Back in the day, smoke signals were good enough for the American Indians. They would control the size and shape of the puffs to signify different things. In this way, coherent messages could actually be relayed over a distance. But poor visibility or a torrential downpour would make them pretty much useless. And smoke puffs werent varied enough to convey anything truly complex anyway.
Ring Mah Bell?
Then along came Thomas Graham Bell and his marvelous invention, the telephone. Suddenly, people could actually hear one another over a distance too great to be covered by even the loudest human voice. It converted sound into electric signals at one end.
These signals would then be carried over wire and converted back into audio on the other end. In its current incarnation, the telephone does this in virtually no time at all. And now, the advent of cellular phone technology and satellite communications means that wires are no longer a constraining factor.
Get The Party Started!
But what happens when a number of people want to engage simultaneously in conversation using current technology? No, they dont all gather around one telephone and yell over...