The Impact Of The Telephone

Joshua Uzan
American History
Mr. Rothbort
December 4th, 2014 The Impact of the Telephone

We picture inventors as heroes with the genius to recognize and solve a society's problems. In reality, the greatest inventors have been tinkerers who loved tinkered for its own sake and who then had to figure out what, if anything, their devices might be good for" - Jared Diamond. The telephone, invented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1867, revolutionized the world we live in today. The telephone had many good impacts on American society. Three main impacts were that it connected the country as a whole, stimulated business and created jobs, and helped security across the board. The Telephone, " A crude thing made of a wooden stand, a
funnel, a cup of acid, and some copper wire"(privateline.com), was invented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1867. But how this came about is controversial. There was actually a second inventor of the telephone: Elisha Gray.
Both of these men independently designed devices that could transmit speech electrically (the telephone). Both men rushed their own designs to the patent office in New York within hours of each other. A.G Bell's patent (archives.gov- primary source) got their first and therefore is credited for the inventor of the telephone. Elisha Gray and Alexander Bell, as a result, got into a famous legal battle over the invention. At the end Bell won (inventors.com). The telephone itself is simply "a system which converts sound, specifically the human voice, to electrical impulses of various frequencies and then back to a tone that sounds like the original voice" ( idea finder.com). When a person speaks into a telephone, the sound waves made by his voice enter the mouthpiece. An electric current carries the sound to the telephone of the person he is talking to. A telephone has two main parts: the transmitter and the receiver. The Transmitter of a telephone
serves as a sensitive "electric ear." It lies behind the mouthpiece of the phone. Like the human ear, the transmitter has an 14 eardrum." The eardrum of the telephone is a thin, round metal disk called a diaphragm. When a person talks into the telephone, the sound waves strike the diaphragm and make it vibrate. The diaphragm vibrates at various speeds, depending on the variations in air pressure caused by the varying tones of the speaker's voice. The sound waves strike the ear ear of the listener and he hears the words of the speaker (antiquetelephonehistory.com). "Mr. Watson, come here, I want you" were the first words Bell spoke and marked a turning point in American history. During the 19th century, specifically the early 1870s, electricity was the newest and rising technology. The telegraph was the dominant invention of the time and made communication easier. It was the quickest way to transport messages of long distances but they were slow and arduous to use. The main problem was that people had to learn how to use Morse code in order to use the machine. Another problem was that people had to go to special telegraph offices to send messages which was quite annoying. As a result Alexander Graham Bell needed to find a way to solve this problem and make a system that is easier and faster to use. In March of 1876 the Telephone was invented and revolutionized the way live. One way the telephone impacted American society is that it connected society and made communication easier then ever. Before the telephone was invented, communication was slow and burdensome. Sending telegrams, mail, postcards etc.. were all a pretty lengthy process. But the telephone changed all that. It cut the process in half. You didn't need to know morse code or wait weeks to receive a letter in the mail. All you needed to do was speak and the message was received instantly. In 1877, construction of the first telephone line from Boston, Massachusetts was completed. By the end of 1880, there were 47,900 telephones in the United States (inventors.com). The first telephone system was installed in Hartford, Connecticut and the first exchange linking two major cities was established between New York and Boston in 1883. The first exchange outside the United States was built in London in 1879 (ideafinder.com). Because of this, people could communicate faster and more efficiently. It made society more connected in that it set up an interconnected system between cities across the country. Another way that the telephone impacted America was that it stimulated new business.
As a result of the invention of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell created the Bell Telephone Company which, in1885, became the American Telegraph and Telephone Company (AT&T) (ebook). AT&T dominated telephone communications for the next century and controlled basically all telephone traffic in the USA. Between 1894 and 1904, over six thousand independent telephone companies went into business in the United States, and the number of telephones boomed from 285,000 to 3,317,000 (corp.att.com). Because of this booming in business, many jobs were created and the economy starts to boom. It was the golden age of invention and many people took advantage and did something about it. And as a result, these companies are big successful companies today and play a major role in our
society. A third way that the telephone company impacted American society is that it greatly helped security across the board. Before the telephone and mass communication, everything was private. People could do many things on their own and people would really find out about it. Now with the invention of the telephone, people and the government could communicate certain issues faster and the government could listen in on conversations and help stop crime. Even though many people might say that this is illegal and is a bad thing, it has helped the U.S greatly. Many crime is now stopped due to this interconnected network and open communication. The NSA (National Security Agency) does just this. It is in place to make sure the country is safe from crime and terror. The invention of the telephone is Americas most influential and revolutionary invention. Without Alexander Graham Bell's ingenuity and patience the world wouldn't be the same. The telephone revolutionized the world we live in and is greatly prevalent in our everyday lives. It impacted society in many ways that we often take for granted. If it wasn't for Bell, our world would be much different that it is today.