Alexander Graham Bell | 150 Years of Connection
The Telephonic Bell
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Communications Media, 1870s
Skaneateles Historical Society / Worthpoint.com / Hipstamp.com
In 1875, Americans communicated over distance via hundreds of millions of postcards, letters, and publications delivered by the U.S. Postal Service—and 17 million messages on the Western Union Company’s 250,000 miles of business-oriented, electric telegraph wire.
Alexander Graham Bell, 1876
Photograph by E. A. Holton. Patrick Feaster collection
Bell’s family background and passion lay in elocution, acoustics, and deaf education. Yet he also wanted to earn a reputation and fortune in electric telegraphy. Like other inventors, he focused initially on multiplexing via “harmonic telegraphy,” or transmitting messages simultaneously on different frequencies.
Bell’s Earliest Drawings of the Telephone, June 1875
Library of Congress, Alexander Graham Bell family papers
As a deaf educator, Bell understood that spoken sounds are comprised of complex continuous waves. Unlike telegraph inventors, he realized that voices might be reproduced using continuous, “undulating” electric current in a circuit, not the interrupted currents of telegraphy.
Page from Thomas Watson’s Notebook, with Entry for March 10, 1876
AT&T Archives and History Center
Three days after Bell received his patent on March 7, he and assistant Thomas Watson transmitted and received a telephone call in Boston, Massachusetts. Their notebooks recorded slightly different sentences, but Bell and Watson documented an indisputable first.
…telegraph wires will be laid on to houses just like water or gas—and friends converse with each other without leaving home.
Alexander Graham Bell, March 10, 1876
Bell’s Ticket for the Centennial Exhibition, 1876
Photograph by Marian Early. Parks Canada, Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site
The United States Centennial Exhibition offered the promise of establishing Bell’s reputation. Because he was reluctant to leave his deaf students during their final exams, Bell’s future wife, Mabel Hubbard, had to trick him to Boston’s South Station, give him his train ticket, and pack him off to Philadelphia.
Bell’s Magneto Telephone, November 1876
National Museum of American History
Towards the end of 1876, Bell and Watson improved the magneto telephone by replacing its steel diaphragm with one of soft iron that enabled clear voice communication over 140 miles without batteries. Outside the international scientific community, however, few paid Bell’s invention much attention.
As to Bell's talking telegraph… as a scientific toy it is beautiful, but of no commercial value.
Elisha Gray, November 1, 1876
Bell Demonstrates the Telephone in Salem, Massachusetts, February 12, 1877
Library of Congress
Bell at the Lyceum in Salem, Massachusetts, and Watson 18 miles away in Boston, demonstrated the clarity and stability of their magneto telephone to 500 people in February 1877. A reporter for the Boston Globe dictated his story of the event over the line from the Lyceum.
Ladies and gentlemen… I am in Boston and you in Salem.
Thomas Watson, February 12, 1877
Declaration of Trust for the Bell Telephone Company,
July 9, 1877
AT&T Archives and History Center
Western Union declined to buy Bell’s patent in September, 1876. Investor and patent attorney Gardiner Hubbard founded the Bell Telephone Company two days before Bell married his daughter Mabel. By the end of the year, Bell Telephone had leased 3,000 phones.
The idea is idiotic on the face of it.
Western Union report, 1876
“A Bell telephone and transmitter in practical use,” around 1880
From Robert Brown (ed.), Science for All
The Bell Telephone Company won its first patent infringement suit in 1879, against Western Union. As a result, it merged with Western Union’s telephone business and acquired its manufacturer, Western Electric. Among 50 million people in the U.S., the new Bell company leased 133,000 telephones in cities.
Stockholm Telephone Tower with 5,000 telephone lines and hoarfrost, around 1895
Photography by Tekniska Museet. Wikipedia
Bell’s basic patent expired in 1893. His company’s successor—AT&T—and other inventors patented solutions to the challenges of networking growing numbers of telephones, and amplifying long-distance calls. Millions of businesses and households around the world adopted telephone service.
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