During the 1870’s, two well known inventors both independently designed devices
that could transmit sound along electrical cables. Those inventors were
Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray. Both devices were registered at the
patent office within hours of each other. There followed a bitter legal battle
over the invention of the telephone, which Bell subsequently won.
The telegraph and telephone are very similar in concept, and it was through
Bell’s attempts to improve the telegraph that he found success with the
telephone.
The telegraph had been a highly successful communication system for about 30
years before Bell began experimenting. The main problem with the telegraph was
that it used Morse code, and was limited to sending and receiving one message
at a time. Bell had a good understanding about the nature of sound and music.
This enabled him to perceive the possibility of transmitting more than one
message along the same wire at one time. Bell’s idea was not new, others before
him had envisaged a multiple telegraph. Bell offered his own solution, the
“Harmonic Telegraph”. This was based on the principal that musical notes could
be sent simultaneously down the same wire, if those notes differed in pitch.
By the latter part of 1874 Bell’s experiment had progressed enough for him to
inform close family members about the possibility of a multiple telegraph.
Bell’s future father in law, attorney Gardiner Green Hubbard saw the
opportunity to break the monopoly exerted by the Western Union Telegraph
Company. He gave Bell the financial backing required for him to carry on his
work developing the multiple telegraph. However Bell failed to mention that he
and his accomplice, another brilliant young electrician Thomas Watson, were
developing an idea which occurred to him during the summer. This idea was to
create a device that could transmit the human voice electrically.
Bell and Watson continued to work on the harmonic telegraph at the insistence
of Hubbard and a few other financial backers. During March 1875 Bell met with a
man called Joseph Henry without the knowledge of Hubbard. Joseph Henry was the
respected director of the Smithsonian Institution. He listened closely to
Bell’s ideas and offered words of encouragement. Both Bell and Watson were
spurred on by Henry’s opinions and continued their work with even greater
enthusiasm and determination. By June 1875 they realised their goal of creating
a device that could transmit speech electrically would soon be realised. Their
experiments had proven different tones would vary the strength of an electric
current in a wire.
Now all they had to do was build a device with a suitable membrane capable of
turning those tones into varying electronic currents and a receiver to
reproduce the variations and turn them back into audible format at the other
end. In early June, Bell discovered that while working on his harmonic
telegraph, he could hear a sound over the wire. It was the sound of a twanging
clock spring. It was on March 10th 1876 that Bell was to finally realise the
success and communications potential of his new device. The possibilities of
being able to talk down an electrical wire far outweighed those of a modified
telegraph system, which was essentially based on just dots and dashes.
According to Bell’s notebook entry for that date, he describes his most
successful experiment using his new piece of equipment, the telephone. Bell
spoke to his assistant Watson, who was in the next room, through the instrument
and said “Mr Watson, come here, I want to speak to you”.
Alexander Graham Bell was born on 3rd March 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland. His
family were leading authorities in elocution and speech correction. He was
groomed and educated to follow a career in the same speciality. By the age of
just 29 in 1876 he had invented and patented the telephone. His thorough
knowledge of sound and acoustics helped immensely during the development of his
telephone, and gave him the edge over others working on similar projects at
that time. Bell was an intellectual of quality rarely found since his death. He
was a man always striving for success and searching for new ideas to nurture
and develop.
The telephone – important dates
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1874 – Principal of the telephone was uncovered.
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1876 – Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone, beating Elisha Gray by a
matter of hours.
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1877 – The very first permanent outdoor telephone wire was completed. It
stretched a distance of just three miles. This was closely followed in the U.S.
by the worlds first commercial telephone service.
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1878 – The workable exchange was developed, which enabled calls to be switched
between subscribers rather than having direct lines.
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1879 – Subscribers began to be designated by numbers and not their names.
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1880’s – Long distance service expanded throughout this period using metallic
circuits.
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1888 – Common battery system developed by Hammond V. Hayes, allows one central
battery to power all telephones on an exchange, rather than relying on each
units own battery.
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1891 – First automatic dialling system invented by a Kansas City undertaker. He
believed that crooked operators were sending his potential customers elsewhere.
It was his aim to get rid of the operators altogether.
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1900 – First coin operated telephone installed in Hartford, Connecticut.
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1904 – “French Phone” developed by the Bell Company. This had the transmitter
and receiver in a simple handset.
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1911 – American Telephone and Telegraph (AT & T) acquire the Western Union
Telegraph Company in a hostile takeover. They purchased stocks in the company
covertly and the two eventually merged.
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1918 – It was estimated that approximately ten million Bell system telephones
were in service throughout the U.S.
1921 – The switching of large numbers of calls was made possible through the
use of phantom circuits. This allowed three conversations to take place on two
pairs of wires.
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1927 – First transatlantic service from New York to London became operational.
The signal was transmitted by radio waves.
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1936 – Research into electronic telephone exchanges began and was eventually
perfected in the 1960’s with the electronic switching system (SES).
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1946 – Worlds first commercial mobile phone service put into operation. It
could link moving vehicles to a telephone network via radio waves.
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1947 – Microwave radio technology used for the first time for long distance
phone calls.
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1947 – The transistor was invented at Bell laboratories.
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1955 – Saw the beginning of the laying of transatlantic telephone cables.
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1962 – The worlds first international communications satellite, Telstar was
launched.
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1980’s – The development of fibre optic cables during this decade, offered the
potential to carry much larger volumes of calls than satellite or microwaves.
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1980’s, 1990’s, to present – Huge advances in micro electronic technology over
the last two decades have enabled the development of cellular (mobile) phones
to advance at a truly astonishing rate. A cellular (mobile) phone has its own
central transmitter allowing it to receive seamless transmissions as it enters
and exits a cell.
Some people believe the impact of the telephone has had on our lives is
negative. Whatever your beliefs, it is un-doubtable that the invention and
development of the telephone has had a massive impact on the way we live our
lives and go about our every day business.
Thanks for reading.
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