By Emily Kehm and Elyse Stephens

Impact and Change: “The Invention of the Telephone”

Alexander Graham Bell

Born March 3, 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland

When he was born he pleaded to have a middle name just like his two brothers. For his 11th birthday present he was given the middle name “Graham” because his father was treating a Canadian who was a boarder and family friend named Alexander Graham.

Education includes Edinburgh High School and Edinburgh University where he received special training in his father, Alexander Melville Bell’s, system for removing impediments in speech.

In 1867, he moved to London where he enrolled the University.

In 1870 he retired to Canada because of his ailing health where he stayed with his father.

He gained residence in the United States in 1872 and he introduced his father’s system of deaf-mute instruction while he also became a professor of vocal physiology at Boston University.

The Telegraph

Transmitted electric signals over wires from location to location that then translated into a message.

The non-electric telegraph was invented by Claude Chappe in 1794. The system used semaphore which was a flag-based alphabet which was dependent upon a line of sight for communication.

In 1835 Samuel Morse proved that signals could be transmitted by wire. He used pulses of current to deflect an electromagnet which caused a marker to create written codes on a strip of paper. This was called Morse Code.

The next year he modified the system to mark the paper with dots and dashes.

In 1743, he was funded thirty thousand dollars to construct an experimental telegraph line that covered 40 miles from Washington to Baltimore.

The Telegraph Patent

This is a 1844 receiver.

Patented May 1, 1849,

patent number 6,420.

The first practical line was

created in 1844 when a line

went from Baltimore to

Washington, D.C.

How Morse Code Works

International Morse Code

1. Short mark, dot or dit, one

unit long.

2. Longer mark, dash or dah,

three units long.

3. Intra character gap (between

the dots and dashes of a

character – one unit long.

4. Short gap between letters.

5. Medium gap between words-

seven letters long.

Telephone Vs. Telegraph

Until the year 1877, the year after Bell’s telephone was patented, all express long distance communication depended upon the telegraph.

The telephone changed the way people communicated.

By the year 1879, proceedings between Western Union and the infant telephone system was finished with an agreement that largely divided the two services.

Johann Philip Reis

January 7, 1834 – January 14, 1874

Born in Gelnhausen Germany

In 1860, he constructed the first prototype of a telephone which covered a distance of 100 meters.

In 1862 he changed the name to “telephon” to interest Professor Poggendorff and list him in the periodical Annalen der Physik, but was rejected for a second time.

In 1947, a test was conducted by the British Company Standard Telephones and Cables and it was confirmed that it could only faintly transmit and receive speech.

Drawing of Reis’s Telephone

The Speaker of the telephone

worked by Magetostriction . In

the first receiver he coiled a wire

around an iron knitting needle

and rested the needle against

the F hole of a violin . When

current passed through the

needle, the iron shrank forming

a click. In later versions he

clamped the iron bar to a cigar-

box-shaped resonator.

Bell’s Early Experiences with Sound

Sarah Fuller the principal of the Boston School of Deaf Mutes invited Alexander Graham Bell’s father to introduce his Visible Speech System to instructors. He declined and asked his son to take his place.

He travelled to the Boston School of Deaf Mutes in April 1871.

He was successful in training the school’s teachers and was therefore asked to repeat his program a the American Asylum for Deaf-Mutes located in Hartford Connecticut as well as the Clarke School For Deaf in Northampton Massachusetts.

In October 1872, Bell opened the “ School of Vocal Physiology and the Mechanics of Speech” in Boston

This attracted 30 deaf pupils in his first class.

One of his most famous students was Helen Keller.

Bell’s Telephone

When Bell was working in Brantford, he experimented with a “phonautograph.” A “phonautograph is a pen-like machine that had the ability to draw shapes of sound waves on smoked glass by tracing their vibrations.

Experimenting with the “phonautograph” led him to the idea that it might be possible to generate electrical currents that corresponded to sound waves.

Sanders and Hubbard were able to provide financial support to help Bell continue his experiments. Bell then had the capablility to hire Thomas Watson as his assistant and the two of them experimented with acoustic telegraphy.

Bell’s Telephone (cont.) The finished telephone had a transmitter that was created with

a double electromagnet and in front was a membrane that was stretched on a ring carried an oblong piece of soft iron (also called armature) was cemented to the center. A mouthpiece located before the diaphragm directed the sound upon it and as it vibrated with them the armature induced corresponding currents in the electromagnet. After the currents traversing through the line they were then passed through the receiver.

