Impact and Change:
“The Invention of
the Telephone”
By Emily Kehm and Elyse Stephens
Alexander Graham Bell

Born March 3, 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland

When he was born he pleaded to have a middle name
just like his two brothers. For his 11th birthday present
he was given the middle name “Graham” because his
father was treating a Canadian who was a boarder and
family friend named Alexander Graham.

Education includes Edinburgh High School and Edinburgh
University where he received special training in his father,
Alexander Melville Bell’s, system for removing impediments in
speech.

In 1867, he moved to London where he enrolled the University.

In 1870 he retired to Canada because of his ailing health where he
stayed with his father.

He gained residence in the United States in 1872 and he introduced
his father’s system of deaf-mute instruction while he also became
a professor of vocal physiology at Boston University.
The Telegraph

Transmitted electric signals over wires from location to location that
then translated into a message.

The non-electric telegraph was invented by Claude Chappe in 1794.
The system used semaphore which was a flag-based alphabet which
was dependent upon a line of sight for communication.

In 1835 Samuel Morse proved that signals could be transmitted by
wire. He used pulses of current to deflect an electromagnet which
caused a marker to create written codes on a strip of paper. This was
called Morse Code.

The next year he modified the system to mark the paper with dots
and dashes.

In 1743, he was funded thirty thousand dollars to construct an
experimental telegraph line that covered 40 miles from Washington
to Baltimore.
The
Telegraph
Patent
This is a 1844 receiver. Patented
May 1, 1849, patent number
6,420.
The first practical line was created
in 1844 when a line went from
Baltimore to Washington, D.C.
How Morse Code Works
International Morse Code
1. Short mark, dot or dit, one unit
long.
2. Longer mark, dash or dah, three
units long.
3. Intra character gap (between the
dots and dashes of a character –
one unit long.
4. Short gap between letters.
5. Medium gap between words-seven
letters long.
Telephone Vs. Telegraph

Until the year 1877, the year after Bell’s telephone
was patented, all express long distance
communication depended upon the telegraph.

The telephone changed the way people
communicated.

By the year 1879, proceedings between Western
Union and the infant telephone system was finished
with an agreement that largely divided the two
services.
Johann Philip Reis

January 7, 1834 – January 14, 1874

Born in Gelnhausen Germany

In 1860, he constructed the first prototype of a
telephone which covered a distance of 100 meters.

In 1862 he changed the name to “telephon” to interest
Professor Poggendorff and list him in the periodical
Annalen der Physik, but was rejected for a second
time.

In 1947, a test was conducted by the British Company
Standard Telephones and Cables and it was confirmed
that it could only faintly transmit and receive speech.
Drawing of
Reis’s
Telephone
The Speaker of the telephone
worked by Magetostriction . In the
first receiver he coiled a wire around
an iron knitting needle and rested
the needle against the F hole of a
violin . When current passed
through the needle, the iron shrank
forming a click. In later versions he
clamped the iron bar to a cigar-boxshaped resonator.
Bell’s Early Experiences with Sound

Sarah Fuller the principal of the Boston School of Deaf Mutes
invited Alexander Graham Bell’s father to introduce his Visible
Speech System to instructors. He declined and asked his son to
take his place.

He travelled to the Boston School of Deaf Mutes in April 1871.

He was successful in training the school’s teachers and was
therefore asked to repeat his program a the American Asylum
for Deaf-Mutes located in Hartford Connecticut as well as the
Clarke School For Deaf in Northampton Massachusetts.

In October 1872, Bell opened the “ School of Vocal Physiology
and the Mechanics of Speech” in Boston

This attracted 30 deaf pupils in his first class.

One of his most famous students was Helen Keller.
Bell’s Telephone

When Bell was working in Brantford, he experimented with
a “phonautograph.” A “phonautograph is a pen-like
machine that had the ability to draw shapes of sound waves
on smoked glass by tracing their vibrations.

Experimenting with the “phonautograph” led him to the
idea that it might be possible to generate electrical currents
that corresponded to sound waves.

Sanders and Hubbard were able to provide financial support
to help Bell continue his experiments. Bell then had the
capablility to hire Thomas Watson as his assistant and the
two of them experimented with acoustic telegraphy.
Bell’s Telephone (cont.)

The finished telephone had a transmitter that was created with a
double electromagnet and in front was a membrane that was
stretched on a ring carried an oblong piece of soft iron (also called
armature) was cemented to the center. A mouthpiece located before
the diaphragm directed the sound upon it and as it vibrated with them
the armature induced corresponding currents in the electromagnet.
After the currents traversing through the line they were then passed
through the receiver.

