The First Call

The telephone is one of the greatest inventions in history.  Early telephones were nothing like the ones we have today. Telephone is the Greek word for “far sound.” This is how the telephone became what it is today.

The telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876, with the help ofhis assistant Thomas A. Watson. Mr. Bell was originally from Scotland and came to Boston, Massachusetts in 1872. Mr. Bell got the idea for the telephone from a German inventor, Hermann von Helmholz.

Mr. Bell invented the telephone by accident when he was trying to invent a device that could send more than one telegram at the same time. Mr. Watson and Mr. Bell were both practicing their musical instruments in separate rooms. Bell spilled some polishing liquid on himself and said over the telephone, “Mr. Watson, come here, I want you.”  Mr. Bell also invented the microphone and the speaker.

The first telephone didn’t have a bell, so the caller had to tap the phone with a hammer to let the receiver know a call was being sent to them. It was Thomas Watson who invented the bell. Mr. Watson and Mr. Bell were the first people, on January 15, 1915, to make a transcontinental call. A transcontinental call is a phone call made from one side of the country to another. Bell was in New York and Watson was in California. Bell repeated his famous line “Watson, come here, I want you.” Watson replied, “It would take me a week to get there now.”

Source : library.thinkquest.org/04oct/00451/telephone.htm

Early Communication

Communication has certainly changed a lot over the past 150 years. When our founding fathers first came to America, the only form of communication they had with one another was through letters, which could take days or even weeks to reach its destination. Sending letters to England could take months. But even before that Native Americans actually used smoke signals to communicate with one another. Native Americans are not the only group of people who have used smoke signals to communicate. The Chinese have also used smoke signals as well as the Boy Scouts of America. This form of communication is used by creating puffs of smoke using a fire and a blanket. The smoke signals must be used in an area where they will be visible to the receiver and is usually transmitted on top of a hill or mountain

It was evident that something had to be developed to make communicating with one another easier and faster. That’s where the telephone comes in. It could actually be considered the greatest invention of the nineteenth century. It not only made communicating with others who were miles away much quicker, it also spawned the growth of many businesses since it made communication much easier.

Surprisingly, there were two people in the running to patent the telephone, not just one person as the majority of people believe. In the 1870s, two relatively unheard of inventors of this time, Alexander Graham Bell and the less known Elisha Gary, both independently designed devices that could transmit speech electrically. This would later be known as the telephone, of course. Both men rushed their respective designs to the patent office within hours of each other, but Bell patented his telephone first. Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell entered into a famous legal battle over the invention of the telephone, which as most people know, Bell won.

Source : www.personal.psu.edu/jtk187/art2/telephone.htm