By the age of just 29 in 1876 he had invented and patented the telephone. He was groomed and educated to follow a career in the same specialty. His family were leading authorities in elocution and speech correction. Bell spoke to his assistant Watson, who was in the next room, through the instrument and said "Mr Watson, come here, I want to speak to you."Īlexander Graham Bell was born on 3rd March 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland. The possibilities of being able to talk down an electrical wire far outweighed those of a modified telegraph system, which was essentially based on just dots and dashes.Īccording to Bell's notebook entry for that date, he describes his most successful experiment using his new piece of equipment, the telephone.
It was on March 10th 1876 that Bell was to finally realise the success and communications potential of his new device. It was the sound of a twanging clock spring. In early June, Bell discovered that while working on his harmonic telegraph, he could hear a sound over the wire. Now all they had to do was build a device with a suitable membrane capable of turning those tones into varying electronic currents and a receiver to reproduce the variations and turn them back into audible format at the other end. Their experiments had proven different tones would vary the strength of an electric current in a wire. By June 1875 they realised their goal of creating a device that could transmit speech electrically would soon be realised. Both Bell and Watson were spurred on by Henry's opinions and continued their work with even greater enthusiasm and determination. He listened closely to Bell's ideas and offered words of encouragement. Joseph Henry was the respected director of the Smithsonian Institution. During March 1875 Bell met with a man called Joseph Henry without the knowledge of Hubbard. This idea was to create a device that could transmit the human voice electrically.īell and Watson continued to work on the harmonic telegraph at the insistence of Hubbard and a few other financial backers. However Bell failed to mention that he and his accomplice, another brilliant young electrician Thomas Watson, were developing an idea which occurred to him during the summer. He gave Bell the financial backing required for him to carry on his work developing the multiple telegraph. Bell's future father in law, attorney Gardiner Green Hubbard saw the opportunity to break the monopoly exerted by the Western Union Telegraph Company. This was based on the principal that musical notes could be sent simultaneously down the same wire, if those notes differed in pitch.īy the latter part of 1874 Bell's experiment had progressed enough for him to inform close family members about the possibility of a multiple telegraph. Bell offered his own solution, the "Harmonic Telegraph". Bell's idea was not new, others before him had envisaged a multiple telegraph.
This enabled him to perceive the possibility of transmitting more than one message along the same wire at one time. Bell had a good understanding about the nature of sound and music. The main problem with the telegraph was that it used Morse code, and was limited to sending and receiving one message at a time. The telegraph had been a highly successful communication system for about 30 years before Bell began experimenting.
The telegraph and telephone are very similar in concept, and it was through Bell's attempts to improve the telegraph that he found success with the telephone. There followed a bitter legal battle over the invention of the telephone, which Bell subsequently won. Both devices were registered at the patent office within hours of each other. Those inventors were Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray.
History of the Telephone The Telephone: A Brief Historyĭuring the 1870's, two well known inventors both independently designed devices that could transmit sound along electrical cables.
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