The history of the telephone

I can't hear you rose that's funny I can hear you plainly isn't this great Here I am in New York and there you are in st. Louis and and it's just like you're in the next room I said it's just like you're in the next room few inventions can claim to have changed the course of history as thoroughly as the telephone from simple sounds beamed down a wire to holding the sum of human knowledge in our hands the ever-evolving tech that lets us instantly chat with someone hundreds of miles away has altered the way we live time and time again here's how the telephone has changed and how the telephone and how the telephone in turn has changed us the telephone itself was more evolution than revolution building on the Telegraph a genius bit of gadgetry that allowed coded messages to be sent through wires as electrical impulses problem was this setup could only take one message down a wire at a time the popularity of the Telegraph booming in the second half of a 19th century the race was on to find something better inventors tackling the problem included Edinburgh born Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha gray from Ohio at first the plan was to transmit multiple tones down one telegraph line and in 1875 gray patented the electric telegraph for transmitting musical tones inadvertently becoming the father of the synthesizer before long though it became clear that transmitting human speech had even more potential one year later the telephone was close to becoming real as both inventors rushed to get their increasingly sophisticated creations enshrined in patent law it was Bell who got his patent in first becoming the inventor of the telephone well maybe frankly just the question of who truly deserves the credit for the telephone could make your head spin on Valentine's Day 1876 bells patent application was entered onto the books just a few hours later Gray's paperwork hit the official record a month later its Bell who successfully transmits speech but there are allegations that bells transmission used a liquid transmitter suspiciously similar to grace or paint examiner's anus Wilbur's claims that bells team slipped him $100 in exchange for a peek at Gray's work then later claims that those claims contradicted Wilbur's Leigha claims hundreds of legal cases into while out of court experts continue to debate whether it was gray or Bell or invent a psyche antonio meucci johann philipp reis or charles pourcel all of whom were dreaming up or building voice transmission tech you could even argue that Thomas Edison deserves the credit as in 1877 he patented a carbon grain transmitter which used the variable resistance of carbon under pressure to make long-distance calls practical okay so it's unclear who deserves the title of telephone inventor but we do know who actually got it Alexander Graham Bell a few years after the patent war the Bell Telephone Company today known as AT&T had exchanges in most major US cities and as the telephone caught on new developments came thick and fast early phone calls involved an operator who'd manually connect you to the phone line of the person you wanted to talk to these would eventually give way to automatic switches of the kind patented as long ago as 1891 by Almon Strowger as transmitter tech improved the candlestick phone became increasingly obsolete replaced around the late 1920s by models like this one which crammed a transceiver and receiver into one handset 1927 saw London and New York connected by a commercial transatlantic phone service it was conducted via radio but in 1955 and 56 a huge feat of engineering saw the laying of the transatlantic t81 the first of many underwater telephone cables that would ultimately connect the entire globe by 1969 90% of US households had a telephone but this world shifting tech still had one downside wires GPM I see me no lady I'm an eccentric millionaire I'll get so many phone calls I could carry the phone around with me mobile telephony dates back to 1946 when it became possible to make a call from your car so long as you had loads of money and hardly anyone else in town was trying to make a call at the same time one year later Bell Labs is Douglas H ring sent a memo describing something much fancier a hexagonal cell network that could make countrywide car phones a reality it was the blueprint for a cellular phone network but the tech didn't exist to support such a system two decades later that was all changing the early 70s and Bell Labs was still working on cellular tech but was still focused on putting phones in cars ultimately it was Motorola who captured the public's imagination in 1973 demonstrating an entirely untethered phone the first cell phone the DynaTAC 8000x hit shelves a decade later weighing two and a half pounds with twenty minutes of battery life and costing around ten thousand dollars in today's money it wasn't pretty but Motorola's breakthrough spot a global obsession with mobile telephones the next two decades or mobile marvels get more powerful more affordable and more miniature while the telegram got a kind of mobile rebirth in the form of the text message by 1998 there were nearly 70 million u.s. mobile subscribers a figure that would double just four years later at this time Bluetooth 3G color screens and cameras were making our Mobile's truly multifunctional as the power of these devices grew in line with their popularity the next step forward in telephony was only a matter of time and we are calling it iPhone it's ironic that is today's touchscreen 4G capable phones get more advanced we use them less and less for the actual transmission of our voices the original problem that so many great minds grappled with nearly 150 years ago but in another way modern mobiles are fulfilling the telephonic promise like never before giving humans more tools to communicate with and understand each other regardless of whereabouts on the planet they are that's all for now but for much more do check out see sorry he means that don't forget to check out see net dot Oh

Channel: CNET

Views: 302,629

Keywords: Mobile, Tech Culture, Gadgets, Tech Industry, Special Features, Luke Westaway, Andrew Hoyle

Id: j3RbnsHTuVw

Length: 6min 23sec (383 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 15 2016