Speech on History of the Telephone

¶ … Distance Communication and the Invention of the Telegraph & Telephone

When Scottish-born Alexander Graham Bell invented the first working telephone in 1876, he never could have envisioned the modern masses glued to their wireless devices. The wooden stand, funnel, copper wire, and acid used to form the first telephone could not be farther removed from the digital universe we live in now. What arose out of a general knowledge about acoustics and electricity became a revolution in technology and communications. The age-old human dream of long distance communication became a reality with the invention of the telephone.

What was once termed "talking by lightening" evolved out of many years of investigation into potential voice transmission devices. Samuel Morse's telegraph paved the way for future developments on the telephone, but early phones served more as novelty items than practical devices. Nevertheless, during the late 1800s, a plethora of patents were issued for telephony devices. After Thomas Edison and Francis Blake invented more sophisticated electronic transmitters, the telephone moved to the forefront of new technologies. Corporations got their hands into the budding business; Western Union operated some of the first national switchboards. As subscribers to telephone service grew, the National Bell Company was formed in 1879 under the guidance of William H. Forbes. In 1880, the American Bell Company formed, employing over 130,000 telephones. Theodore Vail created AT&T in 1885.

Roosevelt's New Deal plan to rescue America from the Great Depression gave birth to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1934. An affirmation of the growing significance of the telephone, the FCC helped big businesses develop market strangleholds while they promoted their communications devices. As technologies improved, so did the public's demand for the telephone. Direct dialing, microwave systems, transatlantic cables, and eventually digital carriers, created a culture dependent on the phone. By the end of the 1960s, consumer demand for telephony escalated so high that company service and maintenance could not keep up. The telephone had become an indispensable household item.

Consumer dissatisfaction coupled with anti-trust violation led to the mass restructuring of the telephone industry. AT&T was split into several regional systems in the 1980s, just in time to parallel the wireless revolution. The 1990s witnessed a wave of interest in cellular phones, which hence evolved into digital devices. The future of long distance communications rests with wireless technologies, and the best is yet to come.

CONCLUSION

In 1954, AT&T Chief of Engineering Dr. Harold Osborne predicted the future of telephone communications:

Let us say in the ultimate, whenever a baby is born anywhere in the world, he is given at birth a number which will be his telephone number for life. As soon as he can talk, he is given a watch-like device with ten little buttons on one side and a screen on the other. Thus equipped, at any time when he wishes to talk with anyone in the world, he will pull out the device and punch on the keys the number of his friend. Then turning the device over, he will hear the voice of his friend and see his face on the screen, in color and in three dimensions. If he does not see and hear him, he will know that the friend is dead."

Osborne may not have been far off the mark. Perhaps the future will bring holographic phones that connect us with our loved ones across the miles. Maybe we will even create devices that can communicate across language barriers with a built-in translator. The earliest pioneers of the telephone could not have predicted its proliferation today; nor can we predict future developments.

One of the most, if not the most dynamic developments in human communications is the telephone. Its invention changed the world, enabled people to transmit voice messages instantly over thousands of miles. We should never take for granted the convenience the telephone offers. Although the phone has ceased to be an object of curiosity, many callers are unaware exactly how the device works. Were it not for early electrical engineers who painstakingly developed over the course of years inductors and transducers that made telephony possible, we would not today have fax machines, modems, nor our cellular phones.