Pulse code modulation (PCM) is an analog-to-digital conversion technique used to represent sampled analog signals as digital data. PCM involves sampling the analog signal at regular intervals, quantizing the amplitude of the signal at each point to a few discrete levels, and coding it as digital data. The sampling rate must be greater than twice the highest frequency of the analog signal as per the Nyquist sampling theorem. PCM was invented in 1937 but was not widely adopted until the 1940s. It became the standard method for digital telephony due to its robustness and ability to efficiently regenerate and transmit signals.