The Telephone
Smartphones, the ones almost everyboody uses, were acheivable only with the help of Alexander
Graham Bell, who revolutionized modern day comunication by inventing the grandfather ofa
smartphone, the telephone.
Alexander Bell was born in March, 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland.He had two brothers, Melville James
Bell and Edward Charles Bell.Bell’s father, Alexander Melville Bell, was a phonetician, which is
ascientist who studies speech sounds and how they are made and transmitted.
The telegraph was the primary mode of long-distance communication at the time, and Bell’s
attempts to improve the telegraph system led to the invention of the telephone.The telegraph
system was an inadequate form of communication because it required users to learn Morse code and
it wasn’t possible to send more than one message at the same time.
In the early 1870s, Bell was living and teaching in Boston, America. He spent years trying to develop a
device to transmit the human voice over electrical wires. In 1874 he began working with Thomas
Watson, a skilled electrician. Together, they continued experimenting and developing a way to
transmit speech. On 10th March 1876, Alexander and Thomas were working in separate rooms. Bell
made the first ever telephone call, saying: “Mr Watson, come here. I want to see you!”
Alexander Graham Bell was not the only person working on the telephone during the 1870s. Several
scientists claimed that they had actually invented the first telephone, not Bell. Bell had filed a patent
for his telephone in February 1876. A patent is a document that gives an inventor the right to prevent
other inventors from making, using or selling the same invention without asking. On the same day, a
scientist called Elisha Grey had filed a patent caveat. This was not a full patent, but was a document
to show that he would soon be filing a full patent.
One small invention for Alexander Graham Bell, one huge step for humanity, that created new
models which could text, e-mail, play video games etc.
