The History of the Telephone

The History of the Telephone

By: Gus Joseph

I. Intro

The invention of the telephone has no doubt revolutionized the way people communicate nowadays. With the push of a button, you can communicate with somebody on the complete other side of the world. The man credited with the invention of the telephone was Alexander Graham Bell, who patented the machine on February 14^th, 1876. The telephone is one of the most used inventions every day, along with the car and the computer.

II. Invention

The telephone has come a long way from its first model made in 1876. A telephone is a device that converts sounds into electrical pulses and frequencies and then transmits them to another device, which then “translates” the pulses back into distinguishable sounds. A man named Michael Faraday thought of the idea that vibrations of metal could be converted into electrical pulses, which served as the foundation on which the telephone was made. The first working telephones were invented by two men, Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray, who worked completely independent from each other and just happened to create the same invention in almost the exact same time period. In fact, both men patented the telephone on the EXACT SAME DAY, and Graham Bell’s patent was filed a mere 2 hours before Gray’s.

The First Telephone

Because of this, Graham Bell was credited for the invention. The first audible sentence that was sent over a telephone was Graham Bell calling his assistant in another room. He said “Come here, Watson, I want to see you”, and the first telephone call was made. The first phone had a stationary speaker, where you would talk, and a receiver, which was detachable and you would hold up to your ear to listen. Since then, the telephone has gotten some major upgrades, and have definitely evolved a lot over the years.

III. Biography of Inventor

Alexander Graham Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on March 3^rd, 1847. He had 2 brothers, one older and one younger. He was very intelligent as a child and built a wheat de-husking machine when he was only 12 years old. As he grew up he began to experiment with sound and speech, and was even able to manipulate his dog’s vocal cords and mouth to make it sound like he was speaking. He eventually became a professor of Vocal Physiology at Boston University, but then soon gave it up to focus his works on experiments and tests with sound. He also began to study vibrations of sound waves and experimented with a phonautograph, a machine that drew shapes to match sound waves. He also designed prototype telephones that could transmit and convert sounds, but none of which was audible. But soon, that all changed on March 10^th, 1876, when the first audible telephone call was made, and Graham Bell’s hard work paid off. On that day, he invented the cornerstone of modern communication. Then in 1878, he created the Bell Telephone Company, which then went on to become The American Telephone and Telegraph company, or more commonly known in the world today, AT&T. AT&T is still one of the leading phone providers in the world today.

IV. Impact on the World

The impact of the telephone in modern society is one of the biggest in history. Being able to dial a phone number and almost instantaneously be connected with that person is still one of the most impressive technologies today. Now, telephones have been upgraded immensely, and are now really more like small computers than telephones. The upgrades the telephone has undergone have been huge, but without Graham Bell’s invention, none of this would’ve been possible. Almost every person on the earth has a phone and is now something that nobody can live without.

V. Journal Article Review

The Association Between Cellular Telephone Calls and Motor Vehicle Collisions

The journal article I decided to review was one about the association between using a cell phone while driving and getting in collisions. The people doing the test gathered up the billing records of 699 people who had been involved in car crashes and compared the time of collision to the time their cell phone was being used. For 231 of these people, the time of collision matched exactly to the time their phone was being used. This test proves that texting while driving increases the risk of a car accident greatly, especially when holding the phone in your hand. People using hands-free headsets had a much lower percentage of collisions, but were still more dangerous than not talking on the phone at all. Unfortunately, this study didn’t study the correlation between texting while driving and car crashes, because this study was taken in 1996, much before texting became popular. Because of this study, we can definitely associate talking on the phone while driving and getting into car crashes.

Bibliography

Journal Article

http://www.chescrosbie.com/library/Association%20between%20Cellular-Telephone%20Calls%20and%20Motor%20Vehicle%20Collisons.pdf

http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/telephone.htm

http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ba-Be/Bell-Alexander-Graham.html