Modern mobile phones significantly different from what was used 20 or even 10 years ago. Photo evidence is attached.
World's first mobile phone: Motorola DynaTAC 8000X (1983)
Today, Motorola is not a leader in the mobile industry, but it is the company that launched the world's first mobile phone. It turned out to be the DynaTAC 8000X model. The prototype of the device was shown in 1973, but commercial sales began only in 1983. The powerful DynaTAC weighed almost a kilogram, worked for an hour on a single battery charge and could store up to 30 phone numbers.
First car phone: Nokia Mobira Senator (1982)
In the early 1980s, it became widely known Nokia phone Mobira Senator. It was released in 1982 and was the first of its kind - it was designed for use in a car, while weighing about 10 kilograms.
Gorbachev spoke on it: Nokia Mobira Cityman 900 (1987)
In 1987 Nokia introduced Mobira Cityman 900, the first device for NMT (Nordic Mobile Telephony) networks. The device became easily recognizable due to the fact that Mikhail Gorbachev used it to call from Helsinki to Moscow, and photographers did not ignore this. Nokia Mobira Cityman 900 weighed approximately 800 grams. The price was high - in terms of current money, its purchase would cost the Americans 6,635 dollars, and the Russians - 202,482 rubles.
First GSM phone: Nokia 101 (1992)
The Nokia phone, with the modest index 101, was the first commercially available device capable of operating in GSM networks. A monoblock with a monochrome screen had a retractable antenna and a book with 99 numbers. Unfortunately, it did not yet contain the well-known Nokia tune ringtone, as the composition appeared in the next model, released in 1994.
Touchscreen: IBM Simon Personal Communicator (1993)
One of the first attempts to create a communicator was a joint development of IBM and Bellsouth. The IBM Simon Personal Communicator phone was stripped of the keyboard, offering instead a touch screen with a stylus. For $899, buyers got a device that could make calls, fax, and store notes.
First flip phone: Motorola StarTAC (1996)
In 1996, Motorola confirmed its title of innovator by introducing the first flip phone, the StarTAC. The device was considered stylish and fashionable, it was compact not only for that time, but also in comparison with modern smartphones.
First smartphone: Nokia 9000 Communicator (1996)
The weight of the Nokia 9000 Communicator (397 grams) did not prevent the phone from becoming popular. The first smartphone was equipped with 8 MB of memory and monochrome screens. When opened to the user's gaze, a QWERTY keyboard was opened, making it easier to work with text.
Replacement panels: Nokia 5110 (1998)
In the late 1990s, companies realized that mobile phones were viewed by customers not only as a means of communication, but also as accessories. In 1998, Nokia released the 5110, which supported interchangeable panels. The phone has become popular also thanks to the excellent assembly, good battery life. It featured the famous Snake game.
First camera phone: Sharp J-SH04 (2000)
Sharp J-SH04 was released in Japan in 2000. This is the world's first camera phone. The resolution of the camera today seems ridiculous - 0.1 megapixels, but then the J-SH04 seemed to be something incredible. After all, the phone could be used as a bad camera, but still.
Mail is Essential: RIM BlackBerry 5810 (2002)
RIM introduced its first BlackBerry in 2002. Prior to this, the Canadian manufacturer was engaged in the production of organizers. The main drawback of the BlackBerry 5810 was the lack of a microphone and speakers - a headset was required to talk on it.
PDA meets phone: Palm Treo 600 (2003)
Palm long time was considered the main manufacturer of PDAs (pocket Personal Computer) and in 2003 released the hugely successful Treo 600. Communicator with a QWERTY keyboard, color screen, 5-way navigation key was based on Palm OS 5.
Gaming phone: Nokia N-Gage (2003)
Nokia has made several attempts to capture the minds of mobile gamers and not all of them have been successful. The first truly gaming phone is called the Nokia N-Gage. It is similar in design to portable console and was positioned as an alternative to the Nintendo Game Boy. On the front side there are gaming control keys, which few people found comfortable. The games themselves were recorded on MMC memory cards. The microphone and speaker in the N-Gage are located at the end, so all users looked like cheburashkas during conversations. There were a lot of minuses and the project failed.
O2 XDA II (2004)
O2, like Palm, was heavily involved in the PDA. In 2004, the XDA II model appeared, offering users a sliding QWERTY keyboard, office applications. The price then bit - 1,390 US dollars.
