Inventions- Telephone

Inventions- Telephone 
   
  The telephone is an instrument enabling us to converse with a person at a great distance. The word telephone is derived from two Greek terms – Tele-meaning 'At a distance’, and phone-meaning 'Sound'. In the language of Suence, telephone is an arrangement to convert sound waves to electric waves and then to convert electric waves to sound waves again. Nowadays Telephone has become one of the important means of communication. People from near and far communicate through this instrument.

  Scientists had started attempts at broadcasting the human voice as far back as in the 1800's.It was Sir Charles Wheatstone himself, one of the inventors of the telegraph, who had initiated this search. During the course of his search, he developed the enchanted lyre, an instrument that could broadcast music from one room to another.

  In those times, persons travelling in ships and trains are seated at a distance, used to talk through certain tube like devices. Children of those times used to talk with each other through two tins tied at the opposite ends of a thread. Children in our country-side might have engaged in such recreations. These references indicate that broadcast of the human voice was not a novel idea. On the contrary, the challenge faced by scientists was to invent an instrument capable of broadcast.

  Alexander Graham Bell of Scotland researched on how sound could be transmitted and received. He had researched for long on the telegraph, and it was not surprising that he thought of using electricity as the conducting force of sound had struck his mind.

  In fact, Bell had invented the telephone during the course of his attempts to modify the telegraph. When he started his researches for telephone in the 1870's, nearly 30years had passed after telegraph had taken roots in society. Then, the Morse code consisting of dots and dashes was the basis of telegraph. For telegraph, there was heavy loss of time for decoding the message, besides the demand for service of experts for decoding or translating. In addition, the telegraph had not the capacity of exchanging so many messages simultaneously.

  Bell, in joint efforts with Thomas Watson, tried to transmit sound with the help of electricity. He had clearly understood how the human ear identified sounds, and in 1874, he explained the working principle of the telephone. In 1875, Bell and Watson jointly developed an instrument that could transmit sound. They found that variation in sound effected corresponding variations in the electric flow. It also came to their mind that the telephone could become a reality only if an arrangement for recording these variations in the electric flow was developed. So they began their attempts to devise such an arrangement.

  On 10th march 1876, Bell and Watson invented telephone. Earlier Telephones could be used only for exchanging conversation between people in adjacent rooms. Continued experiments by Bell and Watson enabled the distance to be enhanced by miles. In 1877, telephone wires extending upto a distance of 3 miles was set up.

  During 1876 - 77, some professors who conducted research in the Brown University jointly produced a telephone of a smaller size. In1877, the Bell Telephone Company was established for industrial manufacture of telephones. In 1878 the first telephone exchange came into existence. In 1879 telephone subscribers started to be allotted 5 -digits numbers.

  The field of telephones subsequently witnessed unforeseen development. Mobile cellular phones have become very common today. Besides, the videophone system, enabling the persons at both ends to see each other on a screen and to talk has become a reality.  

By: Remya Krishnan