Monday, March 5, 2012

The Telephone - A Brief History

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 straight through Bell's attempts to heighten the telegraph that he found success with the telephone.

Telephone

The telegraph had been a very thriving communication ideas for about 30 years before Bell began experimenting. The main problem with the telegraph was that it used Morse code, and was wee to sending and receiving one message at a time. Bell had a good comprehension about the nature of sound and music. This enabled him to realize 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 important that musical notes could be sent simultaneously down the same wire, if those notes differed in pitch.

The Telephone - A Brief History

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 hereafter father in law, attorney Gardiner Green Hubbard saw the opening 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 expedient 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 intimately 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 expedient that could transmit speech electrically would soon be realised. Their experiments had proven different tones would vary the vigor of an electric current in a wire.

Now all they had to do was build a expedient with a favorable 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 ultimately realise the success and communications possible 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 thriving experiment using his new piece of equipment, the telephone. Bell spoke to his assistant Watson, who was in the next room, straight 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 prominent authorities in elocution and speech correction. He was groomed and educated to result a work in the same speciality. By the age of just 29 in 1876 he had invented and patented the telephone. His suitable knowledge of sound and acoustics helped immensely during the improvement of his telephone, and gave him the edge over others working on similar projects at that time. Bell was an intellectual of potential rarely found since his death. He was a man all the time striving for success and searching for new ideas to look after and develop.

The telephone - prominent dates

1. 1874 - important 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 intimately followed in the U.S. By the worlds first industrial telephone service.

4. 1878 - The workable change 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 aid expanded throughout this period using metallic circuits.

7. 1888 - coarse battery ideas 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 automated dialling ideas invented by a Kansas City undertaker. He believed that crooked operators were sending his possible 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 straightforward handset.

11. 1911 - American Telephone and Telegraph (At & T) collect the Western Union Telegraph business in a hostile takeover. They purchased stocks in the business covertly and the two ultimately merged.

12. 1918 - It was estimated that approximately ten million Bell ideas telephones were in aid throughout the U.S.

13. 1921 - The switching of large numbers of calls was made possible straight through the use of phantom circuits. This allowed three conversations to take place on two pairs of wires.

14. 1927 - First transatlantic aid from New York to London became operational. The signal was transmitted by radio waves.

15. 1936 - explore into electronic telephone exchanges began and was ultimately perfected in the 1960's with the electronic switching ideas (Ses).

16. 1946 - Worlds first industrial mobile phone aid put into operation. It could link involving 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 starting of the laying of transatlantic telephone cables.

20. 1962 - The worlds first international communications satellite, Telstar was launched.

21. 1980's - The improvement of fibre optic cables during this decade, offered the possible 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 improvement of cellular (mobile) phones to improve at a truly splendid 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. anything your beliefs, it is un-doubtable that the invention and improvement of the telephone has had a immense impact on the way we live our lives and go about our every day business.

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The Telephone - A Brief History

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