A telephone is a communication instrument for reproducing sound at a distance. Originally it was an electric device transmitting analogue speech along wires. Now it is an electronic device sending digital signals on wires or radio transmission.
The word 'telephone' was first used in English in 1828 for a system of signalling with musical notes.
Frenchman Charles Bourseul first proposed transmitting speech electronically in 1854, but he was ahead of his time and it took another six years before German Johann Philipp Reis using a cork, knitting needle, sausage skin and a piece of platinum achieved the transmission of sound.
Reis coined the word 'telephone' (or 'Telephon' as he wrote it in German) for his invention for which the user spoke into a carved wooden ear, but it did not work very well and was dismissed as a toy.
The Italian-American Antonio Meucci devised in the mid 1850s an electromagnetic telephone as a way of connecting his second-floor bedroom to his basement laboratory in his Staten Island, New York, thus being able to communicate with his wife, who was ill at the time. He submitted a patent caveat for his telephonic device to the U.S. Patent Office in 1871, but there was no mention of electromagnetic transmission of vocal sound in his caveat.
Alexander Graham Bell, who is widely regarded as the inventor of the telephone, got the idea for his communication device while working to improve the telegram in an upper room in Court Street, Boston, Massachusetts Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. On June 2, 1875 his assistant Watson made a mistake, the incorrect contact of a clamping screw which was too tight changed what should have been an intermittent transmission into a continuous current. Bell at the other end of the wire heard the line vibrate and emit the same timbre of a plucked reed. When Bell heard the rich overtones of the plucked reed, it occurred to him that since the circuit was never broken, all the complex vibrations of speech might be converted into undulating currents, which in turn would reproduce the complex timbre, amplitude, and frequencies of speech at a distance.
Bell spent the next winter making calculations with the aim of filing an application for a patent knowing a rival, Elisha Gray was working on a similar project.
On February 14, 1876 a representative of Bell filed his patent for a "telephone" which is Greek for sound, at New York Patent Office at 12.00Ppm. The now forgotten Elisha Gray got there two hours later.
The first intelligible words transmitted over the new electric speech machine by Bell and Watson was on March 10, 1876. when Bell spoke into the device, "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you." and Watson answered.
Bell made the first two-way long-distance telephone call between Cambridge and Boston, Massachusetts on October 9, 1876.
The first Bell telephone was both a transmitter and a receiver. One spoke through it and then put it to one's ear to hear the reply.
When Bell invented the phone he thought its main use would be to play music to selected subscribers. Before he'd invented the telephone Bell had designed a piano which could transmit its music to a distance by means of electricity.
Bell's patent for the telephone was modestly titled 'Improvement in Telegraphy.'
Alexander Graham Bell offered to sell his telephone patent to Western Union for $100,000 in 1876 when he was still struggling with his business. The committee appointed to investigate the offer concluded the telephone was "hardly more than a toy" and "inherently of no use to us".
When telephones first came into commercial use you had to whistle loudly into the receiver or ring a bell by hand to get the other person's attention, as telephone bells had yet to be invented.
Alexander Graham Bell recommended answering calls with the word 'Ahoy'. It was Thomas Edison who suggested saying 'Hello'. The word had usually been spelt 'hallo' or 'hullo' before he introduced 'hello' for phone calls.
The first residential telephone line was installed in Charles Williams, Jr. House on Arlington Street, Somerville, Massachusetts in 1877. The phone inside the house connected to Mr. Williams’ office at 109 Court Street in Boston, about 3 miles (5 kms) away. These two properties had the first telephone numbers – 1 and 2.
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HISTORY
The word 'telephone' was first used in English in 1828 for a system of signalling with musical notes.
Frenchman Charles Bourseul first proposed transmitting speech electronically in 1854, but he was ahead of his time and it took another six years before German Johann Philipp Reis using a cork, knitting needle, sausage skin and a piece of platinum achieved the transmission of sound.
Reis coined the word 'telephone' (or 'Telephon' as he wrote it in German) for his invention for which the user spoke into a carved wooden ear, but it did not work very well and was dismissed as a toy.
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| Reis' telephone |
The Italian-American Antonio Meucci devised in the mid 1850s an electromagnetic telephone as a way of connecting his second-floor bedroom to his basement laboratory in his Staten Island, New York, thus being able to communicate with his wife, who was ill at the time. He submitted a patent caveat for his telephonic device to the U.S. Patent Office in 1871, but there was no mention of electromagnetic transmission of vocal sound in his caveat.
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| Meucci's telephone. By Officine Galileo (costruttore) Wikipedia |
Alexander Graham Bell, who is widely regarded as the inventor of the telephone, got the idea for his communication device while working to improve the telegram in an upper room in Court Street, Boston, Massachusetts Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. On June 2, 1875 his assistant Watson made a mistake, the incorrect contact of a clamping screw which was too tight changed what should have been an intermittent transmission into a continuous current. Bell at the other end of the wire heard the line vibrate and emit the same timbre of a plucked reed. When Bell heard the rich overtones of the plucked reed, it occurred to him that since the circuit was never broken, all the complex vibrations of speech might be converted into undulating currents, which in turn would reproduce the complex timbre, amplitude, and frequencies of speech at a distance.
