The history of the invention of the telephone is a stormy one. A number of inventors contributed to carrying a voice signal over wires. In 1854 the French inventor Ch
arles Bourseul suggested that vibrations caused by speaking into a flexible disc or diaphragm might be used to connect and disconnect an electric circuit, thereby producing similar vibrations in a diaphragm at another location, where the original sound would be reproduced. A few years later, the German physicist Johann Philip Reis invented an instrument that transmitted musical tones, but it could not reproduce speech. An acoustic communication device that could transmit speech was developed around 1860 by an Italian American inventor, Antonio Meucci. The first to achieve commercial success and inaugurate widespread use of the telephone, however, was a Scottish-born American inventor, Alexander Graham Bell, a speech teacher in Boston, Massachusetts.
Bell had built an experimental telegraph, which began to function strangely one day because a part had come loose. The accident gave Bell insight into how voices could be reproduced at a distance, and he constructed a transmitter and a receiver, for which he received a patent on March 7, 1876. On March 10, 1876, as he and his assistant, Thomas A. Watson, were preparing to test the mechanism, Bell spilled some acid on himself. In another room, Watson, next to the receiver, heard clearly the first telephone message: “Mr. Watson, come here; I want you.”
A few hours after Bell had patented his invention, another American inventor, Elisha Gray, filed a document called a caveat with the U.S. Patent Office, announcing that he was well on his way to inventing a telephone. Other inventors, including Meucci and Amos E. Dolbear, also m
ade claim to having invented the telephone. Lawsuits were filed by various individuals, and Bell’s claim to being the inventor of the first telephone had to be defended in court some 600 times. Gray’s case was decided in Bell’s favor. Meucci’s case was never resolved because Meucci died before it reached the Supreme Court of the United States.
arles Bourseul suggested that vibrations caused by speaking into a flexible disc or diaphragm might be used to connect and disconnect an electric circuit, thereby producing similar vibrations in a diaphragm at another location, where the original sound would be reproduced. A few years later, the German physicist Johann Philip Reis invented an instrument that transmitted musical tones, but it could not reproduce speech. An acoustic communication device that could transmit speech was developed around 1860 by an Italian American inventor, Antonio Meucci. The first to achieve commercial success and inaugurate widespread use of the telephone, however, was a Scottish-born American inventor, Alexander Graham Bell, a speech teacher in Boston, Massachusetts.
Bell had built an experimental telegraph, which began to function strangely one day because a part had come loose. The accident gave Bell insight into how voices could be reproduced at a distance, and he constructed a transmitter and a receiver, for which he received a patent on March 7, 1876. On March 10, 1876, as he and his assistant, Thomas A. Watson, were preparing to test the mechanism, Bell spilled some acid on himself. In another room, Watson, next to the receiver, heard clearly the first telephone message: “Mr. Watson, come here; I want you.”A few hours after Bell had patented his invention, another American inventor, Elisha Gray, filed a document called a caveat with the U.S. Patent Office, announcing that he was well on his way to inventing a telephone. Other inventors, including Meucci and Amos E. Dolbear, also m
ade claim to having invented the telephone. Lawsuits were filed by various individuals, and Bell’s claim to being the inventor of the first telephone had to be defended in court some 600 times. Gray’s case was decided in Bell’s favor. Meucci’s case was never resolved because Meucci died before it reached the Supreme Court of the United States.
Wow. Good info, thanks :)
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