Everywhere you go there are telephones – cell phones, cordless phones, pay phones, even landline phones. Today the telephone is taken for granted, but it hasn’t been all that long since the time when telephones did not exist. For the first century of the United States, communication took place via word of mouth, mail, or telegram, but not telephones.
Alexander Graham Bell was born in Scotland and immigrated to the United States in 1872, planning to set up a school for teachers of deaf students. In addition, he conducted experiments with sound reproduction that ultimately led him to develop the means of transmitting sound across wires. He was not yet an American citizen in 1876, when the country celebrated its birthday, but he was present at the Centennial Exhibition held in Philadelphia, where he demonstrated the first telephone.
Telegraphy, which was able to transmit sounds (dots and dashes) across wires, had made its debut in 1844. But Bell wanted to invent something that could send human voices speaking intelligible words. His patent for the telephone was granted on March 7, 1876, and 3 days later he spoke his famous sentences, “Mr. Watson, come here! I want to see you!” through a telephone with a water transmitter and an electromagnetic receiver.
The voice of the speaker vibrated a membrane over the liquid, which caused a rod to move and change the resistance of the water. The changing current that was created could be sent along a wire made of conductive material such as copper. When it reached the electromagnetic receiver, the current caused a diaphragm to move slightly with each change. The sound waves produced by the diaphragm could be understood as speech.
This was a startling invention to Americans attending the Exhibition! Since Bell had the patent, he was legally the owner of the new device; however, several other scientists came forward with their own claims, and it is possible that Bell did benefit from the ideas of men like Elisha Gray, who devised a water transmitter but did not build one. Other contributors to early telephone technology included Thomas Edison, Antonio Meucci, and Phillip Reis.
The Bell Telephone Company was established in 1877, and improvements on the prototype system were quickly devised. The first telephone systems were leased to businesses, connecting two at a time. The year 1878 saw the introduction of the switchboard, which allowed a shop to call more than one place from a single telephone. This was set up in New Haven, Connecticut. At about the same time, Bell developed a phone that used two magnets and two diaphragms, so that transmission could go either way, and Edison patented a carbon graphite microphone. This type of microphone worked so well it was subsequently used by the Bell system for the next 100 years, until the 1980’s.
The exchange principle, using switchboards, was already part of the telegraph system of Western Union, and for awhile the telegraph and telephone networks supported and encouraged one another in new technology. The first long distance telephone call was made from New York to Boston in 1884. One feature that helped long distance calls was the central office, a location in each community which housed the local switchboard as well as connections to other central offices. A person desiring a long distance call would notify the local central office, which then connected the person to the other party’s central office, and on to the individual’s phone line.
Telephone technology still had a long way to go in the late 19th century, but it was off to a good start with inventors Bell, Edison, and their contemporaries.