The invention of the telephone is not the credit of any one person, but the result of the joint efforts of a large number of scholars. As early as 1876, many scientists had theoretically explained this method of communication. However, history generally believes that the first telephone was put into use in the United States in 1876, and the invention of the telephone should belong to Alexander Bell of the United States.
However, this great invention was inspired by an accidental "accident" just like Newton's discovery of gravity and Edison's discovery of the electric light by cotton thread.
In 1871, Bell returned to the United States from Scotland and served as professor of acoustic physiology at Boston University. Bell's father was a famous linguist and the inventor of sign language for the deaf. Bell's wife was once his student, a deaf girl. In addition to studying acoustics and teaching mute speech, Bell also devoted himself to developing a multiplex transmission telegraph system.
One day in 1875, Bell and his assistant Watson were conducting an experiment in two rooms respectively. Due to a mechanical failure, an iron piece on the transmitter that Watson was guarding hit the electromagnet. The front keeps vibrating. This vibration produces a fluctuating current that propagates along the wire, causing a piece of iron in the adjacent room to vibrate in the same way.
The faint sound produced by the vibration was heard by Bell, which attracted the great attention of this young man who was good at discovery and thinking, which inspired him to generate novel associations and ideas. In June 1875, Bell and Watson used the principle of electromagnetic induction to trial-produce the world's first machine for transmitting sound, a magnetoelectric telephone, and submitted a patent application to the U.S. Patent Office on February 14, 1876.
The principle of this kind of telephone is: speaking into the microphone, the metal diaphragm at the bottom of the microphone vibrates with the sound. The vibration of the diaphragm drives a magnetic reed to vibrate accordingly, and in the electromagnetic coil An induced current is generated, and the current is transmitted to the receiving party through the wire, causing the diaphragm on the receiver to vibrate accordingly and restore the voice. However, the machine actually started working on March 10, 1876.
At that time, Bell was doing an experiment and accidentally splashed sulfuric acid on his feet. He was so painful that he couldn't help shouting into the microphone to Watson who was in another room: "Watson, come and help." Me!" Unexpectedly, this cry for help became the first voice transmitted by a telephone in the world, and Watson clearly heard Bell's voice from the receiver.
While Bell was developing the telephone, Gray invented a liquid telephone based on the same principle. And very coincidentally, on the same day that Bell filed his patent application, Gray also filed a patent application with the New York Patent Office and sold the patent invention rights to Westin Telecom, the largest telecommunications company in the United States. As a result, a lawsuit over the right to invention the telephone lasted for more than 10 years.
Later, after detailed investigation, it was found that Bell applied for the patent about two hours earlier than Gray. Based on this, the court ruled that the patent for the invention of the telephone belonged to Alexander Bell. After that, inventor King Edison also devoted himself to the improvement of telephones. In 1878, he developed a carbon microphone and obtained a patent.
His invention greatly improved the performance of telephones. To this day, most of our telephones still use carbon microphones. The original telephone body required its own battery and hand-operated generator to send out a call signal, and it could only be used for fixed calls.
Between 1880 and 1890, an "electric telephone" appeared, which could simultaneously use the power supply of the telephone exchange. This improvement greatly simplifies the structure of the telephone and is easy to use. You can make a call just by picking up the phone. The automatic telephone is based on the traditional telephone with a small dial added. From then on, people can choose the person they want to call through the switching station.
With the rapid development of electronic technology, not only the number of modern telephones has increased sharply, but the varieties and functions are also unprecedented. In addition to traditional manual telephones and automatic telephones, many special telephones have also appeared.
Such as recording phones and writing phones that can serve as "duty secretaries", TV phones that can hear sounds and images, cordless phones that are readily available, and mobile phones that can be carried with you.
In addition, there are "digital phones", "vocal mobile phones", and even "deaf phones" that enable deaf-mute people to talk have been successfully trial-produced. With the development of Internet technology, today's communication technology is far from what it was in the early days of the telephone. The telephone has become a very common communication technology.
Bell's breakthrough in the invention of the telephone was triggered by two accidental events. One was that his assistant Watson had a "mechanical failure" during the experiment. A malfunction is an unexpected obstacle. It is not something that is expected to happen in an invention. However, this accident triggered the vibration of electromagnetic waves, which prompted Bell to discover the sound emitted by this vibration wave, even if it was very weak.
The second accident happened when Bell "accidentally splashed sulfuric acid on his feet" during the experiment, which caused him to scream violently. The sound accidentally passed through Bell's mouth when he was pouring sulfuric acid into the test piece. The microphone was uploaded to Watson, an assistant who was conducting experiments in another room, and the real human telephone was officially born.
To be honest, if I told a scientist face to face that scientific inventions and creations are not based on professional knowledge, but are triggered by accidental events, he would definitely not be able to accept it. After all, in traditional logical thinking, In , professional knowledge can also be used to make some creative designs. Many technicians today rely on this traditional thinking to do design, although the efficiency is very low.
Lateral thinking is not magical thinking. It is based solely on the successful principles of scientists' inventions and creations, and designs a method that can artificially create accidents and extract concepts related to the invention goals from the concepts born by chance. Creativity, and ultimately achieve creative results that break through logic.
Don’t confuse lateral thinking with the messy and imaginary thinking concepts of Internet thinking, CEO thinking, reverse thinking and divergent thinking.
Lateral thinking is creative thinking that was born in response to the traditional logical thinking’s inherent lack of creativity. There are only two functions of lateral thinking: First, the way of looking at things and problems is three-dimensional and perspective. Second, you can create endless new ideas and overcome all difficulties!