McConnell 1

Maggie McConnell
Ms. Dockus
1st Hour American Literature
31 December 2015
Response to a Quote by Alexander Graham Bell
The period of time encompassing the nineteenth century and the turn of the twentieth
century has been described as having produced greater advances in technology than any other
era. These discoveries, mostly inspired by the newly introduced use of steam and then electricity
as modes of power, have greatly influenced the modern world. Among these inventions is the
telephone. Its first successful function occurred on the 10th of March, 1876 when Alexander
Graham Bells words, Mr. Watson-- come here-- I want to see you were comprehensibly
transmitted through a telephone to his assistant, Thomas A. Watson, in the next room.
In our society of rapidly evolving technology, egged on by planned obsolescence, it may
be hard to believe that our modern age is not producing the largest advances in technology in
human history. However, if one compares the difference between the abilities of an iPhone 5 and
an iPhone 6 with the difference between having access to a basic telephone and not, then she
would find that the period in which devices, such as the telephone, were invented has much
greater significance in terms of the rate at which the abilities of technology were increasing.
Bells discoveries in the field of telecommunications, then, were some of the most influential in
the history of human technology.
Discoveries, regardless of when or where they are made, often influence the knowledge
of the future. Inventions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have greatly impacted our
technology today. For example, while we no longer use the candlestick style telephone or listen

McConnell 2
to music with a phonograph, without them, we would not have the cell phones or the stereo
systems that we so cherish in the twenty-first century. Bells discoveries that lead to the invention
of the telephone not only convey the intellectual productivity of the turn of the century, but also
how it influenced our lives now.