What was the earliest form of data compression? Maybe some sort of code, or maybe some sort of glyph. Imagine ancient cuneiform or hieroglyphics. Loads of meaning packed into a small form. When did we humans start terraforming our information landscape with the shortcuts that all kinds of signifiers are?
This is a bit of a trick question. You wouldn't be at all wrong to note that written language (all language, for that matter) is a way to compress complex information into a shorter, simpler signifier. A language is structured; it’s systematic; each mind that’s learned that language holds the decoding libraries.
Mathematicians and information scientists usually trace the origins of modern data compression back to Morse code in the early 19th century. Using dots and dashes in sequence, Morse code is able to transmit perfectly legible messages across long distances using very little bandwidth - and a simple mechanical function. In fact, the code isn't just constrained to electrical pulses - it can be made using visual signals like flashing lights. Imagine an SOS signal being sent by flashlight with a hand moving across it to create the pulses, or a plume of smoke being withheld and let go in pulses to form short and long puffs. Morse code was groundbreaking and opened up a new dimension for communication.
The late 1940s and early 50s saw a wave of developments that we can look back on as the start of that exponential curve that brought us to where we are in compression today. In 1949, a new method called Shannon-Fano encoding introduced a way to encode information based on probability. Just a few years later, Fano's student, David Huffman, flipped the Shannon-Fano model on its head, quite literally. By building the probabilistic system from the top down rather than bottom up, Huffman found an even more optimised way to encode data for compression.
Since then developments have come thick and fast. There were the Lempl-Ziv algorithms and all their variations. There's run-length encoding, which finds quick wins in duplicated information in sequences. And now, further developments in both lossy and lossless compression techniques.
The future of compression is full of promise. With breakthroughs in quantum computing coming thick and fast, there’s much to be excited about. But making those advances accessible to the public is still a distance away. There’s much happening now to celebrate, including the possibility of overcoming the friction consumers still encounter in compression speed and size limits.
CompressionX is leading the way as part of that future. Our groundbreaking compression model is based on a new, smarter way to make data smaller. Here’s a quick visual to describe how it works. Imagine the CompressionX model as sending a scout out to survey your file. It sprints ahead to check out the file's full landscape. It takes stock of the space from different angles and ranges. Armed with that information, it can quickly map out a route that's hyper-efficient. Once the quickest route is charted, your data stays safe with full lossless compression and secure encryption, all while shrinking down to a mere slice of its original size.
CompressionX is a lossless compression tool that's ready to change the industry - again. We’re proud to maximise compression ratios by chunking data in a smarter way. Curious to learn more? Try it out for free today.
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