Gergana Draganova VI a

The first telephone

The telephone is one of the greatest inventions in history. Early telephones were nothing like the ones we have today. Telephone is the Greek word for "far sound." This is how the telephone became what it is today.

The telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876, with the help of his assistant Thomas A. Watson. Mr. Bell was originally from Scotland and came to Boston, Massachusetts in 1872. Mr. Bell got the idea for the telephone from a German inventor, Hermann von Helmholz.

The telephone

Mr. Bell invented the telephone by accident when he was trying to invent a device that could send more than one telegram at the same time. Mr. Watson and Mr. Bell were both practicing their musical instruments in separate rooms. Bell spilled some polishing liquid on himself and said over the telephone, "Mr. Watson, come here, I want you. " Mr. Bell also invented the microphone and the speaker.

The first telephone didn't have a bell, so the caller had to tap the phone with a hammer to let the receiver know a call was being sent to them. It was Thomas Watson who invented the bell. The first telephone operators only answered the phone when they felt like it. The operator would pick up the phone and say, "Number please." If the number wasn't busy, the operator took a chord and plugged it into a switchboard. This connected the caller to the number.

The Bell Telephone Company was founded by Alexander Graham Bell in 1877 to build a nationwide telephone system. By 1881, there were 132,700 Bell telephones in homes. The telephone became one of the most popular methods of communication. People wrote fewer letters and visited less often. A farmer in Gratiot, Wisconsin in the 1900's took apart his telephone to see how it worked. When the carbon in the phone spilled out, he realized he could replace it with gunpowder. But the instant he tried to call somebody, the telephone blew up! The farmer wasn't harmed, but he learned one lesson: telephones don't make good guns.

Mr. Watson and Mr. Bell were the first people, on January 15, 1915, to make a transcontinental call. A transcontinental call is a phone call made from one side of the country to another. Bell was in New York and Watson was in California. The radio wave sends it to the nearest transmitter, which sends it to the nearest telephone wire of the person receiving the call. To transmit calls, they used to use copper wires. Today phones are used very much. It comes in different models and almost no one was found phone.