Communication Progress from Wireline to Railroads to Wireless

It’s Golden Spike Day when we celebrate the driving of the final spike that connected the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads at Promontory Point, Utah. This transcontinental joint venture, which culminated on May 10, 1869, made it possible for people, information, and goods from around the world to ride the rails from coast to coast across the United States.

The railroad improved upon what the transcontinental telegraph and the Pony Express did to make coast-to-coast communication much faster by bringing more direct contact and commerce into reality. Rail workers from many backgrounds and cultures worked across the Midwest through the Rockies to connect the growing rail line networks in the Eastern U.S. to the rising West’s coastal, mountain, and desert railways. Driving the golden spike 153 years ago ushered in a new rapid transportation and communication era.

The powerful steam locomotives connected people in remote small towns that sprung up along the railways to other people and things in the country’s largest cities. These once modern machines on rails built with the blood, sweat, tears, and sometimes lives connected people in cities, across states, and through barely inhabited territories like never before.

Innovation Inspires More Innovation

Today, it’s the Internet of Things (IoT) and its derivatives—the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), the Internet of Everything (IoE), or Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT)—that’s the solution. We’re building the IoT to bridge data communication gaps and create better connections in our increasingly interconnected world.

Remote monitoring with IoT sensors and gateways connects you to data from machines, equipment, and conditions in facilities or areas nearby or across the globe. The Internet of Things instantaneously and simultaneously shrinks the world and exponentially expands communication between people and things. The actionable data we glean from so many connected things can help us instantly know what’s happening with the most important things in our business and find ways to solve critical problems.

Monnit ALTA Sensors and Gateways send and receive data over a secure and resilient wireless platform running on the radio frequency-hopping spread spectrum (FHSS). Among the credited inventors of frequency-hopping communication are concert pianist George Anthiel and actress Hedy Lamarr. Yes, you read that right—a pianist and an actress. Their patent professed a secret communications system for ships and torpedoes to help defeat Nazi Germany. Frequency-hopping has been deployed in many wireless technologies since.

Thank you to the past pioneers and engineers for pushing us forward in our worldwide communication journey and mission to connect nearly anything and everything to the Internet.