Blade thin: Motorola RAZR V3 (2004)
Motorola RAZR V3 is considered to be the best-selling clamshell. The model attracted attention with a thin and stylish design. The creators drew inspiration from the "old man" StarTAC and as a result released a device dressed in a case with aluminum inserts, with a VGA camera (0.3 MP), Bluetooth, GSM. After the light saw improved RAZR V3x, RAZR V3i and RAZR V3xx with more quality camera, 3G, microSD.
First phone with iTunes: Motorola ROKR E1 (2005)
In 2005, few people could imagine that Apple, specializing in computers and music players, decides to go to mobile industry(and present popular iPhone). The company entered into an agreement with Motorola, and as a result, the ROKR E1 was created - a device with support for music iTunes libraries. The expectations of buyers did not come true - few people liked the candy bar with a Motorola design, slow USB interface 1.1, an outdated 0.3-megapixel camera and a limit on the storage of songs (100 pieces).
Motorola MOTOFONE F3 (2007)
The Motorola MOTOFONE F3 retailed for just $60. One of the most affordable devices on the market offered a display made using the technology of "electronic paper" (EPD, Electronic Paper Display). The advantages include low weight, small thickness.
Simple finger control: Apple iPhone(2007)
The first version of the Apple iPhone was originally released in the US in 2007. Touchphone with 2-megapixel camera, 3.5-inch touch screen, with a convenient finger-oriented interface supported only second-generation networks. The iPhone did not work with MMS and could not record video. In 2008, the iPhone 3G was released, and in 2009, the iPhone 3GS. The concept has not changed in three years - programs and a user-friendly interface are at the center.
Even in the myth of ancient Greek times, Theseus was the first mention of how information can be transmitted. Aegeus, the father of this hero, when he sent his son to the island of Crete, to fight the monster Minotaur, asked him, upon his return, if successful, to raise the sail on the ship white color, and in case of defeat - black. Unfortunately, the inventor of the telephone had not yet been born, and the colors were mixed up, and Aegeus, deciding that his son was dead, drowned himself. The sea where he did this was called the Aegean.
Continuation of the story with communication
For some time, people did not pay much attention to solving the problem of transmitting symbols and signals over long distances. long time the most reliable way to ensure high-quality communication there were birds and people. When the weather was disgusting and there were no people willing to flee, they used fire, smoke, voice, or other conventional signs.
Although, to be honest, in the 16th century there was a proposal by Giovanni della Porta, an Italian scientist, to use speaking pipes for communication. A similar method operates on ships for communication between the engine room and the captain. So, the proposal to lay such pipes throughout Italy did not meet with understanding, and the first telephone was not invented at that time.
Revolution in France and a breakthrough in communications
In 1789, the mechanic Claude Chappe proposed to the Convention to resolve the issue of communication in the following way: they intended to cover the whole of France with a network of towers and install devices made of planks on them. At the same time, they should have been clearly visible from a distance. At night, lanterns were lit at the ends of the planks. Inside the tower was a telegraph operator, changing the location of the slats. The reference point for him was the tower in the zone of visibility. The telegraph operator sitting in it copied the message and sent it further. And so it went - from the starting point to the end. Approximately 200 combinations could be obtained by changing the arrangement of the bars.
A cipher was compiled, which consisted of a notebook with a volume of 92 pages, each of which had the same number of words. The telegraph employee transmitted the number of the word and page, they did not know the cipher at the intermediate points, but simply passed on the received combinations. Claude Chappe is not yet the inventor of the telephone, but his great admirer, Napoleon, introduced his method of communication throughout almost all of Europe. By the way, the transmission speed was quite high. For example, a message from St. Petersburg to Warsaw took about 45 minutes, if only the weather was normal.
and communication
When electricity was invented, at first scientists could not find him practical application. The first experience was the transmission of information over a distance. Austrian scientists, seeing the dependence of Schapp's telegraph on weather conditions, created its electric version. Semmering, a member of the Munich academy, invented a device in 1809 that was connected by thirty-five wires, each of which corresponded to numbers and letters of the alphabet. The message came to a bath filled with water, a short circuit took place here electrical network, at which gas bubbles were released, information was read from them. The design was very complex, it did not immediately take root, only in 1832 was a usable electric telegraph made. It was invented by Schilling, a scientist from Russia, and later improved by the British Cook and Wheatstone. So, gradually, we will get to how it happened, briefly dwelling on important points.
