声音和数据之间的调制解调 —— 电报机和电传打字机如何影响计算机的演变

注：机翻，未校对。增加了两处注释。

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The Squeal of Data

The through line between the telegraph and the computer is more direct than you might realize. Its influence can be seen in common technologies, like the modem.

电报和计算机之间的直通线比你想象的要直接得多。它的影响可以在常见的技术中看到，比如调制解调器。

Today in Tedium: My favorite sound in computing is one that I haven’t actually had to use on a computer in nearly 20 years. The modem was a connection to a world outside of my own, and to get that connection required hearing the sounds of a loud, abrasive handshake that could easily be mistaken for Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music. I’d like to compare it to another kind of sound for a little bit—the noise of a “straight key” used for a telegraph. Both technologies, despite more than a century in age difference, seemingly turned data into sound, then into electrical pulses, and back into sound again. It’s no wonder, then, that you can actually trace the roots of the modem back to the telegraph, and later the teletype machine. Data and wires, simply put, go way back. And it’s not the only example of the telegraph’s quiet influence on modern computing. Today’s Tedium draws a line between the modern computer and the pulses that inspired it. — Ernie @ Tedium
今天的 Tedium：我在计算机中最喜欢的声音是一个我近 20 年来实际上没有在电脑上使用过的声音。调制解调器是通往外部世界的连接，而要获得这种连接，需要听到一种响亮、刺耳的握手声，这种声音很容易让人联想到卢·里德的《金属机器音乐》。我想把它与另一种声音进行比较——电报中使用的“直键”的噪音。尽管这两种技术相隔超过一个世纪，但它们似乎都将数据转化为声音，然后再转化为电脉冲，再返回为声音。因此，调制解调器的根源可以追溯到电报，后来又延伸到电传打字机，这并不奇怪。简而言之，数据和电线的历史由来已久。而这并不是电报对现代计算机影响的唯一例子。今天的Tedium勾勒出现代计算机与那些启发它的脉冲之间的联系。——埃尔尼 @ Tedium

Today’s GIF is from the movie WarGames, one of the few films to show off the acoustic coupler-style modem.
今天的 GIF 来自电影《战争游戏》，这是为数不多的展示声学耦合器式调制解调器的电影之一。

A telegraph key. (Matthew Boyle/Flickr)

The roots of the modem can be found in the telegraph 调制解调器的根源可以在电报中找到

As noted above, the modem, at least in its telephone-based forms, represents a dance between sound and data. By translating information into an aural signal, then into current, then back into an aural signal, then back into data once again, the modulation and demodulation going on is very similar to the process used with the original telegraph, albeit done manually, where information was input by a person and translated into electric pulses, where another person would receive the result.
如上所述，调制解调器（至少在其基于电话的形式中）代表了声音与数据之间的一种交互。通过将信息转换为声波信号，再转化为电流，然后再返回为声波信号，最后重新变回数据，这一调制和解调的过程与最初的电报非常相似，只是那个过程中是手动操作，人为输入信息并将其翻译成电脉冲，而另一个人则接收结果。

Modems work the same way, except no additional people are needed on the other end.
调制解调器的工作方式相同，只是另一端不需要额外的人员。

And considering that context, it makes sense that, for a time, the evolution of data transmission and voice transmission were on a parallel path. You could make the case that, before Alexander Graham Bell came up with the telephone, he was effectively working on a modem of sorts. Here was the problem that he was working on before the first phone call was made: The telegraph system, with its limited communication style of dots and dashes, limited the amount of information that could be transmitted at once. In the mid 1870s, Bell was exploring the idea of something he called a “harmonic telegraph,” which allowed for multiple pieces of data to be sent at once, as long as the sounds being created had a different pitch.
考虑到这一背景，可以理解的是，在一段时间内，数据传输和语音传输的演变是并行发展的。可以说，在亚历山大·格雷厄姆·贝尔发明电话之前，他实际上是在研究某种形式的调制解调器。在进行第一次电话通话之前，他面临的问题是：电报系统以摩尔斯电码的有限通信方式限制了可以同时传输的信息量。在 1870 年代中期，贝尔正在探索一个他称之为“谐波电报”的概念，这种系统允许同时发送多个信息，只要所产生的声音具有不同的音调。

Bell wasn’t the only one working on an idea of this nature—other inventors were toying with the idea of using harmonics to send multiple telegraph messages at once, including Western Electric founder Elisha Gray—who notably was a major personal competitor of Bell.
贝尔并不是唯一一个提出这种想法的人 —— 其他发明家也在考虑使用谐波同时发送多个电报信息，包括西部电气公司的创始人伊利沙・格雷（Elisha Gray）—— 他显然是贝尔的主要个人竞争对手。

There’s a lot of story in there, including a conflict about ownership that makes Bell look like a thief—I’ll let someone else tell it—but long story short, the concept of the harmonic telegraph being used to send data through electric lines had been overshadowed by the fact that voice could be sent in the same way.
这里面有很多故事，包括一个关于所有权的冲突，这让贝尔看起来像是个小偷——我会让别人来讲述这个故事——但长话短说，谐波电报的概念，即通过电线传输数据的想法，已经被这样一个事实所掩盖，即声音也可以以同样的方式传输。

The idea of improving data transmission never faded, however, and by the early 20th century was improving by leaps and bounds in a more sophisticated form: The telegraph gained the ability to multiplex, or spread multiple pieces of information at once on the same line. This ability parti