Who invented the telephone?

This timeline is provided to help show how the dominant form of communication changes as rapidly as innovators develop new technologies. A brief historical overview: The printing press was the big innovation in communications until the telegraph was developed. Printing remained the key format for mass messages for years afterward, but the telegraph allowed instant communication over vast distances for the first time in human history. Telegraph usage faded as radio became easy to use and popularized; as radio was being developed, the telephone quickly became the fastest way to communicate person-to-person; after television was perfected and content for it was well developed, it became the dominant form of mass-communication technology; the internet came next, and newspapers, radio, telephones, and television are being rolled into this far-reaching information medium. As with many innovations, the idea for the telephone came along far sooner than it was brought to reality. While Italian innovator Antonio Meucci (pictured at left) is credited with inventing the first basic phone in 1849, and Frenchman Charles Bourseul devised a phone in 1854, Alexander Graham Bell won the first U.S. patent for the device in 1876. Bell began his research in 1874 and had financial backers who gave him the best business plan for bringing it to market. In 1877-78, the first telephone line was constructed, the first switchboard was created and the first telephone exchange was in operation. Three y...

Strowger 11 digit desk telephone -1905 Cyber Telephone Museum/Ron Christianson Legend has it that Almon Brown Strowger was a mortician that believed his local operator was directing all business calls to his competitor, who happened to be her husband. Strowger felt that subscribers should have control over calls rather than operators. He patented the automatic telephone exchange a.k.a. dial service in 1891, eliminating the need for an operator to direct calls.

In our new video series, Ingenious, Susannah Carroll and Trace Dominguez look at the history of many inventions that have changed our world – including the telephone. Most people know Alexander Graham Bell as the inventor of the telephone, but there is so much more to that story. When we think of an inventor, we often think of someone with a singular passion for whatever it is that they’re working on. This was not the case for Bell. At least, his passion wasn’t for the telephone. Instead, Alexander Graham Bell was devoted to the idea of oralism – teaching the deaf to speak using lip-reading and verbal speech, as opposed to sign language. In her book, The Invention of Miracles: Language, Power and Alexander Graham Bell’s Quest to End Deafness, Katie Booth explores how this idea shaped Bell’s life, as well as his most famous invention. Alexander Graham Bell initially used Visible Speech, a method developed by his father, Alexander Melville Bell, to teach deaf people, including Helen Keller and his future wife Mabel. Visible Speech uses symbols to represent different sounds that are made when a person speaks. Bell further developed his father’s work and lectured around the country, promoting his ideas. With help from Bell, oralism caught on and became the primary method through which deaf children were taught, well into the 20 th century. It was through his work with the deaf and his careful study of how sound is transmitted via the human voice that led Bell to the invention ...

Today, mobile phones fit in the palm of our hands, and laptops fit in our bags, making communication seem compact and accessible. But, the history of phones goes way back. Teenagers today may not have experienced this, but in the olden days, before the time of the convenient handheld mobile phone, telephones had cords and antennas. Telephone systems were usually entirely analog devices with little digital screens. At that time, no one imagined that digital cordless phones would come and take over the market. Just like cell phones did not come out of anywhere, the telephone system has a series of predecessors too. Here is a brief history of the telephone, beginning from the earliest forms of audio transmission to the invention of the first cell phone: Table of Contents • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • The History of Phones: The Earliest Audio Communication Devices With the industrial revolution in full swing and wars becoming increasingly mechanical, it was only a matter of time before someone came along with the idea of audio transmission. There are a few devices that preceded and, consequently, led to the invention of the telephone: Mechanical Devices Mechanical and acoustic devices for the transmission of speech and music go back a long way. As far back as the 17th century, people were experimenting with pipes, strings, and similar media to transmit sound. The earliest examples of this phenomenon were acoustic in nature like the tin can telephone. Ti...

Bell's Biography Alexander Graham Bell was born on March 3, 1847, in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was immersed in the study of sound from the beginning. His father, uncle, and grandfather were authorities on elocution and speech therapy for the deaf. It was understood that Bell would follow in the family footsteps after finishing college. But after Bell's two other brothers died of tuberculosis, Bell and his parents decided to immigrate to Canada in 1870. After a brief period of living in Ontario, the Bells moved to Boston where they established speech-therapy practices specializing in teaching deaf children to speak. One of Alexander Graham Bell's pupils was a young Helen Keller, who when they met was not only blind and deaf but also unable to speak. Bell's extensive knowledge of the nature of sound and his understanding of music enabled him to consider the possibility of transmitting multiple messages over the same wire at the same time. Although the idea of a "multiple telegraph" had been in existence for some time, it was purely conjecture as no one had been able to fabricate one—until Bell. His "harmonic telegraph" was based on the principle that several notes could be sent simultaneously along the same wire if the notes or signals differed in pitch. Talk With Electricity By October 1874, Bell's research had progressed to the extent that he could inform his future father-in-law, Boston attorney Gardiner Greene Hubbard, about the possibility of a multiple telegraph. Hubbard...

