The evolution of the Telephone has not only brought people together throughout the years but fundamentally changed the way we live our lives through communication.
Before the development of the electric technology, information was transmitted across long distances in ancient civilizations such as China, Egypt and Greece using drumbeats or smoke signals to exchange information between far-flung points. However, such methods were limited by the weather and the need for an uninterrupted line of sight between receptor points. These limitations also lessened the effectiveness of the semaphore, a modern precursor to the electric telegraph.
Developed in the early 1790s, the semaphore consisted of a series of hilltop stations that each had large movable arms to signal letters and numbers and two telescopes with which to see the other stations. Like ancient smoke signals, the semaphore was susceptible to weather and other factors that hindered visibility. A different method of transmitting information was needed to make regular and reliable long-distance communication workable.
Developed in the 1830s and 1840s by Samuel Morse (1791-1872) and other inventors, the telegraph revolutionized long-distance communication. It worked by transmitting electrical signals over a wire laid between stations. In addition to helping invent the telegraph, Samuel Morse developed a code (bearing his name) that assigned a set of dots and dashes to each letter of the English alphabet and allowed for the simple transmission of complex messages across telegraph lines.
In 1844, Morse sent his first telegraph message, from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore, Maryland; by 1866, a telegraph line had been laid across the Atlantic Ocean from the U.S. to Europe. The telegraph had laid the groundwork for the communications revolution that led to those later innovations.
Alexander Graham Bell was credited for having invented the telephone on March 10, 1876. The telephone is a device capable of mimicking and replicating a voice and transmitting it from one point to another. This allowed people to hear their families voices over great distances from across the street to he other side of the world in seconds. The sounds were carried through through copper wires to another point and transformed sound into electrical energy to transmit it.
The way the phone would receive sounds is through a mouthpiece, or transmitter, which is made up of a thin metal diaphragm. Inside the diaphragm is a small chamber filled with carbon granules. When the user talks, sound waves cause the granules to compress, which allows a small electric current to pass through. When the granules are compressed, an electric current can pass through easily, when theres no sounds the granules don’t compress and no sound is transmitted. The transceiver copies the pattern and loudness of our voice, mimicking it it when the current gets to the other side of the line. The receiver, otherwise known as the ear piece, converts the electrical impulses back into sound, making the vibrations from our voice become sound in another location. Once the electric current hits the electromagnetic field in the receiver, the diaphragm vibrates and produces sound waves that mimic the original sound produced by the person talking into the transceiver. It is truly a marvel of technology to be able to talk to anyone in the world instantly and easily.
As transmitter technology improved the candlestick phone became obsolete, replaced in the 1920’s by personal home phones that had a receiver and transceiver in one handset. These phones would with switchboards in large cities usually were mounted floor to ceiling in order to allow the operators to reach all the lines in the exchange. Milo G Kellogg devised the Divided Multiple Switchboard for operators to work together, with a team on the "A board" and another on the "B." These operators were almost always women until the early 1970s, when men were also hired.
In 1946, the Car phone was invited to try and mobilize phone calls with the worlds first ever attempt at a mobile phone. The phone weighed 80 pounds and had very limited channels to talk through making it difficult to use. Since a traditional car phone uses a high-power transmitter and external antenna, it is ideal for rural or undeveloped areas where mobile handsets may not work well or at all. Motorola communications equipment carried the first calls on Illinois Bell Telephone Company's new car radiotelephone service in Chicago. Although it was only for the extreamly wealthy, it was a revolution in thinking of how communication would mobilize.
By 1970 90% of US houses had a telephone. In 1973 something magical happened. The first cellular and wireless phone was created by Motorola (Dynatac 8000X) costing approximately $10,000 in todays currency. Weighing 2.5 pounds and having 20 minutes of battery life, this phone would inspire the next generation to do amazing things.