The Telephone

Probably no means of communication has revolutionized the daily lives of everyday people more than the invention of the Telephone. The telephone is an inexpensive, personal, and simple tool that is still growing to this day. With the invention of the phone, there has been many dispute of who the ‘true’ inventor is, with credit given to multiple people, it is still a toss-up.

In 1931, an Englishman named Michael Faraday proved his theory that vibrations of metal could be converted to electrical pulses, which was the technological basis of the telephone. Though Faraday was the first to discover this, he never fully was able to put his experiments in action, until 1861, when Johann Philip Reis[Photo] who is said to have built a simple apparatus that changed sound to electricity and back again to sound; but again, this device was incapable of transmitting most frequencies, and was never completely developed for later use. A working telephone was finally created by two men working in the United States, Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell. When this happened, both men raced to fill out a patent on the design at the New York Patent Office on February 14, 1876, soon to make the telegram a forgettable device.

As the story goes, the first telephone call occurred on March 6, 1876, when Bell called for his assistant in another room saying, “Come here, Watson, I want you.” Watson heard Bell through a receiver connected to a transmitter that Bell had designed. What followed that event lead to changes that would envelope the world, with Bell creating the Bell Telephone Company (later AT&T), growing to be the largest phone company worldwide.

Since then, people have experimented with the different parts of the telephone, trying to push its boundaries to make it modern and acceptable by society. The ever changing world eventually didn’t want to make the time to stand and talk against a wall, pushing the design of this revolutionary creation, leading us to many different designs, types, and styles of phones to be produced in the years to come.

Travis

1844-idea of the phone -1935 first telephone call around the world

In 1844 The Telegraph was introduced by Samuel Morse. With the telegraph only one message could be sent at a time, which caused backups and delays, and required operators to translate the coded messages. The competition to find a solution to the telegraph was intense. Alexander bell was not the only one trying to develop a better way of communication, Thomas Edison, and the Western Union, were also striving to develop a telegraph that was capable of sending several messages simultaneously over a single wire. Between the birth of Bell and his invention of the telephone, many advancements where made with the telegraph concerning the communication industry.
From 1844-1876 their were many advancements with the telegraph , fifty-one telegraph companies were in operation , The western union was formed ,2250 telegraph offices in operation nationwide, and the invention of the multiplex telegraph by Edison .

In 1875 bell was in Boston teaching the deaf, and working on devices to help the hearing impaired. While he was in Boston he developed an earphone with a microphone using a bar magnet, a thin coil of wire and a thin metal disk. The device Bell made worked both as an earphone and a microphone. Moreover, at first the device didn’t transmit sound loud enough so Bell had to use a carbon microphone so the device (telephone) could be used for commercial use.

In 1876 Bell filed a patent but only three hours before Elisha Gray, over 600 patents were filed over the next eleven years. It settled in Bells favor, and on March seventh 1876 the first telephone patent No. 174,465 was issued to Alexander Graham Bell. Bell offered his patent to the western union for $100,000.In 1877 Bell Telephone Company was formed , with Alexander Graham Bell as “electrician” and Thomas Watson as “superintendent”. Then in 1878 the first telephone directory was established in New Haven, CT, and had 21 listings. In 1880 30,872 Bell telephone station were established in the United States. Moreover most of the progress made was from 1880-1889 was expansion of the Bell telephone company.

In 1889 Almon B. Strowger invented a switch that had line contacts in circular rows that are inside a cylinder, which were controlled by push buttons. Furthermore in 1892 Strowger developed the dial telephone system that eliminated the operator. Following Strowger’s dial system on the eighteenth of October the first long distance telephone service was formed, from New York to Chicago over a span of 900 miles. Then in 1894 all the basic patents expire and there is a period of extreme competition and a lot of engineers start churning out a bunch of new inventions. In 1995 was the invention of the radio, and selective trunking. Then in 1996 Guglielmo Marconi patents the wireless telegraph.

In 1899 the name of the Bell Telephone Company was changed to the American Telephone and Telegraph. Following the Bell companies name change in 1900 John J. Carty, the chief engineer of NY TEL and later AT&T installed loading coils to extend the range and utilize open wire transportation to reduce crosstalk. Eventually AT&T paid Michael Pupin $255,000 for the patent for the coils, and there are now 20,000 telcos in business and there are now 856,000telephones in service. Then from 1900 – 1915 although a lot of expansion occurred and a few companies merged the important events were, two element “Fleming Valve” is invented by John Ambrose, directive horizontal antenna is patented by Marconi, radios were commercialized and, formation of Automatic Telephone Manufacturing Co.. In between 1915 and 1934 not much happened, then in 1935 the first around –the- world telephone call was made as well as the first conversation by wire and radio, and there was the invention of the new Bakelite wall Monophone.