Bell spent the next winter making calculations with the aim of filing an application for a patent knowing a rival, Elisha Gray was working on a similar project.
On February 14, 1876 a representative of Bell filed his patent for a "telephone" which is Greek for sound, at New York Patent Office at 12.00Ppm. The now forgotten Elisha Gray got there two hours later.
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| Alexander Graham Bell's telephone patent[81] drawing, March 7, 1876 |
The first intelligible words transmitted over the new electric speech machine by Bell and Watson was on March 10, 1876. when Bell spoke into the device, "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you." and Watson answered.
Bell made the first two-way long-distance telephone call between Cambridge and Boston, Massachusetts on October 9, 1876.
The first Bell telephone was both a transmitter and a receiver. One spoke through it and then put it to one's ear to hear the reply.
When Bell invented the phone he thought its main use would be to play music to selected subscribers. Before he'd invented the telephone Bell had designed a piano which could transmit its music to a distance by means of electricity.
Bell's patent for the telephone was modestly titled 'Improvement in Telegraphy.'
Alexander Graham Bell offered to sell his telephone patent to Western Union for $100,000 in 1876 when he was still struggling with his business. The committee appointed to investigate the offer concluded the telephone was "hardly more than a toy" and "inherently of no use to us".
When telephones first came into commercial use you had to whistle loudly into the receiver or ring a bell by hand to get the other person's attention, as telephone bells had yet to be invented.
Alexander Graham Bell recommended answering calls with the word 'Ahoy'. It was Thomas Edison who suggested saying 'Hello'. The word had usually been spelt 'hallo' or 'hullo' before he introduced 'hello' for phone calls.
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| Bell at the opening of the long-distance line from New York to Chicago in 1892 |
The first residential telephone line was installed in Charles Williams, Jr. House on Arlington Street, Somerville, Massachusetts in 1877. The phone inside the house connected to Mr. Williams’ office at 109 Court Street in Boston, about 3 miles (5 kms) away. These two properties had the first telephone numbers – 1 and 2.
On June 20, 1877 Hugh Cossart Baker Jr. started the first commercial telephone service in Canada in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, so he and his friends T. C. Mewburn and C. D. Cory could contact each other directly about their chess moves. Telegraph linemen string the single line from house to house across roofs, attached to trees and a few handily located telegraph poles.
The Bell Telephone Company, a common law joint stock company, was organized in Boston, Massachusetts on July 9, 1877, by Alexander Graham Bell's father-in-law Gardiner Greene Hubbard.
In the first month of the Bell Telephone Company's existence, only six telephones were sold.
Mark Twain was one of the first private citizens to have a telephone. He wrote: "About the end of the year (or possibly in the beginning of 1878) I put up a telephone wire from my house down to the Courant office, the only telephone wire in town and the first one that was ever used in a private house in the world."
On January 14, 1878 the telephone was demonstrated to Queen Victoria at Osborne House by Alexander Graham Bell and she immediately commissioned installations throughout the British royal residences.
When Queen Victoria first installed a telephone at Osborne House, it was one of only two phones in Britain. The only person who could possibly ring her was a member of her household staff.
The first commercial North American telephone exchange was opened in New Haven, Connecticut on January 28, 1878. The first telephone book was issued the same time in New Haven. It contained only 50 entries.
The picture below is a scene from Bold Experiment – the Telephone Story, depicts the first women operators, Emma and Stella Nutt, working alongside boy operators at the Edwin Holmes Telephone Despatch Co. Boston, Massachusetts in 1878.
The world's first international telephone call was made between St. Stephen, New Brunswick, Canada, and Calais, Maine, United States on July 1, 1881. The call was made over a line that was 13 miles long and used a new type of telephone transmitter that Thomas Edison had invented.
By 1887 there were already more than 150,000 telephones in the United States, 26,000 in the United Kingdom, 9,000 in France, and 7,000 in Russia.
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| Acoustic telephone ad, The Consolidated Telephone Co., Jersey City, NJ 1886 |
Almon Brown Strowger, an undertaker in Topeka, Kansas, patented the Strowger switch on March 10, 1891, a device which led to the automation of telephone circuit switching. Strowger had noticed he was losing business because a competitor would have his wife, a telephone operator redirect calls asking for Strowger to his business. His invention eliminated the need for operators.
New England Telephone and Telegraph installed the first battery-operated telephone switchboard in Lexington, Massachusetts in 1894.
John W. Atkins, the manager at International Ocean Telegraph Company (IOTC), made the first international telephone call over telegraph cable at 09:55 am on Christmas Day 1900 from his office in Key West, Florida to Havana, Cuba. Atkins was testing to see if it would be possible for voice to be heard through the telegraph lines. After a long silence, Cuba answered with a simple "I don't understand you."
The oldest known song featuring somebody talking over the phone, "Hello! Ma Baby" was written in 1899 by the Tin Pan Alley husband and wife songwriting team of Joseph E. Howard and Ida Emerson, when only 10% of the population had telephones. Its subject is an African-American man who has a girlfriend that he knows only through the telephone. The song was made popular by Looney Tunes' Michigan J Frog.