Morse invention
Morse demonstrated his telegraph alphabet and transmitting apparatus to the public in 1837. From that moment on, the electric telegraph began its victorious march around the world. In just 10 years, his lines have entangled most of North America and Europe. His triumph was the laying of a communication cable along the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, carried out in 1866 with the help of the ship Great Eastern, specially built for this purpose. When radio was invented, she moved to the air.
And now, despite mass distribution satellite, cellular, other sophisticated communications, the Internet, there are people, and there are many of them, who prefer to send telegrams. And not only in villages, but also in big cities. Now we are very close to such a significant date as the year of the invention of the telephone.
When was the telephone invented
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the telephone became the main means of communication. He was born much later than the telegraph, his predecessor. Even at a time when this predecessor was the main one, Philipp Rice, a German scientist, in 1861 invented a device that, using a galvanic current, transfers a human voice to any distance. Fifteen years later, Alexander Graham Bell, a Philadelphia school teacher, demonstrated the first electric telephone at the World's Fair. Remember: 1876 is the date the telephone was invented. But Elish Grey, another inventor, was only a couple of hours late with a claim for the same invention. Therefore, primacy in this matter is purely conditional.
Development of telephone communication
Literally five years later, a new means of communication, which was much simpler than the telegraph, firmly entered human life. Have you seen the photo of the first phone? So, the famous improved this device, and it became a truly household means of communication. And the telegraph was and remains public. There was also a field phone option. Due to the speed of deployment and ease of handling, it has become indispensable for the army and the military.
First telephone exchange opened in 1878. This means of communication, like the telegraph, acquired the status of inviolable. Neither revolution nor war could interfere with their normal functioning. From films about those times it is clear that one of the favorite activities of the military commanders of both the White Army and the Red Army during the Civil War was quarreling over the phone.
Briefly about the first phone
You have already understood who is the official inventor of the telephone. And what was this first phone like? By the way, the invention happened by chance, like many others in this life. During experiments and experiments, the stuck plate began to act as a primitive diaphragm, and it was already a matter of time to think out what to do next. As a result, Bell's phone became a real sensation at the exhibition.
Although the first apparatus worked only at a distance of up to two hundred meters, with monstrous sound distortions, the transmitting and receiving devices were very primitive. The inventor created the "Bell Telephone Society" and began to actively improve it. As a result, one year later he patented fittings and a new membrane for his device. A little later, I used a carbon microphone (to increase the transmission distance) and powered by separate batteries. A little over a hundred years, almost in this form, the telephone existed.
Development of telephone communication in the twentieth century
How did it go further development an invention invented by Alexander Bell? The telephone, created by him, soon surpassed and began to develop by leaps and bounds. Between Canada and Scotland in 1956 was laid the first transatlantic telephone cable TAT-1. And after that - more than a hundred thousand kilometers of such cables. Including - Washington - Moscow, the famous government special wire, for communication between the American president and the leader Soviet Union. Nobody else had access to it. Such a wired, cable telephone connection, of course, is much more expensive than radiotelephone, especially if you count the amount of drowned and buried copper, but it is not going to give up its positions. At least because of its greater reliability and the ability to intercept the conversation.
Phone today
Bell - the inventor of the telephone - could not, most likely, imagine the progress that communication has made to date. It would seem that the development of cellular communications should slow down wired communications, but the latter continues to move forward, especially in large cities: thanks, as already mentioned, to its reliability, as well as the introduction of the latest technologies, such as fiber optic communications.
Have you forgotten what wires the Internet is transmitted through? According to the very ones that our grandfathers and grandmothers used to communicate, and in the central part of Moscow - great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers. Thanks to the latest technologies, the phone mastered the ether and turned from a stationary object into a very convenient and advanced human companion.
Another version of the inventor of the telephone
Revealing the topic of the invention this tool connection, it is impossible not to mention one more version, according to which the inventor of the telephone is Elisha Gray, and not Alexander Bell at all. In 2007, a book was published by a well-known researcher, journalist Seth Shulman, in which he wrote that the latter had stolen a competitor's invention and passed it off as his own. The main piece of evidence is Bell's notebook, access to which was very limited until 1976. It turns out, in addition to everything else, that Gray applied for a patent first, but his competitor, thanks to bribery and aggressive lawyers, managed to register a patent earlier. But that's not all.
There is a version that Philipp Rice, a German scientist, can also be considered as the inventor of the first telephone. His device, created in the 1860s, was capable of transmitting speech over a distance, but it worked on a different principle. By the way, Gray began his work as a carpenter, while studying at Oberlin College. Then he experimented with telegraph technology and electricity, invented a hotel notification device, a telegraph switchboard, a letter-printing machine and other devices. He lost the trial for the right to be considered the inventor of the telephone, and Bell has since been considered the first.
