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| In the 1870s, two inventors Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell both independently designed devices that could transmit speech electrically the telephone. Both men rushed their respective designs to the
patent office within hours of each other, Alexander Graham Bell patented his telephone
first. Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell entered into a famous legal battle over the invention of the telephone, which Bell won. The telegraph and telephone are both wire-based electrical systems, and Alexander Graham Bell's success with the telephone came as a direct result of his attempts to improve the telegraph. When Bell began experimenting with electrical signals, the telegraph had been an established means of communication for some 30 years. Although a highly successful system, the telegraph, with its dot-and-dash Morse code, was basically limited to receiving and sending one message at a time. Bell's extensive knowledge of the nature of sound and his understanding of music enabled him to conjecture the possibility of transmitting multiple messages over the same wire at the same time. Although the idea of a multiple telegraph had been in existence for some time, Bell offered his own musical or harmonic approach as a possible practical solution. 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 1874,
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 he did not tell Hubbard that he and Thomas Watson, a young electrician
whose services he had enlisted, were also exploring an idea that had occurred to him that
summer - that of developing a device that would transmit speech electrically. While Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Watson worked on the harmonic telegraph at the insistent urging of Hubbard and other backers, Bell nonetheless met in March 1875 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 1875 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 they therefore needed only to 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, 1875, Alexander Graham Bell while experimenting with his technique called "harmonic telegraph" discovered he could hear sound over a wire. The sound was that of a twanging clock spring. Bell's greatest success was achieved on March 10, 1876, marked not only the birth of the telephone but the death of the multiple telegraph as well. The communications potential contained in his demonstration of being able to "talk with electricity" far outweighed anything that simply increasing the capability of a dot-and-dash system could imply. Alexander Graham Bell's notebook entry of 10 March 1876 describes his successful experiment with the telephone. Speaking through the instrument to his assistant, Thomas A. Watson, in the next room, Bell utters these famous first words, "Mr. Watson -- come here -- I want to see you." Born on March 3, 1847, in Edinburgh, Scotland, Alexander Graham Bell was the son and grandson of authorities in elocution and the correction of speech. Educated to pursue a career in the same specialty, his knowledge of the nature of sound led him not only to teach the deaf, but also to invent the telephone. Bell's unceasing scientific
curiosity led to invention of the photophone, to significant commercial
improvements in Thomas Edison's phonograph, and to development of his own flying machine
just six years after the Wright Brothers launched their plane at Kitty Hawk. As President
James Garfield lay dying of an assassin's bullet in 1881, Bell hurriedly invented a metal
detector in an unsuccessful attempt to locate the fatal slug. |
| According to "Adventures in
Cybersound - Valdemar Poulsen": Valdemar Poulsen, (b. Nov. 23, 1869, d. July 1942), Danish telephone engineer and inventor, best known for his Telegraphone, which he patented in 1898. It was the first practical apparatus for magnetic sound recording and reproduction. It was an ingenious apparatus for recording telephone conversations. It recorded, on a wire, the varying magnetic fields produced by a sound. The magnetized wire could then be used to play back the sound. According to Phontel: According to Casio from Casio
TAD History (Telephone Answering Devices): The first digital tad was invented by Dr. Kazuo Hashimoto of Japan in mid-1983. US patent 4,616,110 entitled Automatic Digital Telephone Answering. Voicemail - Voice Mail "When I call a business, I like to talk to a human" - Gordon Matthews. Gordon Matthews - Voicemail Inventor |
| According to "Adventures in Cybersound - Valdemar Poulsen": Valdemar Poulsen, (b. Nov. 23, 1869, d. July 1942), Danish telephone engineer and inventor, best known for his Telegraphone, which he patented in 1898. It was the first practical apparatus for magnetic sound recording and reproduction. It was an ingenious apparatus for recording telephone conversations. It recorded, on a wire, the varying magnetic fields produced by a sound. The magnetized wire could then be used to play back the sound. According to Phontel: According to Casio from Casio
TAD History (Telephone Answering Devices): The first digital tad was invented by Dr. Kazuo Hashimoto of Japan in mid-1983. US patent 4,616,110 entitled Automatic Digital Telephone Answering. Voicemail - Voice Mail "When I call a business, I like to talk to a human" - Gordon Matthews. Gordon Matthews - Voicemail Inventor In the late seventies, Matthews first began working on the technology that would come to be called "voicemail." He patented it in 1982. His "Voice Message Exchange" managed electronic messages in a digital format. At times, it seems Matthews saw his invention as a bit of a Frankenstein. "We didn't design this technology to annoy people, but rather make their lives easier." His first inspiration to develop communications tools came when he was in the marines, which he joined as a pilot in 1959. A friend and fellow aviator was killed in a mid-air collision. Matthews suspected that the accident was caused when the pilot had to take his hands off the flight controls to adjust his radio frequency. After the marines, he went to work at IBM, helping to develop a voice-controlled military cockpit. In 1966, Matthews moved to Dallas to work for Texas Instruments. He specialized in using computers to automate telephone systems of large corporations with multiple lines and then launched a series of his own businesses specializing in computers and telecommunications. In 1979, Matthews formed his company, VMX, of Dallas, which stands for Voice Message Express. He applied for a patent in 1979 for his voicemail invention and sold the first system to 3M. His wife, Monika, recorded the first greeting on this first commercial voicemail. He sold VMX and retired to Austin after 13 years. "The market was growing
faster than I could grow the company," Matthews once said |
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an·swered,
an·swer·ing, an·swers
To engage in communication by telephone. |
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