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
1. 1874 – Principal of the telephone was uncovered.
2. 1876 – Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone, beating
Elisha Gray by a matter of hours.
3. 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.
4. 1878 – The workable exchange was developed, which enabled
calls to be switched between subscribers rather than having
direct lines.
5. 1879 – Subscribers began to be designated by numbers and not
their names.
6. 1880’s – Long distance service expanded throughout this
period using metallic circuits.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. 1900 – First coin operated telephone installed in Hartford,
Connecticut.
10. 1904 – “French Phone” developed by the Bell Company. This
had the transmitter and receiver in a simple handset.
11. 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.
12. 1918 – It was estimated that approximately ten million Bell
system telephones were in service throughout the U.S.
13. 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.
14. 1927 – First transatlantic service from New York to London
became operational. The signal was transmitted by radio waves.
15. 1936 – Research into electronic telephone exchanges began
and was eventually perfected in the 1960’s with the electronic
switching system (SES).
16. 1946 – Worlds first commercial mobile phone service put into
operation. It could link moving vehicles to a telephone network
via radio waves.
17. 1947 – Microwave radio technology used for the first time
for long distance phone calls.
18. 1947 – The transistor was invented at Bell laboratories.
19. 1955 – Saw the beginning of the laying of transatlantic
telephone cables.
20. 1962 – The worlds first international communications
satellite, Telstar was launched.
21. 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.
22. 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.
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