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| Vintage telephone. Pixiebay |
The first transcontinental telephone service was inaugurated on January 25, 1915 when Alexander Graham Bell at 15 Dey Street in New York City spoke to his assistant Thomas Augustus Watson at 333 Grant Avenue in San Francisco, facilitated by a newly invented vacuum tube amplifier. It cost $20.70 for the first three minutes.
The British red telephone box was designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (1880-1960). Scott's K2 design won a Post Office sponsored competition in 1924.
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The first transatlantic telephone service was established on January 7, 1927 from New York to London. The first transatlantic telephone call that was made on that day by two men testing the line cost £15 ($19) for 3 minutes — a hefty £840 ($1,071) in today's money.
Their conversation included: "How's the weather over in London?"
Direct Distance Dialing (DDD) coast-to-coast telephone service was first offered on trial basis at Englewood, New Jersey, to 11 selected major cities across the United States. It began on November 10, 1951 when Mayor Leslie Denning of Englewood, New Jersey, called the mayor of Alameda, California. This service grew rapidly across major cities during the 1950s.
Subscriber Trunk Dialling (STD) was inaugurated in the UK by Queen Elizabeth II in 1958 when she spoke to the Lord Provost in a call from Bristol to Edinburgh.
Bell Telephone Laboratories unveiled the world's first push-button telephone, known as the Touch-Tone phone, at the 1962 World Fair in Seattle.
The commercial rollout of the Touch-Tone phone began on November 18, 1963, and by the end of the decade, it had become the standard telephone in the United States. The technology quickly gained popularity worldwide, and today, push-button phones are the ubiquitous form of telecommunication.
Phones have an asterisk and hash sign because when Bell Labs designed the first touch-tone phone, their system had two tones which were not assigned values. So they threw in * and #.
Born in Akron, Ohio, George Sweigert served in the US Army as a radio operator in World War II stationed at the South Pacific Islands of Guadalcanal and Bougainville. In June 1969, Sweigert was awarded US patent 3449750 for a "full duplex wireless communications apparatus". Sweigert credited his military service for invention of the cordless telephone, citing experimentation with various antennas, signal frequencies, and types of radios.
Motorola publicly demonstrated the world's first handheld mobile phone on April 3, 1973. A call was made by Motorola's Martin Cooper from a New York City street to a landline phone, which was answered by Joel Engel, the head of research at AT&T's Bell Labs.
The first cordless telephone, capable of operating up to 600 feet from its base, was introduced by Fidelity and British Telecom in 1983.
The last hand-cranked telephone system in the U. S. went out of service in 1983 as 440 telephone customers in Bryant Pond, Maine, were switched over to direct-dial service.
AT&T released its video telephone in 1992. The price: $1,499.
Phones have an asterisk and hash sign because when Bell Labs designed the first touch-tone phone, their system had two tones which were not assigned values. So they threw in * and #.
 |
| Pixiebay |
Born in Akron, Ohio, George Sweigert served in the US Army as a radio operator in World War II stationed at the South Pacific Islands of Guadalcanal and Bougainville. In June 1969, Sweigert was awarded US patent 3449750 for a "full duplex wireless communications apparatus". Sweigert credited his military service for invention of the cordless telephone, citing experimentation with various antennas, signal frequencies, and types of radios.
Motorola publicly demonstrated the world's first handheld mobile phone on April 3, 1973. A call was made by Motorola's Martin Cooper from a New York City street to a landline phone, which was answered by Joel Engel, the head of research at AT&T's Bell Labs.
The first cordless telephone, capable of operating up to 600 feet from its base, was introduced by Fidelity and British Telecom in 1983.
The last hand-cranked telephone system in the U. S. went out of service in 1983 as 440 telephone customers in Bryant Pond, Maine, were switched over to direct-dial service.
AT&T released its video telephone in 1992. The price: $1,499.
Almost half the world's population has never made a phone call.
FUN TELEPHONE FACTS
According to Ofcom, the average person in the UK spends 39 minutes a day on the phone.
Today there are 1.3 billion phone lines in use around the world.
Around half of the people in the world have never made or received a telephone call.
Signals on your telephone travel over 100,000 miles per second.
The rotary phone was invented by an undertaker. The operator in his hometown was married to his competition, so the rotary dial was a way to bypass the human operator.
When the # and * keys were first put on phones they had no purpose whatsoever and were only included because touch tone phones could create up to twelve tones.
There was once a phone booth in the middle of the Mojave desert that was demolished because it became famous on the internet.
The reason some people feel the need to pace while on the telephone is because when you talk on the phone, your brain is lacking the visual feedback it usually receives from face-to-face conversation, and begins to translate emotional responses into physical movements.
Here's a list of phone call songs.
Source Daily Express
There was once a phone booth in the middle of the Mojave desert that was demolished because it became famous on the internet.
The reason some people feel the need to pace while on the telephone is because when you talk on the phone, your brain is lacking the visual feedback it usually receives from face-to-face conversation, and begins to translate emotional responses into physical movements.
Here's a list of phone call songs.
Source Daily Express
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