Further prospects for the development of communications
The inventor of the telephone, whoever he was, could probably imagine what future prospects at the means of communication. They are a little out of the realm of fantasy, but, nevertheless, they have the right to exist. This is telepathy, or, in other words, the transmission of thoughts over a distance. Back in the seventies of the last century, the Soviet academician Glushkov formulated this perspective. He noted that the thought process of a person will be sent to a computer, it will remember it, and over time, a complete symbiosis of a machine and a person will turn out. And he was sure that in 2020 full compatibility of the computer and the human brain would be achieved.
Considering how computer communication displaces traditional means at a distance, the academician's forecast does not give the impression of a very fantastic one. After all, many fantasies that seemed unrealistic came true. For example, a home that is fully computerized, helmets connected to a PC, transmitting visual sensations. Once it was fiction and Ray Bradbury. Or computer printing at the command of a human voice. When the transmission of thoughts over a distance is demanded, then this issue will also be resolved. It's just that no one really needs it yet.
A little about other inventions of mankind
Although the invention of the telephone is one of the most important, all the inventions of mankind do not end there. Now we briefly list a dozen of the most important of them.
Short biography of Alexander Bell
Since we talked about the invention of the great scientist, we need to briefly outline his biography. He was born in Edinburgh (Scotland), March 3, 1847. Many of his relatives had the profession of professional orators - uncle, grandfather and father. The latter even wrote a treatise on eloquence. Alexander at first also followed their path, graduated from the appropriate school and became a teacher of music and eloquence. He studied for a year at the University of Edinburgh, then moved to Bath (England). In 1870 the family moved to Canada and settled in Ontario. Here Bell continued to deal with the issue of signal transmission through telecommunications, which he became interested in back in Scotland. He created, for example, an electric piano that transmitted music over wires. Soon, in 1873, Alexander became a lecturer in the physiology of speech at the University of Boston. And three years later he received patent No. 174465 for the invention of the telephone. He also worked with light rays, which subsequently contributed to the creation of fiber optic technologies. In 1877 he married Mabel Hubbard, his student, in 1882 he became a US citizen. Died August 2, 1992. In the country for a minute, in order to honor his memory, all phones were turned off.
On February 14, 1876, Scottish-American Alexander Graham Bell filed an application with the US Patent Office for an apparatus he invented, which he called the telephone. Just two hours later, another American named Gray made a similar claim.
This happens to inventors to this day, although very infrequently. Bell's luck also consisted in the fact that an accident helped him to make an outstanding invention. However, to a much greater extent, the telephone owes its appearance to the enormous work, perseverance and knowledge of this person.
Alexander Graham Bell was born in Edinburgh on March 3, 1847 into a family of philologists. At the age of 14, he moved to London to live with his grandfather, under whose guidance he studied literature and oratory. And three years later he began an independent life, teaching music and oratory at the Weston House Academy. In the spring of 1871, the family moved to Boston, where Bell taught at a school for the deaf and dumb using a "visible speech system" invented by his grandfather.
At the time, Western Union was looking for a way simulcast several telegrams over one pair of wires to eliminate the need for additional telegraph lines. The company announced a large cash prize to an inventor who would come up with a similar method.
Bell began to work on this problem, using his knowledge of the laws of acoustics. Bell was going to transmit seven telegrams at the same time, according to the number musical notes- a tribute to the music loved since childhood. In the work on the "musical telegraph" Bell was assisted by a young resident of Boston, Thomas Watson. Watson admired Bell.
“Once, when I was working, a tall, slender, mobile man with a pale face, black sideburns and a high sloping forehead rushed up to my workbench, holding in his hands some part of the apparatus that was not made the way he wanted. He was the first educated person with whom I became intimately acquainted, and much about him delighted me.
Thomas Watson
about Graham Bell
And not only him. Bell's horizons were unusually broad, which was recognized by many of his contemporaries. A versatile education was combined in him with a liveliness of imagination, and this allowed him to easily combine in his experiments such different areas of science and art - acoustics, music, electrical engineering and mechanics.
Since, nevertheless, Bell was not an electrician, he consulted another famous Bostonian, scientist D. Henry, whose name is the unit of inductance. After examining the first model of the telegraph in Bell's laboratory, Henry exclaimed: "Do not quit what you started under any pretext!" Without leaving work on the "musical telegraph", Bell at the same time began to build a certain apparatus, through which he hoped to make the sounds of speech immediately and directly visible to the deaf-mutes, without any written notation. To do this, he worked for almost a year at the Massachusetts Otolaryngological Hospital, setting up various experiments to study human hearing.
