More than 140 years ago, a short message made history and started a new way for people to communicate.
On March 10, 1876, inventor Alexander Graham Bell spoke the first successful telephone message in his laboratory in Boston, United States.
The words were simple: “Mr Watson, come here. I want to see you.”
Even though Bell’s assistant Thomas Watson was only in the next room, the message travelled through a wire using electricity. This was the first time clear human speech had been sent electronically.
Who invented the telephone?
Alexander Graham Bell was a 29 year old professor studying how the human voice works. He worked at Boston University and spent years experimenting with ways to send sound through wires.
Bell was trying to improve the telegraph, a system that sent messages using electrical signals.
Another engineer, Elisha Grey, was also working on a similar idea. In fact, both men submitted patent documents for their inventions on February 14, 1876.
Bell officially received his patent on March 7, 1876.
Three days later, he made the first successful telephone call.
How the early telephone worked
Bell and Watson created a device that could turn sound waves from a person’s voice into electrical signals.
The device used a thin sheet stretched like a drum. When someone spoke, the sheet vibrated. These vibrations moved a small piece of metal near a magnet, creating electrical signals that travelled through a wire.
At the other end of the wire, another device turned the electrical signals back into sound.
Did You Know?
Bell suggested answering the telephone with “ahoy,” but Thomas Edison, an American inventor known for developing the phonograph and improving the electric light bulb, promoted “hello,” which became the standard greeting.
Convincing people it was useful
At first, many people thought the telephone was interesting but were unsure what it could be used for.
Bell demonstrated the invention at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876. Brazil’s emperor Dom Pedro II reportedly reacted with surprise, saying: “My God, it talks!”
Bell continued to show the invention at public events. In one demonstration in 1877, people in Salem, Massachusetts listened to music being played through a telephone line from Boston.
The telephone spreads around the world
In 1877, Bell and his partners created the Bell Telephone Company to develop and sell telephone equipment.
Two years later, the company began expanding into Europe. In 1885, it helped create the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, better known as AT&T.
By the early 1900s, telephones were becoming common in homes and businesses in the United States and Europe.
An invention that changed communication
Bell’s simple message in 1876 marked the beginning of the telephone age.
Today, billions of people around the world communicate through phones, including smartphones, which are all based on the same basic idea: turning sound into electrical signals that can travel across long distances.
Photo Credits: Bettmann / Getty Images
