Can you imagine a life without a smartphone or even without, from today’s point of view very basic form of communication, the telephone? Just let me tell you that there were times without telephones and someone once had to come up with the idea of calling someone. In this article you will get to know some information about the invention of the telephone, as well as some interesting facts all around this topic. So be ready to travel back in time for a little bit.
Almost 150 years ago, the most common way to communicate with people from far away was by writing a letter. Letters took several weeks to arrive and stood in connection with a lot of effort. Whatever you wanted to tell your loved ones in the distance, it always needed a third party to convey your message.
The telegraph was also an important device to send and receive messages from one place to another. This, however, was limited as well. The messages were send by using the Samuel Morse code, which made it very difficult to convey messages in another language than English. It is impossible to create a code with letters with diacritical marks.
The telephone was invented to improve these capabilities of the telegraph. It became one of the most important inventions in modern history: A completely new way of communication, simpler and faster than ever before.
When talking about the invention of the telephone Alexander Graham Bell is an important name that always comes up. He is credited as the inventor of the telephone because he received the first patent on March 7, 1876. But already in the beginning of the 19th century,
a lot of different people made attempts to transmit sound by electric means. And the actual first inventor who discovered that you can send and receive sound electrically was Charles Bourseul. Antonio Meucci also did his research concerning that topic, and he even already had a so called “telettrofoni” at home in the 1850s. With this device, he could communicate between different rooms in his house, but he did not patent his invention. Johann Phillipp Reis is an important name to mention as well. He developed another method to transmit sounds and therefore another foundation for future studies and inventions, although his invention could only transmit a simple tone and, because of its complex waveform, no speech.
The already mentioned Alexander Graham Bell and another American inventor, Elisha Gray, both developed devices that could transmit speech electrically. They both worked on it independently in the 1870s and both developed their own telephones and researched on the topic of the transmission of speech. On February 14, 1876, Bell was the first one applying for a U.S. patent with his results. Only several hours later the application of Gray followed. Due to the fact Ball was earlier than him, he was the one getting awarded by the U.S. patent. It was not only a patent for the device itself but also for the concept of a telephone system. Thus, it can be considered as one of the most valuable patents ever issued.
Since this day, the telephone still had to come a long way. The sounds that Bell could transmit were only “speech like” and therefore you couldn’t really understand the other side. But still not only that had to be developed, the telephone network was non existing, too. And if you look at the smartphones we have today, it is easy to understand that it was just the start of something really big and new.
sources:
https://brilliantio.com/how-did-the-telephone-change-the-world/ (Valerie Forgeard, 22.11.2022)
https://www.britannica.com/technology/telephone (David E. Borth, 22.11.2022)