The main part of the apparatus was to be a membrane, fixed on the latter, a needle recorded on the surface of a rotating drum curves corresponding to various sounds, syllables and words. Reflecting on the action of the membrane, Bell came up with the idea of another device, with the help of which, as he wrote, "becomes possible transfer various sounds, if only it is possible to cause fluctuations in the intensity of the electric current, corresponding to those fluctuations in the density of air, which produces given sound". Bell gave the sonorous name “telephone” to this device, which does not yet exist. So the work on the private task of helping the deaf and dumb led to the idea of the possibility of creating a device that turned out to be necessary for all mankind and, undoubtedly, influenced the further course of history.
Working on the "musical telegraph", Bell and Watson worked in different rooms, where the transmitting and receiving devices were installed. The tuning forks were steel plates of different lengths, rigidly fixed at one end and closed at the other. electrical circuit.
Once Watson had to release the end of the record, which was stuck in the contact gap and in the process touched other records. Those, naturally, rattled. Writer Mitchell Wilson describes the subsequent events as follows: “Although the experimenters believed that the line was not working, Bell's delicate hearing caught a faint rattle in the receiving device. He immediately guessed what had happened, and rushed headlong into the room to Watson. “What were you doing now? he shouted. "Don't change anything!" Watson began to explain what was the matter, but Bell interrupted him excitedly, saying that they had now discovered what they had been looking for all along. The stuck plate acted like a primitive diaphragm. In all of Bell and Watson's previous experiments, the free end simply closed and opened the electrical circuit. Now the sound vibrations of the plate were induced electromagnetic oscillations in a magnet located next to the plate. This was the difference between the telephone and all other pre-existing telegraph devices.
The telephone requires continuous electricity, the strength of which would vary in exact accordance with the vibrations of sound waves in the air. The invention of the telephone occurred at the time of the highest flowering of the electric telegraph and was completely unexpected. At that time in the United States, the Morse-founded Magnetic Telegraph Company was completing a line from the Mississippi to the East Coast. In Russia, Boris Jacobi created more and more advanced devices, overtaking all competitors in reliability and transmission speed. The telegraph corresponded to the needs of its era so much that other means electrical communication seemed not to be needed at all.
The world's first telephone, assembled by Watson, had a sound membrane made of leather. Its center was connected with the moving armature of the electromagnet. Sound vibrations were amplified by the horn, concentrating on the membrane fixed in its smallest section.
Bell's breadth of outlook played no less a role in the invention of the telephone than his intuition. Knowledge in the field of acoustics and electrical engineering, combined with the experience of an experimenter, led a teacher at a school for deaf children to an invention that allowed millions of people to hear each other across continents and oceans.
Meanwhile, telephony as the principle of transmitting information by voice to long distances was known before new era. The Persian king Cyrus (VI century BC) had 30,000 people in the service for this purpose, called "royal ears". Settled on the tops of hills and watchtowers within earshot of each other, they transmitted messages intended for the king and his orders. The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus (1st century BC) testifies that in a day the news was transmitted by such a telephone over a distance of a thirty-day transition. Julius Caesar mentions that the Gauls also had similar system connections. Indicates even the speed of transmission of the message - 100 kilometers per hour.
In 1876, Bell demonstrated his apparatus at the Philadelphia World's Fair. Within the walls of the exhibition pavilion, the word telephone was heard for the first time - this is how the inventor introduced his “ talking telegraph". To the amazement of the jury, the monologue of the Prince of Denmark “To be or not to be?” was heard from the mouthpiece of this contraption, performed at the same time, but in a different room, by the inventor himself, Mr. Bell.
History answered this question with an unquestioning “to be”. Bell's invention became a sensation at the Philadelphia Exposition. And this is despite the fact that the first telephone set worked with monstrous sound distortions, it was possible to talk with it no further than at a distance of 250 meters, because it operated even without batteries, by the force of one electromagnetic induction, its receiving and transmitting devices were equally primitive.
Having organized the Bell Telephone Society, the inventor began hard work to improve his brainchild, and a year later he patented a new membrane and armature for the telephone. Then I used Yuza's carbon microphone and battery power to increase the transmission distance. In this form, the phone has successfully existed for more than a hundred years.
