On Sunday, April 14, 1912, shortly before midnight, the RMS Titanic struck an iceberg off the coast of Newfoundland. The radio operator, John Phillips, repeatedly transmitted the distress call CQD in Morse Code. He also sent the newly established signal SOS. Fifty-eight miles away, the Carpathia received the messages, and steamed toward the sinking liner. The Carpathia pulled 705 survivors out of their lifeboats. Phillips continued transmitting until power failed. He and the other passengers could have been saved if more lifeboats had been available, or if the California, which was so close that it could be seen from the deck of the Titanic, had had a radio operator on duty. However, this dramatic rescue established the power of wireless communication. Always before, ships out of sight of land and each other were cut off from the rest of the world. Now the veil was lifted. Since the Titanic disaster, wireless communications have expanded beyond the dreams of radio pioneers. Billions of people around the world receive radio and television broadcasts every day. Millions use cellular telephones and pagers and receive television programs from satellites. Thousands of ships and airplanes communicate by radio over great distances and navigate by the radio-navigation systems LORAN and GPS.

The enormous increase of wireless communications is tied to the growth of electronics in general, and computers in particular. Often people distinguish between digital and analog electronics.