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- The telephone is one of the most important inventions in the world. Since it was patented and introduced to the public in June 1876, it has become the world’s most used device.
- The patent for the telephone was granted to engineer and scientist Alexander Graham Bell in 1876. Although Bell was born in Scotland, he holds two citizenships – Canadian and British.
- Interestingly, Bell’s wife was also hearing-impaired. He met his future wife, Mabel Hubbard, a student 10 years his junior in 1873, when he became a professor of vocal physiology at Boston University.
- The term telephone comes from the Greek words “tele”, which means far or distant, and “phone”, which means voice. Literally, the name of the device means distant voice.
- Overview
- The telephone instrument
- Working components of the telephone
A telephone is an instrument designed for the simultaneous transmission and reception of the human voice. Telephones are inexpensive and simple to operate, and they offer an immediate, personal type of communication. Billions of telephones are in use around the world.
When was the telephone patented?
On February 14, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell applied for a U.S. patent for the telephone. On March 7, 1876, Bell was awarded U.S. patent 174,465. This patent is often referred to as the most valuable ever issued by the U.S. Patent Office, as it described not only the telephone instrument but also the concept of a telephone system.
When was the telephone introduced to the public?
One of the earliest demonstrations of the telephone occurred in June 1876 at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.
Who is credited as the inventor of the telephone?
The word telephone, from the Greek roots tēle, “far,” and phonē, “sound,” was applied as early as the late 17th century to the string telephone familiar to children, and it was later used to refer to the megaphone and the speaking tube, but in modern usage it refers solely to electrical devices derived from the inventions of Alexander Graham Bell a...
As it has since its early years, the telephone instrument is made up of the following functional components: a power source, a switch hook, a dialer, a ringer, a transmitter, a receiver, and an anti-sidetone circuit. These components are described in turn below.
Britannica Quiz
Timeline of the telephone. This timeline of the telephone covers landline, radio, and cellular telephony technologies and provides many important dates in the history of the telephone . Charles Bourseul. Johann Philipp Reis. Elisha Gray. Thomas Edison. Alexander Graham Bell. Thomas Augustus Watson. Tivadar Puskás. Emile Berliner.
Within a year, thousands of people in America owned telephones. Other remarkable inventions related to the telephone are the rotatory dial, invented in 1892; the cordless phone, invented in 1965; and the mobile phone, invented in 1983. Here is the detailed chronology of the telephone.
- The telephone emerged from the improvements of the electrical telegraph. Electrical telegraphs were point-to-point text communications devices that were popular from the 1840s through the late twentieth century.
- There are also other inventors credited with the invention of the telephone. The inventor of the electric telephone is constantly debated, and new arguments over the matter occur regularly.
- After its invention the telephone was hardly used by many people. Post offices, railway stations, the most important political ministries, stock exchanges, a few nationally disseminated newspapers, the largest internationally important enterprises, and affluent individuals were the primary users of the electrical telegraph.
- Early telephones were technically diverse. Early telephones were quite technological. Some of them utilized liquid transmitters, which were quickly phased out.
Nov 9, 2009 · When Was the Telephone Invented? Alexander Graham Bell's Revolutionary Invention In 1871, Bell started working on the harmonic telegraph — a device that allowed multiple messages to be ...
May 21, 2021 · The Telephone Network Is Born. Bell patented his device on March 7, 1876, and it quickly began to spread. By 1877, construction of the first regular telephone line from Boston to Somerville, Massachusetts, had been completed. By the end of 1880, there were over 49,000 telephones in the United States. The following year, telephone service ...
