The invention of the telephone is the culmination of work done by many individuals, the history of which involves a collection of claims and counterclaims. The prerequisite for the development of the telephone goes back to the year 1833 were Carl Friedrich Gauß and Wilhelm Eduard Weber invented the electric transmission of signals in Göttingen which set the fundamental basis for the technology that was used in all inventions following. This invention is recognized to be the first electromagnetic telegraph of the world. The development of the modern telephone involved an array of lawsuits founded upon the patent claims of several individuals. This article covers the early years 1844–1898, from conception of the idea of an electric voice-transmission device, failed attempts to use "make-and-break" current, successful experiments with electromagnetic devices by Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas A. Watson, to commercially successful telephones in the late 19th century.
The origins of the telephone date back to the non-electrical string telephone or "lover's telephone" that has been known for centuries, comprising two diaphragms connected by a taut string or wire. Sound waves are carried as mechanical vibrations along the string or wire from one diaphragm to the other. The classic example is the tin can telephone, a children's toy made by connecting the two ends of a string to the bottoms of two metal cans, paper cups or similar items. The essential idea of this toy was that a diaphragm can collect voice sounds from the air, as in the ear, and a string or wire can transmit such collected voice sounds for reproduction at a distance.
Read more about Invention Of The Telephone: Improvements To The Early Telephone, Controversy, Memorial To The Invention
Famous quotes containing the words invention of, invention and/or telephone:
“The invention of photography provided a radically new picture-making processa process based not on synthesis but on selection. The difference was a basic one. Paintings were madeconstructed from a storehouse of traditional schemes and skills and attitudesbut photographs, as the man on the street put, were taken.”
—Jean Szarkowski (b. 1925)
“Correspondences are like smallclothes before the invention of suspenders; it is impossible to keep them up.”
—Sydney Smith (17711845)
“A woman spent all Christmas Day in a telephone box without ringing anyone. If someone comes to phone, she leaves the box, then resumes her place afterwards. No one calls her either, but from a window in the street, someone watched her all day, no doubt since they had nothing better to do. The Christmas syndrome.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)