. Many routers have built-in modems, so if you are reading this online, there is almost certainly a modem in your vicinity.

Old Modem:




Modern Modem:


Sources:
https://computer.howstuffworks.com/modem1.htm
http://theinventors.org/library/inventors/blmodem.htm
https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-uses-for-modems
https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/bulletin-board-system-BBS