Blog Post 5: EOTO Com Tech Timeline

 06/22/2024

The Invention of the Telephone 

    In our world one thing that almost everyone has is a cellphone. It's such a key part of our everyday lives that we often take it for granted. When life gets boring you whip it out and gawk at it for a few seconds before putting it away. It's something everybody does. However none of this would be possible without the famous invention of the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell (well that's not entirely true but more on that later). 

     Alexander Graham Bell was born in March 3rd 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Alexander in his younger years was quite the curious child and became interested in inventing things around a early age. Bell was homeschooled in his early years and when he was 16 he started to study the mechanics of speech which would of course be useful in his later invention. Eventually Bell moved to the U.S and began teaching (despite not having a degree) at Boston University School of Oratory where he married a deaf student Mabal Hubbord. They went to have 4 children although 2 passed very early on. This is all in the lead up to his great invention and more on his early years can be found here. 

    In 1871 Bell started to working on the harmonic telegraph which is a device that allows for wires to transmit multiple messages at the same time. While he was working on this he became invested in transmitting human voices over wires. Eventually this led to the invention of the telephone and a conflict with a another inventor. 

    On March 7, 1876, the U.S Patent Office issued a patent for Graham to secure the basic principles involved in the telephone. This caused Bell a sort of immortality as the inventor of the telephone. This caused a big contreversy as the same day a caveat for a similar invention was filled by Elisha Gray. Eventually the controversy subsided and Graham was given the full patent to the telephone. They were trying to solve the problem of communication over long distamce without the need for travel or long mail. 

    The telephone completly changed how people community communicate and provided several benefits over both past and future forms of communication. It made communication way easier and convenient as people didn't have to rely on letters, or slow travel and could talk in real time with another person. Telephones also don't typically need to worry about the power going out as fixed and cordless telephones use wires while the cellphones we use today rely on battery. Telephones also were quite user friendly because of the very few buttons making it very easy to use for people of all ages. 

 

    However their are downsides to the telephone but it's important to realize this has to do with the habits of people and not the actual functionality of the tool. Firstly people could use telephones to much even before the advent of cellphones. Two people could easily become lost in coversation and neglect their daily tasks. Secondly telephones or todays more common cell phones could be used for wrongdoing like scamning or harassing in the hands of a criminal. 

     Alexander Graham Bell's work will go down as one of the greatest inventions of our time. He revolutionized something that could take weeks or even months and turned it into seconds. While their were contreversy and the cell phones of today have their own host of issues, nobody can deny that Bell's invention made the world a better place.