Improvement telephone devices many other inventors took over, and by 1900 over 3,000 patents had been issued in this area. Of these, one can note a microphone designed by the Russian engineer M. Makhalsky (1878), as well as the first automatic station for 10,000 numbers by S. M. Apostolov (1894). But then, after the Philadelphia exhibition, the history of the phone was just beginning. Ahead was a fierce struggle with competitors. Bell was also expected to compete with another famous inventor - Thomas Edison.
Bell's patent turned out to be one of the most profitable ever issued in the US, so for the next decades he was the target of attacks by almost every major electrical and telegraph company in America. However, its commercial significance was not immediately understood by contemporaries. Almost immediately after receiving the patent, Bell offered Western Union to buy it for $100,000, hoping that the proceeds would enable him to pay off his debts. But his proposal met with no response.
Bell demonstrated his phone in front of an audience in Salem, and in Boston, and in New York. The first transmissions consisted mainly of the game on musical instruments and performances of popular arias. Newspapers wrote about the inventor with respect, but his activities almost did not bring money.
On June 11, 1877, Bell and Mabel Hubbard were married at the home of the bride's parents, and the young couple sailed for England. This trip played a huge role in the history of the phone. In England, Bell successfully continued the demonstrations that gathered a large number of public. Finally, a "delightful telephone performance" was given to the Queen herself and her family. Titled persons sang, recited and talked to each other over the wires, interrupting themselves with questions about whether they could be heard well. The queen was pleased.
The newspapers were so hyped about the success of the telephone in England that Western Union had to change its mind about the invention. The company's president, Orton, reasoned that if some teacher for the deaf had invented the electric telephone, experts like Edison and Gray could make a better one. And in early 1879, Western Union created the American Spiking Telephone Company, which took up the production of telephones, ignoring Bell's patent law.
Bell's supporters, having taken loans, created the New England Telephone Company in response and rushed into battle. The result of the struggle, however, was the creation at the end of 1879 of the combined "Bell Company". In December of that year, the share price rose to $995. Bell became an extremely wealthy man. Wealth was accompanied by fame and worldwide fame. France awarded him the Volta Prize, established by Napoleon, in the amount of 50 thousand francs (before Bell, this award was issued only once), and made him a Knight of the Legion of Honor. In 1885 he took American citizenship.
In one of his letters to his companions, Bell, for the first time in history and at the same time in great detail, outlined a plan for creating a telephone network in a large city based on central switch. In the letter, he insisted that, for advertising purposes, it would be desirable to install telephone sets free of charge in the central shops of the city.
On a rainy morning on August 4, 1922, all telephones in the United States and Canada were turned off for a minute. America buried Alexander Graham Bell. 13 million telephone sets of all kinds and designs fell silent in honor of the great inventor.
Ordinary Story: Telephone
Telephone communication is the fastest. Television and radio can inform us about the events in the world, because they receive reports by telephone from their correspondents from different parts of the earth. You press a few buttons - and talk to your friends who are now in Germany, Australia or Hawaii. But until 1876, when Bell invented the telephone, this was not possible. I had to write letters or send telegrams.
What did I say? - You said: “Come to me, Mr. Watson. I need to see you."
Two people - Tom Watson and Alexander Graham Bell - looked at each other in surprise. They are on target! The phone is working!
Long-awaited victory
It happened on March 10, 1876 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Watson burst into the room screaming that he had heard Bell's voice on the phone. It was a long-awaited reward for hard work. They managed to transmit articulate speech from the transmitter to the receiver over the wire.
The victory was not easy. For three consecutive years, Bell worked on the project without sleep or rest. He knew that his rival Elisha Gray (1835-1901), a specialist in telegraph equipment, received support from large companies. And Bell had only two small rooms and one assistant. A few days before his success, Bell learned that the great inventor Thomas Alva Edison (1847 - 1931) was also working on this problem in his laboratory.
Alexander Graham Bell (1847 - 1922) built the world's first telephone using parts from an electrical shop and the skill of his assistant Tom Watson
Step by step to glory
Bell's competitors hoped to get things done because they understood electrical engineering. Bell approached the problem from a different angle. He studied the nature of sound well while working in a school for the deaf. It was then that he figured out how to convert sound vibrations into electrical ones. Bell decided to try to put his idea into practice - this is how his experiments with the telephone began.
Bell's family emigrated to America from Scotland when he was twenty-three years old, and he soon moved to Boston. This was six years ago.
Now - he is not yet thirty - he is on the threshold of glory.
