Who invented telephone

But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. He was an immigrant. Bell was born on March 3, , in Edinburgh, Scotland. After attending school in Scotland and London, the year-old immigrated to Canada with his parents in Italian inventor and engineer Guglielmo Marconi developed, demonstrated and marketed the first successful long-distance wireless telegraph and in broadcast the first transatlantic radio signal.

He was an impassioned champion of a strong federal government, and played a key role in defending In his 84 years, Thomas Edison acquired a record number of 1, patents singly or jointly and was the driving force behind such innovations as the phonograph, the incandescent light bulb and one of the earliest motion picture cameras.

By turns charismatic and ruthless, brilliant and power hungry, diplomatic and Serbian-American engineer and physicist Nikola Tesla made dozens of breakthroughs in the production, transmission and application of electric power. He invented the first alternating current AC motor and developed AC generation and transmission technology. In , Connecticut-born gun manufacturer Samuel Colt received a U.

Colt founded a company to manufacture his revolving-cylinder pistol; however, sales were slow and the The internet got its start in the United States more than 50 years ago as a government weapon in the Cold War. For years, scientists and Developed in the s and s by Samuel Morse and other inventors, the telegraph revolutionized long-distance communication.

It worked by transmitting electrical signals over a wire laid between stations. In addition to helping invent the telegraph, Samuel Morse Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. Telephone In , Bell started working on the harmonic telegraph — a device that allowed multiple messages to be transmitted over a wire at the same time. Recommended for you. Nevertheless, historians Seth Shulman and Edward Evenson have recently wrestled with the evidence surrounding the competing patent claims and have concluded that Bell's application was unfairly strengthened through his inclusion of material describing, in effect, Gray's experiments, the knowledge of which, they argue, Bell gained either from the patent attorneys that he and Gray had engaged or from a corrupt Patent Office official.

Thus, the controversy over the awarding of the patent continues, at least for historians. Not only historians, however, wade into historical questions of who was first with this or that discovery or creation. Politicians are seldom shy about pronouncing on such issues—often, it appears, out of a desire to honor the achievements of people of particular ethnic backgrounds. In June , for example, the U. House of Representatives passed a non-binding resolution honoring Italian inventor Antonio Meucci, who apparently did invent a delicate and primitive telephone some time in the s.

Ten days after the U. Although the idea of a "multiple telegraph" had been in existence for some time, it was purely conjecture as no one had been able to fabricate one—until Bell. His "harmonic telegraph" was based on the principle that several notes could be sent simultaneously along the same wire if the notes or signals differed in pitch.

By October , Bell's research had progressed to the extent that he could inform his future father-in-law, Boston attorney Gardiner Greene Hubbard, about the possibility of a multiple telegraph. Hubbard, who resented the absolute control then exerted by the Western Union Telegraph Company, instantly saw the potential for breaking such a monopoly and gave Bell the financial backing he needed.

Bell proceeded with his work on the multiple telegraph but did not tell Hubbard that he and Thomas Watson, a young electrician whose services he had enlisted, were also developing a device that would transmit speech electrically.

While Watson worked on the harmonic telegraph at the insistent urging of Hubbard and other backers, Bell secretly met in March with Joseph Henry , the respected director of the Smithsonian Institution, who listened to Bell's ideas for a telephone and offered encouraging words. Spurred on by Henry's positive opinion, Bell and Watson continued their work. By June , the goal of creating a device that would transmit speech electrically was about to be realized. They had proven that different tones would vary the strength of an electric current in a wire.

To achieve success, therefore, they needed only build a working transmitter with a membrane capable of varying electronic currents and a receiver that would reproduce these variations in audible frequencies.

On June 2, , while experimenting with the harmonic telegraph, the men discovered that sound could be transmitted over a wire completely by accident. Watson was trying to loosen a reed that had been wound around a transmitter when he plucked it by accident. The vibration produced by that gesture traveled along the wire into a second device in the other room where Bell was working. The "twang" Bell heard was all the inspiration that he and Watson needed to accelerate their work.

They continued to work into the next year. Bell recounted the critical moment in his journal: "I then shouted into M [the mouthpiece] the following sentence: 'Mr. Watson, come here—I want to see you.

The first telephone call had just been made. Bell patented his device on March 7, , and it quickly began to spread. By , construction of the first regular telephone line from Boston to Somerville, Massachusetts, had been completed. By the end of , there were over 49, telephones in the United States. Transcontinental service began in Bell founded his Bell Telephone Company in As the industry rapidly expanded, Bell quickly bought out competitors.

After a series of mergers, the American Telephone and Telegraph Co. It would maintain its control over the U. The first regular telephone exchange was established in New Haven, Connecticut, in Early telephones were leased in pairs to subscribers.

The subscriber was required to put up his own line to connect with another. In , Kansas City undertaker Almon B. Strowger invented a switch that could connect one line to any of lines by using relays and sliders. The Strowger switch, as it came to be known, was still in use in some telephone offices well over years later. Strowger was issued a patent on March 11, , for the first automatic telephone exchange. The first exchange using the Strowger switch was opened in La Porte, Indiana, in Initially, subscribers had a button on their telephone to produce the required number of pulses by tapping.

Then an associate of Strowgers' invented the rotary dial in , replacing the button. In , Philadelphia was the last major area to give up dual service rotary and button. In , the coin-operated telephone was patented by William Gray of Hartford, Connecticut.

Gray's payphone was first installed and used in the Hartford Bank. Unlike pay phones today, users of Gray's phone paid after they had finished their call.