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,...

Johan Philipp Reis’ Telephone On October 26, 1861, German teacher and inventor Johann Philipp Reis, presented his telephone system at the ‘ Physikalischen Verein zu Frankfurt am Main‘. Although it did not convince his contemporaries, his invention marks a milestone in telecommunications. Early Life and First Projects Philipp Reis was born on January 7, 1834 in Gelnhausen, Germany in a Jewish family as son of a baker. Reis’s mother died while he was an infant, and he was raised by his paternal grandmother, a well-read woman. At the age of six Reis was sent to the common school of his home town of Gelnhausen. Here his talents attracted the notice of his instructors, who advised his father to extend his education at a higher college. In 1845 Reis was sent to the well known Garniersche private school in Friedrichsdorf. There he learned not only mathematics, physics and chemistry, but also English and French. In 1850 the 16-year-old Philipp Reis became an elementary school teacher in Friedrichsdorf. Although he was no entirely trained teacher, he knew how to tie up his pupils with interesting experiments. He was a self educated person and he continued his own education taking private lessons in physics. In 1852, Reis began work on his “ artificial ear” (künstliches Ohr) project by gathering some common materials found around his house in Friedrichsdorf, Germany, not far from Frankfurt. In his first attempts in his homemade lab in a shed in his backyard he was to construct a cru...

Telephones have come a long way from being chunky machines tied down by wires to elegant and sleek to fit in our pockets. The telephone invented by Graham Bell was heavy and was required to be attached by wires or required a telephone line. It was not until the 1960s that the cordless telephone came into existence. The cordless phone was an invention that changed the communication technology landscape forever. People no longer had to sit beside a telephone to talk to someone; instead, they could pick up the phone and roam around as they pleased. As technology improved, cordless phones became more and more efficient. The invention of the cordless phone laid the base for modern communication technology. A cordless telephone can be used as a portable telephone as it is a combination of a radio transmitter, receiver, and telephone. A cordless phone consists of a base station and a portable handset. It operates on radio signals, with the help of the base station, which is connected to the phone lines. The base is attached to the phone jack with the support of a standard telephone wire. This base receives the incoming call as an electrical signal through the phone line and converts it into an FM radio signal. Then the radio signal is gets broadcasted to the handset of the cordless phone. It again converts the radio signal into an electrical signal and sends it along to the speaker. The speaker interprets the electrical impulses and converts them into a sound that we can understa...

Phones are integral to the everyday lives of most people, but who should be regarded as the device's mastermind? The Scottish-born Alexander Graham Bell is routinely credited as the inventor of the telephone and the first person to speak over the phone. In that first telephone call, on March 10, 1876, he famously told his assistant Thomas Watson, "Mr. Watson, come here; I want to see you." But, as Iwan Morus explains in his book " How the Victorians Took Us to the Moon: The Story of the 19th-Century Innovators Who Forged Our Future" (Icon Books, 2022), inventions are rarely the results of a sole pioneer. "Many — I'd almost say all — nineteenth-century electrical inventions were highly contested, with different inventors claiming credit for having solved the key problems first," Morus told Live Science in an email. "Charles Wheatstone and William Fothergill Cooke, the co-patentees of the first British electromagnetic telegraph, for example, didn't take long to fall out over which of them really invented it. Samuel Morse quarreled with pretty much everyone about his claims to inventing the telegraph. And there were similar debates about the lightbulb, and so on." Related: 20 inventions that changed the world Likewise, many people other than Bell claimed to have invented the telephone, Christopher Beauchamp, a professor of law at Brooklyn Law School, wrote in a 2010 article in the journal Technology and Culture. In fact, some people even suggested that "Bell seized the honor ...

Alexander Graham Bell On invention: "Leave the beaten track occasionally and dive into the woods. Every time you do so you will be certain to find something that you have never seen before. Follow it up, explore all around it, and before you know it, you will have something worth thinking about to occupy your mind. All really big discoveries are the results of thought." -- Alexander Graham Bell On the telephone: "The day is coming when telegraph wires will be laid on to houses just like water or gas -- and friends will converse with each other without leaving home." -- Alexander Graham Bell in a letter to his father in 1876 Alexander Graham Bell Edinburgh, Scotland; March 1847 Alexander Graham Bell is most well known for inventing the telephone. He came to the U.S as a teacher of the deaf, and conceived the idea of "electronic speech" while visiting his hearing-impaired mother in Canada. This led him to invent the microphone and later the "electrical speech machine" -- his name for the first telephone. Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on March 3, 1847. He enrolled in the University of London to study anatomy and physiology, but his college time was cut short when his family moved to Canada in 1870. His parents had lost two children to tuberculosis, and they insisted that the best way to save their last child was to leave England. When he was eleven, Bell invented a machine that could clean wheat. He later said that if he had understood electricity at all, he would have...