Growth difficulties
In July 1876, Bell's telephone company was already in operation. But she had to face unforeseen difficulties. Bell's competitors sued him. Although he won the case, they did not leave him alone. It was difficult to convince people to install a telephone. In addition, purely technical difficulties arose: how to connect all the telephone sets to each other.
By 1887, 150,000 telephones were installed in America, and about half that number in Europe. Since then, the expansion of telephone networks has not stopped all over the world.
Noise and crackle
Although the receiver was constantly crackling and noisy and speech was severely distorted, for most people the first telephone seemed like a miracle. It was hard to believe that you can talk to a person who is in another city or even in another country. Today we are used to it and we can hardly imagine how surprised people were in 1876.
The phone was especially liked by residents of North America, where the cities are located much further from each other than in Europe. Thanks to the telephone line stretched over the prairies, they no longer felt out of touch with the world.
Bell lived long enough to see how his invention changed the face of the world. He himself soon ceased to be interested in the telephone, and after 1879 he no longer dealt with it. He spent the rest of his life working on other inventions, none of which were as successful as the telephone.
Tom Watson later also did not deal with the telephone, he became a successful shipbuilder. And their offspring, meanwhile, grew and grew stronger day by day.
Facts and events
- Charlie Williams, an electrician from Boston, became the world's first telephone subscriber. In April 1877, Williams installed a telephone line between his shop and the house where he lived.
- Inventor of the automatic telephone connection became the owner of one of the Boston funeral homes, Elman Oroudzher. He suspected that operators were connecting his customers to competing firms, so in 1889 he came up with a way to do without operators. The first automatic communication system was installed in 1892 in Paposta, Indiana, USA.
- In 1877 there were 2,600 telephones in the US. Three years later there were already 48 thousand, and ten years later - over 150 thousand.
- In 1892, Bell made the first long distance call from New York to Chicago, Illinois. The distance between these cities is 1600 kilometers.
- Modern faxes - devices that transmit a facsimile copy over telephone lines - appeared in the early 80s of the XX century.
Wires around the globe
Alexander Graham Bell spent all of his free time from working at a school for the deaf in two small rooms in downtown Boston that served as his laboratory. There, thanks to a happy accident, he found a way to convert sound vibrations into electrical vibrations, on which the principle of operation of the telephone is based.
First telephone network- for twenty-one rooms - opened in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1878. The list of all subscribers fit on one piece of paper. In 1892, the first automatic telephone station appeared, and dialing discs appeared on telephones. Gradually, long-distance communication spread throughout America, although calling from New York (in the east) to San Francisco (in the west) became possible only in 1915.
Bell died in 1922. By that time, about 28 million telephone sets had been installed worldwide. He also found the invention of radio - the next stage in the improvement of communications. Plans were made to combine radio and telephone so that Europe could talk to America.
However, this became possible only in September 1956, when the transatlantic telephone cable came into operation. A direct connection between Europe and America was established only in 1971. With the advent of communication satellites, there are practically no places left on the planet that could not be contacted by telephone, and the quality of communication has also improved.
“My phone rang…” I am sure that none of us can imagine life without communications today. We forget the phone at home and rush back to get it, we can’t find it in our bag or briefcase, and we always get upset. Who brought into our lives a unique technique that helps to connect people at a distance?
Lesson plan:
Is it possible to communicate without a phone?
Of course! People used to live, and they didn’t have any newfangled telephone models, but information from each other was transmitted far beyond their place of residence. The need for communication forced people to invent different ways to "call for a conversation" and tell the news to comrades who are several kilometers away. How it was?
By that time, the first attempts were already being made to create a telegraph capable of transmitting signals over long distances using electricity. The scientists Galvani and Volt were engaged in the basics of electrical engineering, the Russian Schilling and Jacobi made their contribution, who invented transmission codes and an apparatus that converts signals into text.
A little later, in 1837, thanks to the American inventor Morse, the electric telegraph and special system codes from dots and dashes, widely known to everyone under the name "Morse code".
But even this was not enough for the scientists of those centuries. They dreamed that it would be possible not only to receive a dry text over wires, but also to speak over them!
This is interesting! Archaeologists discovered two pumpkins in the Peru region, connected by a rope to each other and concluded that this design is a thousand-year-old ancestor of the telephone. Indeed, it is very similar to two matchboxes connected by a thread, on which we tried to “call” in childhood.
Who invented first?
