Let's start by defining telecommunications. Intelligence produced by visual means, oral means, wire, radio, or other electromagnetic systems are also included. Electrical, visual, and sound telecommunications are all used in the Navy. In this chapter we will talk only about electrical types of telecommunications. The types of electrical communications are radio and wire.
Radio uses electromagnetic waves to transmit and receive intelligence.
The waves are not guided by a physical path between sender and receiver. Wire uses conductors to carry these waves. Radio is the most important method the Navy has of communicating between widely separated forces. The transmission methods we will be discussing are radiotelegraph, radiotelephone, teletypewriter, and facsimile. The radio operator separates a continuously transmitted wave into dots and dashes based on the Morse code.