Media Forms

First of all, what is a media form?

well, literally, Media is:

(usually used with a plural verb) the means of communication, as radio and television,newspapers, magazines, and the Internet, that reach or influence people widely."

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/media

And form is, well a lot of things, as seen here, http://www.dictionary.com/browse/form, music.

 But realistically, Media forms in this sense means the shapes and styles media takes, such as magazines, films and music.

Main media forms

Lets have a look at the main media forms that we see in every day life.

Print

The most common media form in existence is print. books, magazines, newspapers, posters, comics. all of these evolved from the same thing and all have the same roots.

If you lived in the 14th century, chances are, you could not read or write, as monks and very rich people were the only people taught. However, in 1440, a man named Johannes Gutenberg started work on his genius invention, the printing press. Now, this doesn't seem very special, but the printing press is widely considered the most important invention in modern history. Thanks to the good old printing press, books could be copied and printed almost infinitely faster than previously, which means that books became very cheap. This meant that even the common farmer could buy them and learn to read. Now, because the general populous could read, messages could be written down, letters and ideas could be shared through paper, a whole new world of possibility was opened up. 

People became smarter, and they started thinking bigger. Governments were formed, scientific research was conducted, even the small things like farmers writing books on what fertilizers to use and when to plant made huge impacts on daily life. All because of a printing machine.

Film and sound

The world stayed the same for a few hundred years, governments were in use, scientists were debating the creation of the universe, and Vincent Van Gogh was cutting his ear off. But in Paris, people were experimenting with light. Joseph Nicephore Niepce and his friends were trying to figure out a way to create a picture without painting. He began to experiment with light sensitive varnishes, that would change shade depending on the amount of light they received. This led to something incredible:

picture from http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/permanent/firstphotograph/

Now it doesn't look like much does it? But if you look closely, you can see a faint outline of the Paris skyline. This was revolutionary, now instead of painting a picture, which required days to do, you could take a  "Heliograph" which took minutes. 

At the end of the 19th century, Thomas Edison, Americas greatest inventor (the lightbulb guy), invented a machine which could record a sound and play it back later - The Phonograph. (this word might be familiar to you as it is where the term telephone comes from).This invention really became important when film was created, as the two seem to go hand in hand. To this day however, lots of people claim to have invented film, so we do not know who to credit, although the Lumiere brothers held the first cinematograph show, which is the 20th century version of a cinema.

Broadcasting

In the 1900s, media was a part of life. you saw it everywhere. However there was still more that could be done. An Italian called Marconi sent the first message via radio waves. Early broadcasting was done  through Morse code. A method of using pauses and hits to make letters and words.  It was only a few yeas later that people invented machines to broadcast film and sound at the same time. 

A Television set from 1939. Small screen huh?

The Internet

Now people thought that media couldn't get any better. They were wrong Ideas on mass communication systems were thought up in America in the 1960s, and this developed for use by private companies, but thanks to a man called Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, The internet became usable by anyone. all forms of media began to use the internet but each form is independent in its own right.