The receiver was created with a tubular shaped electromagnet. It was partially closed at one end with a thin circular disc of soft iron fixed to the end. It’s appearance was similar to that of a cylindrical metal box with thick sides. It had a single iron lid that was fastened with one screw.

When the adulatory current passed through the coil of the magnet, the discs or lid, they were put in vibration and sounds were emitted.

The first long distance telephone call was made on August 10, 1876 from the Bell’s household located in Brantford, Ontario to Paris, Ontario which were 10 miles apart.

Prototype of Bell’s Telephone

This is a photograph of

Alexander Graham Bell

speaking into his telephone

in 1876. After March of

1876, Bell changed the

liquid transmitter telephone

to a electromagnetic

telephone.

Lab Notebook March 10, 1876

This describes the first

successful experiment with the

telephone . He spoke through

the telephone to his assistant in

a neighboring room. Bell

documents the account “I then

shouted into M (the mouthpiece)

the following sentence: ‘Mr.

Watson come here I want to see

you. ‘ To my delight he came

and said that he had heard and

understood what I said.”

Bell’s Patent Drawing

Bell’s telephone patent

drawing. March 7, 1876.

This drawing describes

what was the first

construction to transmit

human speech by machine.

This was one of the most

beneficial patents of all the

19th Century.

Elisha Gray

1805-1901

He grew up on a farm and was a Quaker from rural Ohio.

Invented his version of the telephone in his laboratory in Highland Park, Illinois.

He studied electricity at Oberlin college

Received the first patent of his career in 1867 for an improved telegraph relay.

Founded the Western Electric Manufacturing Company in 1872.

Bell Vs. Gray “Race for the Patent”

Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone patent was filed by his attorney Marcellus Bailey at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

His application was entitled “Improvement in Telegraphy”

A few hours later, Elisha Gray’s attorney filled out a caveat for a telephone which was entitled “Transmitting Sounds Telegraphically”.

That day, Bell filed the fifth patent application while Gray’s was the thirty-ninth.

Bell was honored with the first telephone patent which was U.S. Patent 174,456.

Bell Telephone Company

Founded in 1877 by Alexander Graham Bell’s father-in-law, Gardiner Greene Hubbard.

Hubbard created the New England Telephone and Telegraph Company.

In 1879 the two companies merged forming the National Bell Telephone Company.

In 1880, another merge took place with others forming the American Bell Telephone Company.

The American Bell Telephone Company was acquired by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) on December 30, 1899.

In later years, AT&T merged with SBC Communications and Bell South forming the New AT&T.

Impact on Society The earlier form of communication, the telegraph, used

Morse Code. This was difficult to read and was easily misinterpreted.

Communication is altered when you can hear what is being communicated rather than translate it from dashes and dots.

The telephone amplified the ability to communicate from long distances.

John Vaughn said, “Considering how vital a factor is the telephone in today’s business world, we find it hard to realize that but thirty years have passed since Bell obtained his first patent.” This tells us that the invention of the telephone created a time period of new buisnesses emerging.

The telephone created new means of communication and led to more inventions that had the same properties as the telephone and speech.

The invention of the telephone also lead to ways to help deaf people.

Impact on Society (cont.)Cellular Phones

Concept of ‘cellular’ phones started in the year 1947.

Researchers looked at crude cars also known as car phones and realized that they were using small cells with frequency reuse they could increase the traffic capacity of mobile phones.

A cell phone is a kind of two way radio.

In 1947 AT&T stated that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) assign a number of radio-spectrum frequencies so that widespread mobile telephone would become possible and AT&T could research the technology.

The FCC limited the number of conversations possible at the same time in the same service area to 23 which was not a superior market for researching the technology.

Impact on Society (cont.)Cellular Phones

In 1968 the FCC stated that “If the technology to build a better mobile service works , we will increase the frequencies allocation, freeing the airways for more mobile phones.”

AT&T and Bell Labs said that the cellular system should work with many small, low-powered broadcast towers which would each cover a cell a small number of miles in radius and collectively covering a larger number of miles in general.

As the phones passed through the area, calls would be passed from one tower to the next.

We wouldn’t have they many types of phones we have today if Alexander Graham Bell had not discovered a way to speak to one another through these devices.