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Timeline of the telephone

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 209.7.90.2 (talk) at 18:58, 29 October 2012 (→1844 to 1875). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Below is a timeline of the telephone that covers many important dates in the history of the telephone.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to History of telephony.

1844 to 1875

PUMPKIN


Innocenzo Manzetti
Antonio Meucci
Charles Bourseul
Johann Philipp Reis
Elisha gray
Thomas Edison
Alexander Graham Bell
Thomas Augustus Watson
Tivadar Puskás
Emile Berliner
Charles Sumner Tainter
Theodore Newton Vail
  • 1844: Innocenzo Manzetti first suggested the idea of a “speaking telegraph” (telephone).
  • 1849: Antonio Meucci demonstrates a communicating device to individuals in Havana. It is disputed if this is an electromagnetic telephone, but is said to involve direct transmission of electricity into the user's body.
  • 1854: Charles Bourseul publishes a description of a make-break telephone transmitter and receiver in L'Illustration, (Paris) but does not construct a working instrument
  • 1854: Antonio Meucci demonstrates an electric voice operated device in New York, but it is not clear what kind of device he demonstrated.
  • 1860: Johann Philipp Reis of Germany demonstrates a make-break transmitter after the design of Bourseul and a knitting needle receiver. Witnesses said they heard human voices being transmitted.
  • 1861: Johann Philipp Reis manages to transfer voice electrically over a distance of 340 feet, see Reis' telephone. Reis used his Telephone (the word also invented by Reis) to transmit his phrase "The horse does not eat cucumber salad". This phrase in German is hard to understand acoustically so Reis used it to prove if speech can be recognized successfully at the receiving end.
  • 1864: in an attempt to give his musical automaton a voice, Innocenzo Manzetti invents the 'Speaking telegraph'. He shows no interest in patenting his device, but it is reported in newspapers.
  • 1865: Meucci reads of Manzetti's invention and writes to the editors of two newspapers claiming priority and quoting his first experiment in 1849. He writes "I do not wish to deny Mr. Manzetti his invention, I only wish to observe that two thoughts could be found to contain the same discovery, and that by uniting the two ideas one can more easily reach the certainty about a thing this important." If he reads Meucci's offer of collaboration, Manzetti does not respond.
  • 1871: Antonio Meucci files a patent caveat (a statement of intention to patent)[1] for a Sound Telegraph, but it does not describe an electromagnetic telephone.
  • 1872: Elisha Gray founded Western Electric Manufacturing Company.
  • 1872: Professor Vanderwyde demonstrated Reis's telephone in New York.
  • July 1873: Thomas Edison notes variable resistance in carbon grains due to pressure, builds a rheostat based on the principle but abandons it because of its sensitivity to vibration.
  • May 1874: Gray invents electromagnet device for transmitting musical tones. Some of his receivers use a metallic diaphragm.
  • 29 December 1874: Gray demonstrates his musical tones device and transmitted "familiar melodies through telegraph wire" at the Presbyterian Church in Highland Park, Illinois.
  • 2 June 1875: Alexander Graham Bell transmits the sound of a plucked steel reed using electromagnet instruments.
  • 1 July 1875: Bell uses a bi-directional "gallows" telephone that was able to transmit "indistinct but voicelike sounds" but not clear speech. Both the transmitter and the receiver were identical membrane electromagnet instruments.
  • 1875: Thomas Edison experiments with acoustic telegraphy and in November builds an electro-dynamic receiver but does not exploit it.

1876 to 1878

  • 11 February 1876: Elisha Gray invents liquid transmitter for use with a telephone, but does not build one.
  • 14 February 1876: (about 9:30am) Gray or his lawyer brings to the Washington, D.C. patent office Gray's caveat for the telephone. (A caveat was like a patent application without request for examination to notify the patent office of an invention in process.)
  • 14 February 1876: (about 11:30am) Bell's lawyer brings to the same patent office Bell's patent application for the telephone. Bell's lawyer requested that it be registered immediately in the cash receipts blotter.
  • 14 February 1876: (about 1:30pm) Approximately two hours later Elisha Gray's caveat was registered in the cash blotter. Although his caveat was not a full application, Gray could have converted it into a patent application, but did not do so because of advice from his lawyer and his involvement with acoustic telegraphy. The result was that the patent was awarded to Bell.[2]
  • 7 March 1876: Bell's US patent No. 174,465 for the telephone is granted.
  • 10 March 1876: Bell transmits speech "Mr. Watson, come here! I want to see you!" using a liquid transmitter as described in Gray's caveat, and an electromagnetic receiver.
  • 16 May 1876: Thomas Edison files first patent application for acoustic telegraphy for which US patent 182,996 was granted October 10, 1876.
  • 10 August 1876: Alexander Graham Bell makes the world's first long distance telephone call, about 6 miles between Brantford and Paris, Ontario, Canada.
  • 1876: Hungarian Tivadar Puskas invented the telephone switchboard exchange (later working with Edison).
  • 9 October 1876: Bell makes the first two-way long distance telephone call between Cambridge and Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
  • October 1876: Thomas Edison tests his first carbon microphone.
  • 20 January 1877: Edison "first succeeded in transmitting over wires many articulated sentences" using carbon granules as a pressure sensitive variable resistance under the pressure of a diaphragm (Josephson, p143).
  • 30 January 1877: Bell's US patent No. 186,787 is granted for an electro-magnetic telephone using permanent magnets, iron diaphragms, and a call bell.
  • 4 March 1877: Emile Berliner invents a microphone based on "loose contact" between two metal electrodes, an improvement on the Reis' Telephone, and in April 1877 files a caveat of an invention in process.
  • April 1877: A telephone line connects the workshop of Charles Williams, Jr., located in Boston, to his house in Somerville, Massachusetts at 109 Court Street in Boston, where Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Watson had previously experimented with their telephone. The telephones became No. 1 and 2 in the Bell Telephone Company.[3]
  • 27 April 1877: Thomas Edison files telephone patent application. The US patents (Nos. 474,230, 474,231 and 474,232) were awarded to Edison in 1892 over the competing claims of Alexander Graham Bell, Emile Berliner, Elisha Gray, A E Dolbear, J W McDonagh, G B Richmond, W L W Voeker, J H Irwin and Francis Blake Jr.[4] Edison's carbon granules transmitter and Bell's electromagnetic receiver were used, with improvements, by the Bell system for many decades thereafter (Josephson, p 146).
  • 4 June 1877: Emile Berliner files telephone patent application that includes a carbon microphone transmitter.
  • 9 July 1877: Bell Telephone Company, a common law joint stock company, organized by Alexander Graham Bell's future father-in-law Gardiner Greene Hubbard.
  • 1 December 1877: Western Union enters the telephone business using Thomas Edison's superior carbon microphone transmitter.
  • January 1878: First North American telephone exchange is opened in New Haven, Connecticut.
  • 4 February 1878: Thomas Edison demonstrates the telephone between Menlo Park, New Jersey and Philadelphia, a distance of 210 km.
  • 14 June 1878: The Telephone Company Ltd (Bell's Patents) registered, London. Opened in London 21 August 1879 - Europe's first telephone exchange, followed a couple of weeks later by one in Manchester.[5]
  • 12 September 1878: the Bell Telephone Company sues Western Union for infringing Bell's patents.
  • 1878: The first Australian telephone trials were made between Semaphore and Kapunda (and later Adelaide and Port Adelaide) in South Australia.[6]

