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Technology >> The Telephone
Michael Faraday, a self-taught English physicist and inventor
operating in the early 19th century, is most famous for his
discovery of electromagnetic induction. However, he also made
another, albeit lesser-known contribution to science that would have an equally
important impact in the hands of German scientist Johann Philip
Reis.
Faraday demonstrated the vibrations of a metal diaphragm—the
technological equivalent of an eardrum—being converted into
electrical signals. Reis used this information to build a primitive
telephone, but could never give his device the range or clarity it
would need to be a viable means of communication beyond his
laboratory.
Both Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell subsequently took this
information and developed their own transmitter and receiver
technology, continuing the work Reis had started. Since both of them
were firmly wedded to the idea of developing a new kind of
telegraph, neither man had a true conception of what he had designed
at first.
Even if Bell and Gray had been excited about their inventions, it
was unlikely the public would have shared their elation. Most people
were reluctant to trust this new technology, and few outside its
devotees had faith or interest enough to see to it that work in the
area be continued.
As a consequence, the two boxes Edmontonian Alex Taylor purchased
from the Consolidated Telephone Construction and Maintenance Company
of London England a few years after the initial patents were filed
differed little in composition from the first successful telephones.
Rather, the earliest manufacturers worked to better individual
aspects of the telephone, slowly making major changes to its method
of operation only after Almon Strowger—a sometime soldier, teacher,
and undertaker from the United States—patented his automatic
exchange technology in 1891.
Most phone technology went virtually unchanged, however; Thomas
Edison’s handset, for example, withstood the test of time through
successive generations of phones for over 100 years.
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Heritage Community Foundation and
Telephone Historical Centre All Rights Reserved
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