The receiver was created with a tubular shaped electromagnet. It was
partially closed at one end with a thin circular disc of soft iron fixed to
the end. It’s appearance was similar to that of a cylindrical metal box
with thick sides. It had a single iron lid that was fastened with one
screw.

When the adulatory current passed through the coil of the magnet,
the discs or lid, they were put in vibration and sounds were emitted.

The first long distance telephone call was made on August 10, 1876
from the Bell’s household located in Brantford, Ontario to Paris,
Ontario which were 10 miles apart.
Prototype of
Bell’s
Telephone
This is a photograph of Alexander
Graham Bell speaking into his
telephone in 1876. After March of
1876, Bell changed the liquid
transmitter telephone to a
electromagnetic telephone.
Lab
Notebook
March 10,
1876
This describes the first successful
experiment with the telephone . He
spoke through the telephone to his
assistant in a neighboring room. Bell
documents the account “I then
shouted into M (the mouthpiece) the
following sentence: ‘Mr. Watson
come here I want to see you. ‘ To
my delight he came and said that he
had heard and understood what I
said.”
Bell’s Patent
Drawing
Bell’s telephone patent drawing.
March 7, 1876. This drawing
describes what was the first
construction to transmit human
speech by machine. This was one
of the most beneficial patents of
all the 19th Century.
Elisha Gray

1805-1901

He grew up on a farm and was a Quaker from rural
Ohio.

Invented his version of the telephone in his
laboratory in Highland Park, Illinois.

He studied electricity at Oberlin college

Received the first patent of his career in 1867 for an
improved telegraph relay.

Founded the Western Electric Manufacturing
Company in 1872.
Bell Vs. Gray “Race for the Patent”

Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone patent was filed by
his attorney Marcellus Bailey at the United States
Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

His application was entitled “Improvement in
Telegraphy”

A few hours later, Elisha Gray’s attorney filled out a
caveat for a telephone which was entitled
“Transmitting Sounds Telegraphically”.

That day, Bell filed the fifth patent application while
Gray’s was the thirty-ninth.

Bell was honored with the first telephone patent
which was U.S. Patent 174,456.
Bell Telephone Company

Founded in 1877 by Alexander Graham Bell’s father-inlaw, Gardiner Greene Hubbard.

Hubbard created the New England Telephone and
Telegraph Company.

In 1879 the two companies merged forming the National
Bell Telephone Company.

In 1880, another merge took place with others forming
the American Bell Telephone Company.

The American Bell Telephone Company was acquired by
the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T)
on December 30, 1899.

In later years, AT&T merged with SBC Communications
and Bell South forming the New AT&T.
Impact on Society

The earlier form of communication, the telegraph, used Morse
Code. This was difficult to read and was easily misinterpreted.

Communication is altered when you can hear what is being
communicated rather than translate it from dashes and dots.

The telephone amplified the ability to communicate from long
distances.

John Vaughn said, “Considering how vital a factor is the telephone in
today’s business world, we find it hard to realize that but thirty years
have passed since Bell obtained his first patent.” This tells us that
the invention of the telephone created a time period of new
buisnesses emerging.

The telephone created new means of communication and led to
more inventions that had the same properties as the telephone and
speech.

The invention of the telephone also lead to ways to help deaf
people.
Impact on Society (cont.)
Cellular Phones

Concept of ‘cellular’ phones started in the year 1947.

Researchers looked at crude cars also known as car phones
and realized that they were using small cells with frequency
reuse they could increase the traffic capacity of mobile
phones.

A cell phone is a kind of two way radio.

In 1947 AT&T stated that the Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) assign a number of radio-spectrum
frequencies so that widespread mobile telephone would
become possible and AT&T could research the technology.

The FCC limited the number of conversations possible at
the same time in the same service area to 23 which was not
a superior market for researching the technology.
Impact on Society (cont.)
Cellular Phones

In 1968 the FCC stated that “If the technology to build a
better mobile service works , we will increase the
frequencies allocation, freeing the airways for more
mobile phones.”

AT&T and Bell Labs said that the cellular system should
work with many small, low-powered broadcast towers
which would each cover a cell a small number of miles in
radius and collectively covering a larger number of miles
in general.

As the phones passed through the area, calls would be
passed from one tower to the next.

We wouldn’t have they many types of phones we have
today if Alexander Graham Bell had not discovered a way
to speak to one another through these devices.