1879 to 1919

1920 to 1969

1970 to 1999

2000 to 2010

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Text of Meucci's Caveat, pages 16-18
  2. ^ Hounshell, David A. 1975. Elisha Gray and the Telephone: On the Disadvantages of Being an Expert. Technology and Culture 16 (2):133-161.
  3. ^ John Lossing, Woodrow Wilson. Harpers' Encyclopædia Of United States From 458 A. D. To 1905, Harper & Brothers, 1905. Original from Pennsylvania State University, Digitized: June 25, 2009.
  4. ^ Edison, Thomas A. 1880. The Speaking Telephone Interferences, Evidence for Thomas A. Edison. Vol. 1 [jpg image], [cited 21 April 2006]. Available from http://edison.rutgers.edu/singldoc.htm.
  5. ^ http://www.mosi.org.uk/media/33871608/earlymanchestertelephoneexchanges.pdf
  6. ^ a b c d "DEVELOPMENT OF TELEPHONE". The Advertiser (Adelaide, SA : 1931 - 1954). Adelaide, SA: National Library of Australia. 21 June 1933. p. 5. Retrieved 16 April 2012.
  7. ^ StowgerNet Museum. BTMC And ATEA—Antwerp's Twin Telephone Companies, StowgerNet Telephone Museum website. Retrieved 20 August 2010.
  8. ^ Bob's Old Phones. European Bell and Western Electric Phones, Bob's Old Phones website. Retrieved August 17, 2010.
  9. ^ Bruce 1990, pg. 336
  10. ^ Jones, Newell. First 'Radio' Built by San Diego Resident Partner of Inventor of Telephone: Keeps Notebook of Experiences With Bell, San Diego Evening Tribune, July 31, 1937. Retrieved from the University of San Diego History Department website, November 26, 2009.
  11. ^ Bruce 1990, pg.338
  12. ^ Carson 2007, pg.76-78
  13. ^ The New York Times article, January 26, 1915
  14. ^ Feldman, David (1989). When Do Fish Sleep? And Other Imponderables of Everyday Life. Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. p. 15. ISBN 0-06-016161-2. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  15. ^ Young, Peter (1991). Person to person: the international impact of the telephone. Granta Editions. p. 285. ISBN 0-906782-62-7.
  16. ^ 2-Way Television in Phoning Tested, New York Times, April 10th, 1930, pg.25 (subscription);
  17. ^ Washington Hails The Test: Operator There Puts Through the Calls as Scientists Watch, The New York Time, April 8, 1927, pg.20 (subscription)
  18. ^ a b Finland
  19. ^ "Openmoko mailing list".
  20. ^ "nokia press release".
  21. ^ Symbian announces Symbian^3 and immediately gives it away. Symbian is OS software for mobile phones. - Symbian press release, 15 February 2010

Bibliography

  • (fr) Bourseul, Charles (1854), Transmission électrique de la parole, L'Illustration, (Paris), 26.08.1854
  • Thompson, Sylvanus P. (1883), Philipp Reis, Inventor of the Telephone, London: E. & F. N. Spon, 1883.
  • Coe, Lewis (1995), The Telephone and Its Several Inventors: A History, McFarland, North Carolina, 1995. ISBN 0-7864-0138-9
  • Baker, Burton H. (2000), The Gray Matter: The Forgotten Story of the Telephone, Telepress, St. Joseph, MI, 2000. ISBN 0-615-11329-X
  • Josephson, Matthew (1992), Edison: A Biography, Wiley, ISBN 0-471-54806-5
  • Bruce, Robert V. (1990), Bell: Alexander Bell and the Conquest of Solitude, Cornell University Press, 1990. ISBN 0-8014-9691-8
  • Farley, Tom (2007), "The Cell-Phone Revolution", Invention & Technology, Winter 2007, vol. 22:3, pages 8–19.
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