Telephone History

The pre-history and early history of the telephone is the history of telephonic technology that produced instruments to transfer information through a medium, electrically or mechanically. Later in the timeline of the telephone, the history is dominated by various scientific electromechanic innovations. The history of distance communication, records continuous improvements in the ability of people to communicate from different points over medium or vast distances.

[edit] Telephone prehistory

[edit] Mechanical devices
Before the invention of electro-magnetic telephones, there were mechanical devices for transmitting spoken words over a greater distance than ordinary speech. The very earliest mechanical telephones were based on sound transmission through pipes or other physical media. According to a letter in the Peking Gazette, in 968, the Chinese inventor Kung-Foo-Whing invented the thumtsein, which probably transported the speech through pipes. Speaking tubes remained common and can still be found today. The lover's telephone or string telephone has also been known for centuries, connecting two diaphragms with string or wire which transmits the sound from one to the other by mechanical vibrations along the string and not by electric current. The classic example is the children's toy made by connecting the bottoms of two paper cups, metal cans, or plastic bottles with string.

[edit] Electrical devices
Main article: Electrical telegraph
In 1775 Francisco de Salva offered an electrostatic telegraph. Samuel Thomas von Soemmering constructed his electrochemical telegraph in 1809. Also as one of the first, an electromagnetic telegraph was created by Baron Schilling in 1832. Carl Friedrich Gauß and Wilhelm Weber built and first used for regular communication the electromagnetic telegraph in 1833 in Göttingen. The first commercial electrical telegraph was constructed by Sir William Fothergill Cooke and entered use on the Great Western Railway in Britain. It ran for 13 miles from Paddington station to West Drayton and came into operation on 9 April 1839. It was patented in the United Kingdom in 1837. In 1843 Scottish physician Alexander Bain invented a device that could be considered the first facsimile machine. He called his invention a "recording telegraph". Bain's telegraph was able to transmit images by electrical wires. In 1855 an abbot, Giovanni Caselli, in Italy also created an electric telegraph that could transmit images. Caselli called his invention "Pantelegraph". Pantelegraph was successfully tested and approved for a telegraph line between Paris and Lyon.

An electrical telegraph was independently developed and patented in the United States in 1837 by Samuel Morse. His assistant, Alfred Vail, developed the Morse code signaling alphabet with Morse. America's first telegram was sent by Morse on January 6, 1838, across two miles of wiring. The message read "A patient waiter is no loser." On May 24, 1844, he sent the message, "What hath God wrought", (quoting Numbers 23:23) from Washington to Baltimore, using repeater technology. This message was chosen by Annie Ellsworth, later Mrs. Roswell Smith (Roswell, NM was named after her husband), the daughter of Patent Commissioner Henry Leavitt Ellsworth. The Morse/Vail telegraph was quickly deployed in the following two decades.
Acoustic telegraphy was also known as harmonic telegraphy. During the 1800s inventors tried to find ways of sending multiple telegraph messages simultaneously over a single telegraph wire by using different audio frequencies for each message. These inventors included Charles Bourseul, Thomas Edison, Elisha Gray, and Alexander Graham Bell. Their efforts to develop acoustic telegraphy to reduce the cost of telegraph wires led to the telephone.
The first transatlantic telegraph cable was successfully completed on 25 August 1858, which was sent by the United States and received by Great Britain, allowing transatlantic telegraph communications for the first time. Earlier transatlantic submarine cables installed in 1857 and 1858 only operated for a few days or weeks before they failed. The study of underwater telegraph cables accelerated interest in mathematical analysis of these transmission lines. The telegraph lines from Britain to India were connected in 1870 (those several companies combined to form the Eastern Telegraph Company in 1872).

Credit for inventing the electric telephone remains in dispute. Antonio Meucci, Johann Philipp Reis, Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray, amongst others, have all been credited with the invention. The early history of the telephone is a confusing morass of claim and counterclaim, which was not clarified by the huge mass of lawsuits which hoped to resolve the patent claims of individuals. The Bell and Edison patents, however were forensically victorious and commercially decisive.

It is important to note that there is no one "inventor of the telephone", though Alexander Graham Bell is often credited as such, and the Italian Antonio Meucci was recognized by US Congress on 11th June 2002 as the true inventor following pressure from the Italian-American lobby. The modern telephone is the result of work done by many people, all worthy of recognition of their contributions to the field. Bell was merely the first to patent the telephone, an "apparatus for transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically", 16 years after Antonio Meucci, who did not have sufficient funds to file a patent, demonstrated his "teletrofono" in New York in 1860.
The Elisha Gray and Alexander Bell controversy considers the question of whether Bell and Gray invented the telephone independently and, if not, whether one stole the invention from the other. This controversy is more narrow than the broader question of who deserves credit for inventing the telephone, for which there are several claimants.