The term telematics has been coined 1978 by Simon Nora and Alain Minc in their report titled L'Informatisation de la société [1]. This report was mandated by the French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing in 1976 who was solicitous that “the applications of the computer have developed to such an extent that the economic and social organisation of our society and our way of life may well be transformed as a result”. These developments had their major cause in the development of the microprocessor in 1971 and the subsequent availability of smaller and cheaper computers which replaced previously used mainframes and minicomputers. Mainframes were room-filling, energy-hungry and costed millions of Euros. Minicomputers, although much smaller and cheaper, were still far away from personal computers. Computing time was expensive and only big organisations could afford to use computers. Computers at that time were not connected with each other and usually many users competed about the computation time available. With the development of smaller and affordable personal computers in the seventies widespread computerisation came into effect. As computers began to be increasingly geographically distributed, the need for data exchange grew and telecommunication technologies were used to connect computers. This can be seen as the birth of telematics.
In their report Simon Nora and Alain Minc compare the prospects of telematics with electricity: “Today, any consumer of electricity can instantly obtain the electric power he needs without worrying about where it comes from or how much it costs. There is every reason to believe that the same will be true in the future of telematics”. Today’s life is full of telematics applications. Retrieving money from automatic teller machines (ATM) or electronic booking of hotels and flights are just two examples. The most sweeping telematics application, however, is the Internet. Like electricity the Internet today is a matter of course and in companies and offices the availability of an internet connection is equally important as the availability of electric power.
Recent developments of computer and telecommunication technology have an equally important impact on society and economy today as the increasing availability of small and affordable personal computers in the seventies. As computers are becoming much smaller and less energy-hungry, computing devices are becoming mobile and pocket computers can accompany us wherever we are. Telecommunication technology can be embedded in those mobile devices enabling a wireless telecommunication with stationary devices and other mobile devices. These technological developments lead to new fields of telematic applications sometimes also described with the terms mobile computing, ubiquitous computing, or pervasive computing.
| Computers | Telecommunication | |
|---|---|---|
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Dust abacus is invented, probably in Babylonia
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3000 BC |
In Egypt papyrus scrolls and hieroglyphs are used
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| 1184 BC |
According to the play Agamemnon written by the Greek
poet Aeschylos in 458 BC the fall of Troy was transmitted
with torch signals to 555 km away Argos
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Bead-and-wire abacus originates in Egypt
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500 BC | |
| 150 |
A 4500 kilometres wide smoke signals network covers the
Roman Empire
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Brahmagupta writes Brahmasphutasiddhanta, the earliest known text to treat zero as a number in its own right
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628 | |
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Wilhelm Schickard builds first four-function calculator-clock
at the University of Heidelberg
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1624 | |
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Blaise Pascal builds the first numerical calculating machine
in Paris
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1642 | |
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Gottfried Leibniz builds a mechanical calculating machine
that multiplies, divides, adds, and subtracts
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1673 | |
| 1809 |
Samuel Thomas Soemmering invents the electrical telegraph
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| 1860 |
Antonio Meucci invents the telephone
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| 1895 |
Guglielmo Marconi invents the wireless telegraph
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Konrad Zuse completes the Z1 electromechanical binary
computer
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1938 | |
| 1946 |
First mobile telephone service introduced by AT&T
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The IBM 650 becomes the first mass-produced computer
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1953 | |
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Jack Kilby develops the first integrated circuit
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1958 |
The first communication satellite SCORE is launched
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Texas Instruments completes the first hand-held calculator
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1967 | |
| 1969 |
The ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network)
goes online and links the first two computers
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The first microprocessor the Intel 4004 is developed
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1971 | |
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The first portable computer the Osborne 1 is released
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1981 | |
| 1992 |
World Wide Web released by CERN. All major European
operators start commercial operation of GSM networks
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| 2001 |
The first commercial UMTS network is launched in Japan
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| [1] |
S. Nora and A. Minc.
L'Informatisation de la société. Rapport à M. le Président de la République.
La Documentation Française, Paris, 1978.
English translation: The Computerization of Society. A report to the President of France. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1980. |