Katlin

Highlights of the Last 50 Years of Development

By Cassy Frabott
1963 - First touch tone phones introduced to the public - 10 buttons
- Digital carrier techniques introduced


1964 - Bell puts video telephone into service, however a market is not found for it


1965 - First atomic bomb blast-resistant cable completed
- Communications satellites launched
- Electronic switching offices replaced mechanical switches
- Teri Pall invents the cordless phone

1968 - FCC allows non-Bell equipment to be attached to Bell's system lines
1970s - Bell's "Design Line" telephones introduced
“Celebrity” telephone “Chest” telephone



1970 - "Common carrier" companies allowed to install and to maintain business communications systems

1971 - General Telephone and Electronics introduces Digicom, which "let dispatchers identify patrol car locations on a screen, and allowed officers to run license plate checks."

1973 - Martin Cooper of Motorola makes the first call from a portable cell phone

1977 - FCC institutes certification program - any telephone meeting standards can be connected to Bell's lines

1978 - Stromberg-Carlson introduces first digital switch
- Bell replaces last local cord switchboard
1982 - Carolyn Doughty invents Caller ID

1994 - FCC allows companies to manufacture 900 MHZ frequency phones – got rid of static caused by walls, appliances, and signals from other objects - later allowed manufacturers to make phones with frequencies of 2.4 & 5.8 GHZ, that were less prone to eavesdropping

1995 - The New Brunswick Telephone Company gets rid of busy signals

2009 - Ivan Seidenberg, chief executive of Verizon Communications, declares that Verizon is “simply no longer concerned with telephones that are connected with wires,” and plan to wire all of its territory with its fiber optic network


Cassy

The Social Influences of the Phone

The history of the phone has developed over the past one hundred years but not nearly as influential or rapidly world changing as it has been in the past 20 years. The invention and public use of the mobile telephone, or the cell phone, has been the most rapidly increasing technology ever created. In 1990 it was reported that there were 11 million cell phone users in the world. By 2008 it had increased to 320 million and by 2009 increased to 550million users in the world.

The technology dependent generation, or the digital age, has been conformed around the idea of technology communication and the greatest addiction is the mobile use of a cell phone. Not only the ability to call and not be restricted to a phone line but to text, check face book, email, order movie tickets, record sounds, download music, watch movies. The technology is changing year to year, each cell company competing with each other to create the newest and most compacted, yet widest abilities for their cell phone. Apples newest advertisement for their Iphone shows the costumer using the phone to turn off the lights in their house.

It is these desires by the costumers to have the newest and latest technology that drives these companies to compete. And the demand for such amenities has rapidly changed the design of the cell phone from something that is not only comfortable to talk to but user friendly for all of the other needs like, music, movie watching texting. The demand for a bigger screen, and keyboard like keys have been in the mind of designers when creating some of the latest phone designs.

Amanda

Our Group Proposal:

(Photo-Travis)

Works Cited for Blog

Phil Ament. Title of Specific Page Used. Troy MI: ©1997-2007 The Great Idea Finder, Date of last modification for that page. Online. Available: http://www.ideafinder.com . April 17^th, 2010

Telephone | Define Telephone at Dictionary.com." Dictionary.com | Find the Meanings and Definitions of Words at Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com, Fall 2000. Web. 27 Apr. 2010. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/telephone.

"Timeline of Telecommunications." Telephone Tribute Home Page. Dictionary.com, Fall 2000. Web. 27 Apr. 2010. http://www.telephonetribute.com/timeline.html

"Telephone — History.com Articles, Video, Pictures and Facts." The History Channel — Home Page. Apr. 2003. Web. 27 Apr. 2010. http://www.history.com/topics/telephone.

Bellis, Mary. "The History of the Telephone." Inventors. Apr. 2003. Web. 27 Apr. 2010. http://inventors.about.com/od/bstartinventors/a/telephone.htm.

Farely, Thomas. "Telephone History". Privateline Telecommunications Expertise. 4/27/10

Russell, Gregory. "The Instrument 1960 --Present". Telephony Museum. 4/27/10

Emerson, Peter. "History of Cordless Phone". 4/27/10

Bellis, Mary. "Selling the Cell Phone". 4/27/10

"American Inventors". 4/27/10

Hansell, Saul. "Verizon Boss Hangs Up on Landline Phone Business". The New York Times. 4/27/10 .