The history of the appearance of the telephone is associated with Alexander Bell from America. But he was not the only one who was actively involved in the design idea of transmitting the human voice at a distance. Let's briefly go through the pages of history and trace the path the invention has overcome in the first stages of its birth.
Italian Antonio Meucci
In 1860, Antonio Meucci, a native of Italy, showed the Americans a device that could transmit sound over a wire, but he applied for a patent only in 1871, and the company that took them answered all his questions about the fate of the documents that they were lost.
German Philipp Reis
The German physicist Philipp Reis in 1861 presented to the public an electrical apparatus capable of transmitting sound. From him, by the way, his name “telephone” sounded, which we are used to hearing today, which is translated from Greek as “sound from afar”.
His transmitter was made in the form of a hollow box with holes: sound - in front and covered with a membrane - on top. But the quality of sound transmission in Reis's phone was so low that it was impossible to make out anything, so his invention was not accepted by others.
Americans Gray and Bell
Only 15 years later, two American designers Gray and Bell, quite independently of each other, were able to discover how a metal membrane with a magnet, like the eardrum of our ear, can convert sound and transmit it through an electrical signal.
Why did Bell get all the laurels of fame? Everything is simple! On February 14, 1876, he filed his application to patent the invention he discovered - the "talking telegraph" - a couple of hours earlier than Gray did.
I can imagine how upset Gray was.
Bell presented the telephone at a technical exhibition in Philadelphia.
The new technology did not have a call, the subscriber was called by the attached whistle, and the only handset both received and transmitted speech at the same time. The first phones were forced to generate electricity themselves, so phone line worked only at a distance of up to 500 meters.
This is interesting! In 2002, the US Congress passed a decision that turned telephone world: he recognized the Italian Meucci as the true inventor of the telephone.
Phone evolution
Since the first telephone set was presented to the public, inventors and designers have put a lot of effort into making a modern means of communication out of a primitive device.
So, engineers were able to replace the whistle to call the subscriber with an electric bell. In 1876, a switchboard was invented that could connect not only two, but already several telephones to each other.
A year later, the inventor Edison contributes to the development of the telephone - his induction coil increases the distance of sound transmission, and the carbon microphone, which improves the quality of communication, was used until the end of the 20th century. Then, in 1877, the first telephone exchange appeared in America, through which those who wanted to call someone were connected with desired number telephone operators through plugs.
Thanks to the contribution of the Russian inventor Golubitsky, stations powered by a central source were able to serve tens of thousands of subscribers. Remarkably, the first telephone conversation in Russia took place three years after the appearance of the telephone, and in 1898 the first long-distance line between Moscow and St. Petersburg was built.
This is interesting! The first phones were not convenient. It was hard to hear in them, so special tubes were invented different sizes and forms that you just had to stick your nose into so that the subscriber could understand what the conversation was about. At first they were made separate: one - to speak into it, the second - to listen from it. Then they began to be connected with a handle, like a modern telephone receiver. Telephone sets made of ivory, and mahogany, and cast metal. The cups of the bells were chrome-plated to a shine. But one thing remained unchanged: the case, the tube and the lever on which they hung it after the conversation.
Leaps to Modernity
The inventive world did not stop there. Having received a telephone at home, people wanted to use modern means communications already and on the street, in transport, to communicate on the way to work or home.
Such communication, not attached to the premises, was initially available only to the special services - walkie-talkies, nicknamed "walkie-talkie", or "walk - talk", became a tempting idea for ordinary users. Knowing the secrets of the device, the craftsmen tried to connect the devices to the line using such radio communications. So in the 80s, radiotelephones appeared, operating at a distance of up to 300 meters.
But the main advantage recent years has undoubtedly become cellular, operating from a signal moving from one station to another.
The modern "honeycomb" appeared in 1973 at the Motorola company. Their first-born worked without recharging for no more than 20 minutes and was similar in size to a brick, and weighed as much as 794 grams!
These are now our modern "mobile phones" small and compact, able to take pictures, send mail and messages, play music and even think for their owner! They have become real helpers for children and their parents - you can always call and find out how things are going!
This is interesting! Singaporean En Yang is the fastest to write SMS - it takes him a little more than 40 seconds for a message of 160 characters to appear!
Interesting facts about mobile phones
This video contains 23 more interesting facts about our phones. They can complement your project, so look carefully.
Now you know everything about the appearance of the telephone. Make a report and tell your friends, they will be interested! And I say goodbye to you, but do not forget to look into new projects and stay in touch!
Success in your studies!
Evgenia Klimkovich.
