Telephone inventor

Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders. It often indicates a user profile. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • All • A-Z • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Featured • • About • • • • • • • • Follow • • • • • • • • Subscriptions • • In 1876, inventor Alexander Graham Bellpatentedthe first phone: a bulky device with a curved mouthpiece and earpiececonnected by wires.It looked much different than the iPhones of today. In recognition of Bell's birthday on March 3, we're taking a look back at the design evolution of the phone over the past 144 years. The Leanna Garfield contributed to an earlier version of this story. In the 1930s, famed industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss created what many consider to be the first modern telephone: the Model 302. Its design signaled a departure from earlier models: the ringer is in the phone (instead of a separate component), the cradle lies horizontally, and you speak and listen to the same piece resting on top. Up until 1977, AT&T had a monopoly on phone design in the US. But that year, the Supreme Court lifted restrictions that once prevented people from buying and designing their own phones. This decision, along with AT&T's divestment from the Bell Company, resulted in all kinds of creative phone designs, including the '80s Beocom one below.

On February 14, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell applied for a U.S. patent for the telephone. On March 7, 1876, Bell was awarded U.S. patent 174,465. This patent is often referred to as the most valuable ever issued by the U.S. Patent Office, as it described not only the telephone instrument but also the concept of a telephone system. Learn how Alexander Graham Bell went to revolutionize telegraphy but instead invented the telephone telephone, an instrument designed for the This article describes the functional components of the modern telephone and traces the historical development of the telephone instrument. In addition it describes the development of what is known as the see the articles see the articles The telephone instrument The word telephone, from the Greek roots tēle, “far,” and phonē, “sound,” was applied as early as the late 17th century to the string telephone familiar to children, and it was later used to refer to the megaphone and the speaking tube, but in modern usage it refers solely to electrical devices Working components of the telephone As it has since its early years, the telephone instrument is made up of the following functional components: a power source, a switch hook, a dialer, a ringer, a transmitter, a The switch hook connects the telephone instrument to the direct current supplied through the local loop. In early telephones the receiver was hung on a hook that operated the switch by opening and closing a metal contact. This system is still common,...

• • • • • • Confusing history shows Bell may be least deserving of distinction, Meucci the most. We all know the story of how Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. Or do we? Bell was an audiologist. He worked with patients who had hearing deficits. He had only a limited understanding of electricity, which was and is the basis for telephone technology. Before getting into the technical details of Bell’s invention, consider the spirit of the time in which inventors were experimenting with electricity. Let’s go back to 1844, when Samuel F.B. Morse strung the first telegraph line in the United States. It was between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, Maryland. That success drove rapid expansion, and it wasn’t long until telegraphy connected much of the country. For the first time, we had rapid communication over long distances. As telegraphy became commonplace, inventors strove to develop improvements such as the duplex system that permitted transmitting to and from a location simultaneously over the same wire. Also, inventors became aware that the “vibrations” of the dots and dashes sent over wires might be a basis for transmitting the vibrations of the human voice, and the race was on to invent the first telephone. The key path to the telephone was the development of a practical microphone—or transmitter, as most telephone technologists preferred to call it. Bell’s microphone was a diaphragm coupled to an iron armature. The vibration of the armature caused a magnetic f...

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Long before cell phones and the Internet, the first worldwide telecommunication web emerged in the 1800s with the invention of the telegraph and the telephone. By delivering information at the speed of electricity over wires that gradually stretched across the country and around the globe, these innovations created a network of opportunities for a rapidly expanding society. Morse-Vail Telegraph Key, 1844–45 Alfred Vail made this key, believed to be from the first American telegraph line, as an improvement on Samuel Morse’s original transmitter. Vail helped Morse develop a practical system for sending and receiving coded electrical signals over a wire, which was successfully demonstrated in 1844. Morse’s telegraph marked the arrival of instant long-distance communication in America. The revolutionary technology excited the public imagination, inspiring predictions that the telegraph would bring about economic prosperity, national unity, and even world peace. Bell Telephone, 1876 In July 1876, Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated this experimental telephone at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia to introduce his new invention to the world. Bell, a teacher of the deaf, drew on his studies of sound and speech to devise a method of transmitting voices over electrical wires. Unlike the telegraph, the telephone enabled people to communicate directly, without special skills or codes. First used as a business tool, after 1900 the telephone expanded into private homes and ultima...

While cell phones are a relatively modern invention — if you consider 1973 modern — the idea of a telephone that could travel with you is as old as the telephone itself. For decades though, the best anyone could offer were bulky, two-way radio devices that were essentially walkie-talkies that filled the trunk of your car. However, a few key engineering developments and a classic tale of American business rivalry would help lay the foundation for the device that revolutionized how people communicate. Earliest Mobile Communications Devices RELATED: THE WORLD AT YOUR FINGERTIPS: A BRIEF HISTORY OF MOBILE DISPLAY TECHNOLOGY For most of their history, "mobile" phones were two-way radios you installed on something that moved. In the 1920s, German railroad operators In 1924, Zugtelephonie AG was founded as a supplier of mobile telephone equipment for use in trains. The following year saw the first public introduction of wireless telephones for first-class passengers on major rail lines between Berlin and Hamburg. The Second World War saw significant advances in This didn't stop companies from offering mobile telephone systems designed for use in automobiles in the 1940s and 1950s in America and elsewhere. However, like their military counterparts, they came with Major Developments Towards Modern Mobile Phone Systems In response to this growing demand for better mobile telephony, AT&T's Bell Labs went to work developing a system for placing and receiving telephone calls inside aut...