EE at work: Telecommunications: A big job in a shrinking world: It started with the Pony Express and now includes satellites and fiber optics. The field is ripe, with above-average pay and unlimited growth for EEs

Have you used the phone lately? Or the school computer to access a data base? Or did you have to call home to have money wired to you? All these actions, and similar ones you may not have thought of, have one thing in common: telecommunications, or communications over long distances. The field has a glorious history, beginning with the Pony Express in pioneer days. Later, it was the U.S. mail. At the beginning of the 20th century, the telephone came on the scene. In the last 20 years, telecommunications has been expanded to include the transmission of all sorts of information over wide areas and long distances by a variety of means: telephone, telegraph, teletype, satellite, fiber optics, and other means now on the drawing boards. Basic to all, however, is the telephone. It is the way that telephone switching systems are designed and set up that allows for this variety of communication.