Pictures on the walls When people could not read or write, they drew pictures on the walls. This pictures told the stories of their everyday life, battles and culture.

Alphabet. People used to think that the first alphabet appeared between 1700 and 1500 BC in the Levant region, in what is now Syria, Lebanon and Israel. However, modern archaeologists found facts to show that the alphabet is older and first appeared in 1900BC. It came from Egypt, and other cultures copied it.

Means of writing and letters. The earliest means of writing came from Greece. The Greeks made the first writing stylus and used it to write on wax-coated tablets. Messages on these tablets were the first private letters. Their inventor, a Greek scholar called Cadmus, wrote letters like this and sent them to his friends by foot messengers.

Ink and paper. People invented ink before 2500BC. Some books say that it was the Chinese, but probably the Egyptians invented it at the same time. However, the whole world knows the name of the Chinese philosopher, Tien-Lcheu, (2697BC), who used ink to write with. Paper came from China, in the second century BC. The oldest piece of paper in the world is made from hemp. The archaeologists found it in a tomb near Xian, in China. They think the Chinese made it between 140 and 87 BC.

The telegraph. The word «telegraph»comes from Greek and means «to write far». In other words, it is a communication system which transmits signals. In 1835 a professor of arts and design at New York University, Samuel Morse, developed telegraph wires. He also invented Morse code, an electronic alphabet. With the help of that alphabet it was possible to code the letters and sings of a language.

The telephone. February 14, 1876 was a day that changed the history of communication forever. On that day a tall Scotsman, Alexander Graham Bell walked into the New York patent office. He was carrying the drawing of his invention. The invention was able to transmit the sound of the voice by wire over long distances. We know this invention as the telephone. Fifteen years after the invention there were five million phones in America.

Computers and internet. In the past computers were guite simple. They can count and store information. They can not understand many languages and can not connect to each other. You can play some games with those computers, but they were very slow. Modern computers are more interesting. You can do a lot of things with them. First of all you can surf the Internet and get information. Your computer can understand a lot of languages. Secondly it can help you keep in touch with your friends.

. Nobody tried to invent the . It simply happened. In 1969 an American, Ray Tomlinson, was working on two projects at the same time. Firstly, he was working on a programme called SNDMSG ( send message). With that programme the people in his company were able to leave messages for each other. The second project was a file-transfer programme (CYPNET). With that programme users were able to send files between linked computers. Suddenly Tomlinson had an idea. «If I put the two programmes together, I may be able to send messages, not just files, to other computers.» The idea worked and quickly became popular.