Tech Legacy - Analog Telephones (Part 14)

It is funny that for being such an epic invention, nobody knows to this day who it was that actually invented the phone. It seems to remain a highly debated topic to this day. One thing is not disputed and that is the fact that the first patent was awarded to Alexander Graham Bell in 1876. The telephone has come a long way and has evolved from rotary dial models to smart phones that we can use today to surf the internet!

In 1876, Scottish emigrant Alexander Graham Bell was the first to be granted a United States patent for a device that produced clearly intelligible replication of the human voice. This instrument was further developed by many others. The telephone was the first device in history that enabled people to talk directly with each other across large distances. Telephones rapidly became indispensable to businesses, government and households and are today some of the most widely used small appliances.

The essential elements of a telephone are a microphone (transmitter) to speak into and an earphone (receiver) which reproduces the voice in a distant location.[1] In addition, most telephones contain a ringer, which produces a sound to announce an incoming telephone call, and a dial or keypad used to enter a telephone number when initiating a call to another telephone. Until approximately the 1970s, most telephones used a rotary dial, which was superseded by the modern dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF) push-button dial, first introduced to the public by AT&T in 1963.

To think that something so basic has evolved into the Apple and Samsung smartphones we carry around in our pockets today! The technology has improved by leaps and bounds! We have major power in these small devices these days beyond the greatest supercomputers available in the past!

What a great time to be alive eh?!

Source:

Wikipedia