Evolution of the Telephone 1876 - 2000s

History & Evolution of the Telephone

When was the Telephone Invented?

What is the Telephone?

A telephone is a device that allows two people who are far apart to talk to each other. The word “telephone” comes from Greek and means “distant voice”: “tele” means distant and “phone” means voice.

The basic elements of a classic telephone are the microphone (transmitter) and the earpiece (receiver). To make speaking easy, the microphone is located toward the bottom of the handset, and the earpiece or speaker is located at the top. Another element is the keypad, which is used to dial numbers.

A classic telephone works like this: the transmitter converts sound waves into electrical signals, which are sent to the receiving telephone over a telephone network. The receiving telephone then converts the signals back into audible sound through the earpiece or, sometimes, a speaker. This is how communication is achieved. Telephones are bidirectional devices, meaning they allow simultaneous transmission in both directions.

How Did the Evolution of the Telephone Begin?

From past to present, the telephone has gone through many phases of evolution. Contrary to popular belief, the idea of the telephone was first put forward by the English scientist Robert Hooke in 1667, who made the first acoustic wire telephone. Later, many other people produced different prototypes.

There is still debate about who actually invented the telephone first, and these discussions focus mainly on patents. Some argue that the credit should go to Antonio Meucci or Elisha Gray instead of Alexander Graham Bell. However, Alexander Graham Bell is considered the inventor of the telephone today, as he was the first to patent it, in 1876. Bell’s conversation with his assistant Thomas Watson on March 10, 1876, is considered the first telephone conversation in human history and marks the beginning of telephone communication.

About Graham Bell

Alexander Graham Bell is an important figure in the evolution of the telephone, which is why he is known as its inventor. He made history by holding the first telephone conversation in human history with Thomas Watson on March 10, 1876. Let’s take a closer look at his life:

• He was born on 3 March 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland.
• He graduated from high school at the age of 14. After studying music for a while, he began working with his father, who had developed an “alphabet for the deaf”.
• He studied anatomy and physiology at University College London.
• He met Thomas Watson, a skilled mechanic, in 1872. With Watson’s help, he then worked on a new telegraph device and the telephone between 1873 and 1876.
• On May 2, 1875, he managed to transmit a musical note with a simple telephone setup. After six more months of work, he developed his telephone prototype.
• He patented his invention of the telephone on March 7, 1876. Three days later, on March 10, 1876, he made history by making the first telephone call in human history with Thomas Watson. This was the most important step in the evolution of the telephone.
• Bell then founded the Bell Telephone Company, which commissioned the first commercial telephone exchange in the state of Connecticut.
• He developed the gramophone in the laboratories he established with the money from the Volta Prize, awarded to him by France in 1880. He also contributed to the development of devices such as the audiometer and the photophone.
• In 1915, he opened the world’s first long-distance telephone line connecting New York to San Francisco.
• Bell died in 1922, known as the inventor of the telephone.

