Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Jespersen, James. "Telephone." The New Book of Knowledge®. 2010. Grolier Online. 29 Mar. 2010 <http://nbk.grolier.com/cgi-
bin/article?assetid=a2028870-h>.
In 1861, German Johann Phillip Reis [German: 1834-1874] tried to develop a telegraph that transmitted
sounds, which he called a telephone. Alexander Graham Bell in the 1870s had a similar idea; one
telegraph wire could carry sounds of different pitches representing several messages at once.
Experimenting in 1875, Bell noticed that variations in the amount of current moved thin pieces of metal in
his apparatus. He redesigned the device to use the sound to vary current; at the other end, the changing
current reproduced the sounds. This simple device was patented by Bell in 1876 as the telephone.
Bell and his assistant Thomas Watson soon improved the telephone by using a diaphragm to move
permanent magnets that altered levels of current. The same apparatus was used to send and to receive
sounds. In 1882, a version with a sending mechanism held near the mouth and a receiver placed on the ear
was introduced. Bell's telephone system connected a small group of phones to a central operator who
signaled individual phones to indicate incoming calls. Each phone had its own pattern of rings, but
picking up any receiver allowed anyone in the group to participate in the call, a system known as the
"party line."
Improvements included the first way to send several calls at once over the same wires (1887), a
mechanical switching system to replace central operators (1892), the rotary dial telephone (1896), and
automatic switching systems (1912). In 1983, the first cellular telephone networks in the United States
allowed subscribers to use wireless battery-powered telephones.
"Telephone." The Blackbirch Encyclopedia of Science & Invention. 4 vols. Blackbirch Press, 2001. Reproduced in Kids
InfoBits. Detroit: Gale, 2010. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/KidsInfoBits
Inventions That Changed the
World
written by John Perritano
Great Inventions
written by Bob Barton