ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Analog transmission

Analog transmission is a way of sending information, like sound or pictures, using waves. Imagine you have a toy car and you want to send it to your friend who lives far away. Instead of just mailing the car in a box, you decide to use a special machine that can make the car small and put it inside a sound wave.

But how does that work? Well, let's imagine you record the sound of the car's engine revving up. This sound is made up of tiny air vibrations, kind of like when you blow a raspberry. These vibrations can be measured and turned into an electrical signal.

Next, you can use a wire or a radio wave to send this electrical signal to your friend. This signal will travel from your house to your friend's house. It's like when you talk to your friend on the phone, the sound of your voice travels through the phone lines to your friend's phone.

Once the electrical signal reaches your friend's house, it is turned back into sound waves. These sound waves vibrate the speaker in your friend's machine, and they can hear the sound of the toy car's engine revving up.

Analog transmission is like playing a game of telephone. When you whisper a message into someone's ear, they pass it along to the next person, and so on until the message reaches the last person. In analog transmission, the electrical signal is like the message being passed along from one place to another until it reaches its destination.

One important thing to know about analog transmission is that it can be affected by things like distance and interference. Just like when you play a game of telephone and the message gets a little bit fuzzy as it travels from person to person, analog signals can get weaker or distorted the longer they travel or if there are other electrical interferences in the way.

That's why we now use digital transmission, which is like sending the toy car to your friend in a box instead of through sound waves. Digital transmission can make the signal stronger and more reliable, like putting the toy car in a sturdy box for shipping. But analog transmission still has its uses, especially for things like radio and television signals, where it is important to capture and transmit all the details of the sound or picture.