Timeline

• 1667: Robert Hooke creates an acoustic string telephone that conveys sounds over a taut, extended wire through mechanical vibrations.
• 1844: Innocenzo Manzetti first introduces the idea of an electric “talking telegraph”, or telephone.
• 1849: Antonio Meucci demonstrates a communication device to individuals in Havana. It is argued that this was an electromagnetic telephone, and it was claimed at the time that it transmitted electricity through the user’s body.
• 1854: Charles Bourseul publishes a theoretical description of a working telephone transmitter and receiver in L’Illustration (Paris), but does not build a working prototype.
• 1872: Elisha Gray founds the Western Electric Manufacturing Company.
• May 1874: Gray invents an electromagnetic device to transmit musical tones. Some of his receivers use a metallic diaphragm.
• 29 December 1874: Gray demonstrates his musical tone device and transmits “familiar tunes through telegraph wire” at the Presbyterian Church in Highland Park, Illinois.
• 4 May 1875: Bell works out how to create a varying current amplitude by using a variable resistor in a wire that carries electric current.
• 1 July 1875: Bell uses a bidirectional “gallows” telephone capable of transmitting “vague but voice-like sounds”, but not clear speech. Both the transmitter and the receiver were identical membrane electromagnet instruments.
• 1875: Thomas Edison experiments with the acoustic telegraph and, in November, builds an electro-dynamic receiver.
• 11 February 1876: Elisha Gray designs a liquid transmitter for use with the telephone, but does not build one.
• 14 February 1876: One of the most important days in the evolution of the telephone. First, Gray’s lawyer files a patent caveat for the telephone at the Patent Office in Washington, D.C., but does not pay the filing fee. About four hours later, Bell’s lawyer files a patent application for Bell at the same patent office and pays the fee, asking for it to be recorded in the receipt book immediately. About two hours later, Gray’s lawyer comes to pay Gray’s fee, but it is not accepted. Since Gray was the first to start the patent proceedings, he had the legal right to object. However, Gray followed his lawyer’s advice and did not, partly because of his involvement with the acoustic telegraph. As a result, the patent was awarded to Bell.
• 7 March 1876: U.S. Patent 174,465 is issued for Bell’s telephone.
• 10 March 1876: Bell says, “Mr. Watson, come here! I want to see you!” and the message is successfully transmitted. This is the first two-way telephone conversation in the evolution of the telephone.
• 10 August 1876: Alexander Graham Bell makes the world’s first long-distance telephone call, a one-way call over approximately 6 miles between Brantford and Paris, Ontario, Canada.
• 1876: Hungarian inventor Tivadar Puskás invents the telephone exchange switchboard (he later worked with Edison).
• 9 October 1876: Bell makes the first two-way long-distance telephone call, between Cambridge and Boston, Massachusetts.
• October 1876: Edison tests his first carbon microphone.
• November 1877: The first permanent telephone connection in the evolution of the telephone is set up between two businesses in Manchester, England, using imported Bell instruments.
• 10 September 1879: Connolly and McTighe patent a “dial-up” telephone exchange.
• 19 February 1880: The photophone, also called the radiophone, is jointly invented by Alexander Graham Bell and Charles Sumner Tainter at Bell’s Volta Laboratory. The device allows sound to be transmitted on a beam of light.
• 1 April 1880: The world’s first wireless telephone call is made with Bell and Tainter’s photophone (a forerunner of fiber-optic communication), from the Franklin School in Washington, D.C., to the window of Bell’s laboratory, 213 meters away.
• 1 July 1881: The world’s first international telephone call is made between St. Stephen, New Brunswick, Canada, and Calais, Maine, United States.
• 1886: Gilliland’s automatic switching equipment enters service between Worcester and Leicester, with the first operator-call feature, which allows one operator to handle two switchboards.
• 1887: Tivadar Puskás introduces the multiplex switchboard, an important step in the further development of the telephone exchange.
• 10 March 1891: Almon Strowger patents the Strowger switch, the first automatic telephone exchange.
• 3 May 1892: Thomas Edison is granted a patent for the carbon microphone, based on applications filed in 1877.
• 26 February 1914: The Boston–Washington underground cable begins commercial service.
• 25 January 1915: The first transcontinental telephone call (3,600 miles) takes place: Thomas Augustus Watson in San Francisco receives a call from Alexander Graham Bell at 15 Dey Street in New York, made possible by a newly invented vacuum tube amplifier.
• 7 April 1927: The world’s first video phone call is made from Washington, D.C., to New York City by then-Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, using an electromechanical AT&T unit.
• 1946: Bell Labs develops the germanium point-contact transistor.
• 1947: Bell Labs engineers W. Rae Young and Douglas H. Ring propose hexagonal cells for providing cell phone service.
• 1948: Phil Porter, a Bell Labs engineer, suggests placing base stations at the corners of the hexagons rather than at their centers, with directional antennas facing three directions.
• 1959: Mohamed M. Atalla and Dawon Kahng at Bell Telephone Labs invent the metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET, or MOS transistor), which later leads to the rapid development and wide adoption of pulse-code modulation (PCM) digital telephony.
• 1961: Trials of push-button dialing service begin.
• 1970: Amos E. Joel, Jr. of Bell Labs invents the “call transfer” system for cellular mobile communication systems (patented in 1972).
• 1970: British companies Pye TMC, Marconi-Elliott, and GEC develop the digital push-button telephone based on metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) integrated circuit (IC) technology. It uses MOS memory chips to store phone numbers that can then be used for speed dialing.
• 1971: AT&T submits a proposal for cell phone service to the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
• 3 April 1973: Motorola employee Martin Cooper makes the first handheld cell phone call, to Joel Engel, head of research at AT&T’s Bell Labs, using a prototype Motorola DynaTAC.
• 1975: Paul R. Gray and J. McCreary develop the analog-to-digital converter (ADC) MOS chip used in digital telephony.
• 1976: Kazuo Hashimoto invents Caller ID.
• 1978: Bell Labs launches the first commercial cellular network trial in Chicago, using the Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS).
• 1979: VoIP: work on the Network Voice Protocol (NVP) begins on early versions of IP.
• 1981: NMT, the world’s first fully automatic mobile phone system, is launched in Sweden and Norway.
• 1987: ADSL is introduced.
• 1988: TAT-8, the first transatlantic fiber-optic cable, enters service, carrying 40,000 circuits.
• 1990: Analog AMPS is superseded by Digital AMPS.
• 1994: The IBM Simon becomes the first smartphone on the market.

Telephones Today: 21st-Century Developments and VoIP Technology

One of the latest steps in the evolution of the telephone is VoIP. VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) is the transmission of voice, video, or messages over IP. IP stands for Internet Protocol, and an IP address is the address that identifies each device on the Internet, whether it belongs to a person or an organization, so that devices can communicate with each other.

If you have an internet connection, you can call anyone with VoIP without needing conventional telephone service. Another feature of VoIP is that it can manage outgoing and incoming calls over existing telephone networks. VoIP is also a cost-effective choice today: people do not need to pay additional fees for long-distance and international calls, and the only cost is internet access. For this reason, it is the most preferred form of telecommunication today.

When you make a phone call using VoIP, the business phone app or VoIP adapter takes the analog audio signal and converts it into a digital signal. This digital voice data is then sent to the business phone service provider over your internet connection, and finally the call is forwarded to the other person’s telephone.

Conclusion

To sum up the evolution of the telephone: a telephone is a device that allows two people who are far apart to talk to each other. The most important step in its evolution was the beginning of telephone communication: Alexander Graham Bell’s conversation with his assistant Thomas Watson on March 10, 1876, is considered the first telephone call in human history. Although there is still a lot of controversy, Bell holds the patent for the telephone. He was also one of the first businesspeople to build the communication industry.

Today, thanks to the evolution of the telephone, we can communicate not only through calls but also through other channels. The general name for this is VoIP. VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) is the transmission of voice, video, or messages over IP. It can connect any two devices that have an internet connection, or connect an internet-connected device to a telephone.