During the 1870s, two renowned inventors independently designed devices that could transmit sound through electrical wires. Those inventors were Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray. Both devices were registered with the patent office within hours of each other. A bitter legal battle ensued over the invention of the telephone, which Bell subsequently won.

The telegraph and the telephone are very similar in concept, and it was through Bell’s attempts to improve the telegraph that he succeeded with the telephone.

The telegraph had been a highly successful communication system for about 30 years before Bell began to experiment. The main problem with the telegraph was that it used Morse code and was limited to sending and receiving one message at a time. Bell had a good understanding of the nature of sound and music. This allowed him to perceive the possibility of transmitting more than one message on the same cable at the same time. Bell’s idea was not new, others before him had considered a multiple telegraph. Bell offered his own solution, the “Harmonic Telegraph”. This was based on the principle that musical notes could be sent simultaneously on the same wire, if those notes differed in pitch.

By the end of 1874, Bell’s experiment had progressed far enough for him to inform his close relatives of the possibility of a multiple telegraph. Bell’s future father-in-law, lawyer Gardiner Green Hubbard, saw an opportunity to break the monopoly held by the Western Union Telegraph Company. He gave Bell the financial backing he needed to continue his work developing the multiple telegraph. However, Bell failed to mention that he and his partner, another brilliant young electrician Thomas Watson, were developing an idea that he had come up with over the summer. This idea was to create a device that could transmit the human voice electrically.

Bell and Watson continued work on the harmonic telegraph at the insistence of Hubbard and some other financial backers. During March 1875, Bell met with a man named Joseph Henry without Hubbard’s knowledge. Joseph Henry was the respected director of the Smithsonian Institution. He listened carefully to Bell’s ideas and offered words of encouragement. Both Bell and Watson were encouraged by Henry’s views and continued their work with increased enthusiasm and determination. In June 1875 they realized that their goal of creating a device that could transmit speech electrically would soon be fulfilled. His experiments had shown that different tones would vary the strength of an electrical current in a wire.

Now all they had to do was build a device with a suitable membrane capable of converting those tones into variable electronic currents, and a receiver to play the variations and convert them back into audible format at the other end. In early June, Bell discovered that while working on his harmonic telegraph, he could hear a sound through the wire. It was the sound of a clock spring. It was March 10, 1876, when Bell finally realized the success and communication potential of his new device. The chances of being able to talk over an electric wire far exceeded those of a modified telegraph system, which was essentially based on dots and dashes.

Based on Bell’s notebook entry for that date, he describes his most successful experiment using his new equipment, the telephone. Bell spoke to his assistant Watson, who was in the next room, through the instrument and said: “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to talk to you.”

Alexander Graham Bell was born on March 3, 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland. His family were leading authorities on locution and speech correction. He was prepared and educated to pursue a career in the same specialty. At the age of 29 in 1876 he had invented and patented the telephone. His in-depth knowledge of sound and acoustics was of great help during the development of his phone and gave him an edge over others working on similar projects at the time. Bell was a quality intellectual rarely found since his death. He was a man who was always striving for success and looking for new ideas to nurture and develop.

The phone – important dates

1. 1874 – The principle of the telephone was discovered.

2. 1876 – Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone, beating Elisha Gray by a matter of hours.

3. 1877: The first permanent outdoor telephone cable was completed. It stretched a distance of only three miles. This was closely followed in the US by the world’s first commercial telephone service.

4. 1878 – Viable exchange developed, allowing calls to be switched between subscribers instead of having direct lines.

5. 1879 – Subscribers began to be designated by numbers rather than names.

6. 1880s – During this period, long-distance service using metal circuits expanded.

7. 1888 – Common battery system developed by Hammond V. Hayes allows a central battery to power all telephones in one central, rather than relying on each unit’s battery.

8. 1891 – First automatic dialing system invented by a Kansas City undertaker. He believed that the corrupt operators were sending their potential customers elsewhere. His goal was to get rid of the operators completely.

9. 1900 – The first coin-operated telephone is installed in Hartford, Connecticut.

10. 1904 – “French Telephone” developed by the Bell Company. This had the transmitter and receiver in a single earpiece.

11. 1911 – American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) acquires the Western Union Telegraph Company in a hostile takeover. They covertly bought shares in the company and eventually merged.

12. 1918 – An estimated ten million Bell system telephones were in service in the US.

13. 1921 – The switching of a large number of calls was made possible by the use of phantom circuits. This allowed three conversations to take place on two pairs of wires.

14. 1927 – The first transatlantic service from New York to London begins to operate. The signal was transmitted by radio waves.

15. 1936 – Research into electronic telephone exchanges began and was finally refined in the 1960s with the Electronic Switching System (SES).

16. 1946 – The world’s first commercial mobile phone service goes live. It could link moving vehicles to a telephone network via radio waves.

17. 1947 – Microwave radio technology first used for long distance telephone calls.

18. 1947 – The transistor is invented at Bell Laboratories.

19. 1955 – Saw the beginning of the laying of transatlantic telephone cables.

20. 1962 – The world’s first international communications satellite, Telstar, is launched.

21. 1980s – The development of fiber optic cables during this decade offered the potential to carry much higher call volumes than satellites or microwaves.

22. 1980s, 1990s to present: Huge advances in microelectronic technology over the past two decades have allowed cellular (mobile) phone development to advance at a truly astounding rate. A cellular (mobile) phone has its own central transmitter that allows it to receive continuous transmissions when you enter and leave a cell.

Some people believe that the impact that the telephone has had on our lives is negative. Whatever your beliefs, there is no doubt that the invention and development of the telephone has had a massive impact on the way we live our lives and go about our daily business.

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