Because this book focuses on Microsoft technologies, we will also look at many
of the Microsoft products that have brought us to the present-day solution that we will
be focusing most of our attention on in this book: Offi ce Communications Server
(OCS) 2007.
Before we look forward, it??™s a good idea to step back and look at how we got to
???today.??? To begin, we will review the progress and history of communication over the past
150 years, and how it has impacted where overall information delivery and communication
are going.
History of Communication
You can breathe a sigh of relief. We??™re not going to take you all the way back to the caveman
and discuss cave drawings. Likewise, Egypt and those amazing hieroglyphics are out. We??™re
going to jump in right around the time of Mr. Alexander Graham Bell. Way back in 1876,
Mr. Bell (not Antonio Meucci, as some conspiracy theorists believe) invented the fi rst telephone
(Figure 1.1), which was based on the same principles of the telegraph, which is essentially
the transmission of wire signals over copper wiring. Bell spent numerous hours attempting to
transmit sound over this medium, fi rst in the form of a clock spring??™s twang, and then, on
March 10, 1876, fi nally speaking those now-famous words, ???Mr. Watson??”come here??”I want
to see you.???
Unified Communications ??? Chapter 1 3
Over the next 100 years, Bell??™s invention would grow in popularity, ultimately ending
the reign of the telegraph and eventually placing a phone in nearly every home within the
developed world.
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