The History of Telephone
In the 1870s, two inventors Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell both independently designed devices that could transmit speech electrically (the telephone). Both men rushed their respective designs to the patent office within hours of each other, Alexander Graham Bell patented his telephone first. Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell entered into a famous legal battle over the invention of the telephone, which Bell won.Alexander Graham Bell - Evolution of the Telegraph into the Telephone
The
telegraph and telephone are both wire-based electrical systems, and Alexander
Graham Bell's success with the telephone came as a direct result of his
attempts to improve the telegraph.
When
Bell began experimenting with electrical signals, the telegraph had been an
established means of communication for some 30 years.Although a highly
successful system, the telegraph, with its dot-and-dash Morse code, was
basically limited to receiving and sending one message at a time. Bell's
extensive knowledge of the nature of sound and his understanding of music
enabled him to conjecture the possibility of transmitting multiple messages
over the same wire at the same time. Although the idea of a multiple telegraph
had been in existence for some time, Bell offered his own musical or harmonic
approach as a possible practical solution. His "harmonic telegraph"
was based on the principle that several notes could be sent simultaneously
along the same wire if the notes or signals differed in pitch.
Alexander Graham Bell- Talk with Electricity
By
October 1874, Bell's research had progressed to the extent that he could inform
his future father-in-law, Boston attorney Gardiner Greene Hubbard, about the
possibility of a multiple telegraph. Hubbard, who resented the absolute control
then exerted by the Western Union Telegraph Company, instantly saw the
potential for breaking such a monopoly and gave Bell the financial backing he
needed. Bell proceeded with his work on the multiple telegraph, but he did not
tell Hubbard that he and Thomas Watson, a young electrician whose services he
had enlisted, were also exploring an idea that had occurred to him that summer that of developing a device that would transmit speech electrically.
While
Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Watson worked on the harmonic telegraph at the
insistent urging of Hubbard and other backers, Bell nonetheless met in March
1875 with Joseph Henry, the respected director of the Smithsonian Institution,
who listened to Bell's ideas for a telephone and offered encouraging words.
Spurred
on by Henry's positive opinion, Bell and Watson continued their work. By June
1875 the goal of creating a device that would transmit speech electrically was
about to be realized. They had proven that different tones would vary the
strength of an electric current in a wire. To achieve success they therefore
needed only to build a working transmitter with a membrane capable of varying
electronic currents and a receiver that would reproduce these variations in
audible frequencies.
First Sound- Twang
On
June 2, 1875, Alexander Graham Bell while experimenting with his technique
called "harmonic telegraph" discovered he could hear sound over a
wire. The sound was that of a twanging clock spring.
Bell's
greatest success was achieved on March 10, 1876, marked not only the birth of
the telephone but the death of the multiple telegraph as well. The
communications potential contained in his demonstration of being able to
"talk with electricity" far outweighed anything that simply increasing
the capability of a dot-and-dash system could imply.
