A Brief History of the Telephone

Telegraph operators were looking to save time and effort by searching for ways to send multiple messages over the same line. This engaged independent inventors Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Alva Edison, and Elisha Gray in a race to devise a harmonic telegraph capable of transmitting and receiving frequency transmissions. All succeeded in that initial experiment, concluding that transmitting and receiving human voices over electrical wires was the next logical connection.

Experiments Speak Not So Loud and Clear

Germany had already used megaphones to directly transmit voices in 1796, so the concept of getting a voice from point A to point B wasn't something novel, just unsuccessful, as electrically had yet to be channeled from both of those points. Although Benjamin Franklin is known traditionally as the father of electricity, electricity wasn't born until 1800 when Italian physicist Alessandra Volta created the electric "pile" or battery. Thus, electricity wasn't discovered by an accident, a kite, and a blessed Ben Franklin; but, by chemical reaction that began and ended on a positive and negative connection creating that first confined electrical charge, known as a "voltage." English scientist Michael Faraday, in 1831, used Volta's discovery to open the door for electricity to be used in technology when he created the first, albeit crude, electrical generator known as the "dynamo." It wasn't until 1879 that Edison had his light-bulb moment--three years after Alexander Graham Bell yelled the first words over the first rudimentary telephony system in 1876: "Mr. Watson, come here, I want you!"

Patently a Great Idea, the Telephone

Philipp Reis, a young German inventor and science teacher, created an "artificial ear" in 1852, refining it enough to lecture about it to Frankfort's Physic Association in 1861. It was not well-received although a few "Telephons" were produced. Bell filed his patent "Improvements in Telephony" on February 14, 1876, just a few hours before his rival, Elisha Gray, filed a "caveat" to other inventors that he was working on a "far speaking" telephone. Gray and Bell hotly battled over one of the most important patent rights cases in patent history. Gray brought up Reis's work, but it was deemed not a viable phone. Bell won legal claim because of those precious few hours of filing time and because Reis's work was not considered workable.

Afterwards, Bell and his assistant, machinist Thomas Watson, continued their attempts at creating a viable telephone, and succeeded, making the first commercial phone in 1877 as well as setting up the world's first telephone company, Bell Telephone Company, known colloquially in the 20th century as "Ma Bell." Edison continued his work, creating a carbon transmitter, patenting it in England instead of America to outsmart restrictions on Bell's patent. The transmitter later replaced Bell's as it was more efficient.

Exchanging Greetings by the Numbers

Connecting people to people wasn't the system we take for granted today. It began with a set of 21 telephones in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1878. Those phones were connected by a board that we know as a "switchboard." It took just a couple of years to work out the kinks in the system. By 1880, there were 138 exchanges and 30,000 subscribers in the United States, which exploded into 743 main exchanges, 44 branch exchanges, 150,000 subscribers and about 146,000 miles of insulated wire in less than a decade.

The kinks continued as gophers chewed through those insulated wires and cowboys used them for target practice. Young men manning the exchanges were rude and unreliable which didn't help promote what some people felt was invasive technology that wasn't much more than a toy anyway. Boston's New England Bell Company nipped the raucous young men in the bud, hiring the well-mannered Emma Nutt to be the first woman switchboard operator. Men were out, women monopolized the position late into the 1960s.

Connecting by Any Other Name is Just...a Number

The name system for the switchboard soon grew cumbersome and confusing with the growth of Bell. When a measles epidemic hit in 1879, Moses Greeley Parker, a Lowell, Massachusetts, doctor became concerned that there would be a breakdown in communication if the town's four telephone operators became ill. He suggested using an alphanumeric system, which became the basis for the numbering system we have today. The first crude automatic dialup system was patented in 1891. It served 99 customers using a wand that automatically maneuvered to the exchange being called.

Bell's subsidiary, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, known as AT&T today, was created in 1885 for long-distance connections, later becoming Bell's holding company around the beginning of the twentieth century. Dr. Lee De Forest, who worked for the Federal Telegraph Company in California, patented the "Audion" in 1907, which amplified long-distance calls. Theodore Vail, the first president of the Bell System before becoming AT&T's first president, made that first long-distance call from New York to San Francisco. It took 23 minutes to connect. The first calls "across the pond" between New York and London began in 1927. Customers were charged a whopping $75 for the first three minutes of connection. That is equal to just over $924 in 2009 dollars!

Despite the costs of bringing a universal telephone system to the U.S., Vail hoped that everyone in the United States would ultimately be using a telephone. So he consolidated his research and development departments into a lab which would eventually become Bell Laboratories. In the 1950s, all number calling was introduced much to the dismay of customers who felt it impersonal, but the numeric system stuck. We still use numeric calling codes and customer-distinct last four digits of the telephone numbers...and around 97 percent of U.S. households have land-line or wireless phones today. 

Bell began communications in the new medium of television about the same time and worked with NASA to launch two satellites into space: Telstar 1 and Telstar 2 in the early sixties. Telstar 1 relayed television signals, telephone calls and fax images. It also provided the first television feed across the Atlantic. Both Telstar satellites are still in orbit today, although they haven't been in service since the early to mid-60s. Today's Telstars are extremely complex in comparison. With advancing technology, fiber optics, GPS, and the web, Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Watson launched a brave new world.

 

 

 

 

 

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