Standards Yearbook 1932

Washington, Bureau of Standards, 1932. — 394 p.
Standardized communication promotes human progress. Everyone has unique needs to add to the catalogue of human desires. Everyone has also unique means to meet such desires. Communication links the needs and the means. At the ends of every line of communication are the sender and receiver — a general to his army, a newspaper to its readers, a radio broadcast to the world, or a chat between two children. Contacting the two is the art of communication. Between them vast systems of sending and receiving assure accuracy, speed, convenience, adequacy, economy, and these systems are fast becoming automatic. Progress in the means of communication, therefore, speeds up human progress, for such progress conditions the growth rate of its civilization. Language is a standard convention of symbols, written, spoken, or performed by gesture (Indian sign language or deaf-mute manuals). The art of printing is the multiplier and broadcaster of language in ink patterns called alphabets. Literature is the capital, equipment, and contents of such broadcasts. Written word is sent by rail, air mail, pigeons, or by printing telegraphy by wire or by radio post. Spoken word goes direct by wire or by radio across continents and oceans. Code signals with conventional meanings are primitively sent by drums, click of stones under water, beacon fires, smoke pulses, flags, lights, devices without end. Communication is a bridge between minds or between nature and man. Waves of air or ether tell us all we know of the universe about us. Incoming starlight reports events among the stars. Each atom formed in interstellar space sends its quantum of cosmic ray reporting the fact. Star messages are deciphered through prism or grating, reaching the eye or the camera, photocell, or other device after traveling millions of years.