On page 75 of the third grade of History and Society, it is mentioned that "American Bell invented the telephone, which fundamentally changed the way of human communication." As for the inventor of the telephone, textbooks still follow the traditional saying because of the writing time, and attribute the invention right of the telephone to Bell. However, there is a dispute about the real inventor of the telephone in history, involving three related figures:
1876 On the eve of Bell's 30th birthday, the idea of transmitting sound through wires was unexpectedly patented. Bell rekindled his enthusiasm for research. On March10,0876, Bell's telephone announced the arrival of a new era in human history.
However, Bell was not the only one who devoted himself to the invention of the telephone. A man named Elisha Gray once started a legal lawsuit with Bell about the patent right of telephone. Gray and Bell filed the patent on the same day, but Bibel was a little late (only about 2 hours late) and finally lost the case.
In fact, regarding the invention of the telephone, we should also think of another unknown Italian, antonio meucci meucci, who immigrated to the United States in 1845 and was obsessed with electrophysiological research. He happened to find that radio waves can spread sound. From 1850 to 1862, meucci has made several different forms of sound instruments, which are called "long-distance microphones". Unfortunately, meucci is too poor to protect his invention. At that time, he had to pay an application fee of $250 to apply for a patent, but the long-term research work had exhausted all his savings. Meucci's English level is not high, which makes him unable to know how to protect his invention. Later, fate dealt a greater blow to meucci. 1938+0870, meucci was seriously ill. I have to sell the telephone equipment I invented at a low price of only $6. In order to protect my invention, meucci tried to obtain a document called "Request for Protection of Invention Patent". To do this, he has to pay a fee of $65,438+00 every year, which needs to be updated once a year. Three years later, meucci was reduced to living on social welfare, unable to pay the handling fee, and his request was invalid.
1874, meucci sent several "long-distance microphones" to the American Western Union Telegraph Company, hoping to sell this invention to them. However, he didn't get the answer. When he asked to return the original, he was told that these machines were gone! Two years later, Bell's invention came out and he signed a huge contract with Western Union Telegraph Company. Meucci filed a lawsuit against him, and the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. But 1889 meucci died and the lawsuit was dropped.
Until June 15, 2002, the US Congress passed a bill, which identified antonio meucci as the inventor of the telephone. Now there is a monument in Florence, the birthplace of meucci, which reads "Here lies the inventor of the telephone-antonio meucci".
At present, the recognized inventor of the telephone is Bell. On February 1876, he applied for a telephone patent in the United States patent office. In fact, just two hours after he applied, a man named E Gray also applied for a telephone patent.
Before the two of them, many people in Europe were already thinking and studying this issue. As early as 1854, the telephone principle was conceived by the Frenchman Bausal, and six years later, the German Rice repeated the idea. The principle is that two thin metal sheets are connected by wires. When one party makes a sound, the metal plate vibrates, converts it into electric energy and transmits it to the other party. But this is just an idea. The problem is the microphone.
At first, Bell used electromagnetic switches to form on-off pulse signals, but this method obviously didn't work for such high-frequency sound waves. The final success came from an accidental discovery. 1June 2, 875, in an experiment, he connected the electromagnetic switch with a metal plate. Unexpectedly, in this state, the sound becomes a wonderful current. The analysis principle was originally the vibration of metal sheet caused by sound. A current is induced in the connected electromagnetic switch coil. Now it seems that this principle is known to all students who have studied junior high school physics, but it is undoubtedly a very important discovery for Bell at that time.
Gray's design principle is different from Bell's, which uses the resistance change of the liquid inside the microphone, while the receiver is exactly the same as Bell's. 1977, Edison obtained the patent of carbon particle microphone. At the same time, many people have made various improvements to the way the telephone works. The patent dispute is complicated, and it didn't come to an end until 1892. This situation is one of them. At that time, the largest United Western Telegraph Company in the United States bought the patents of Gray and Edison against Bell's telephone company. As a result of a long-term patent dispute, the two sides reached an agreement that United Western Telegraph Company fully recognized Bell's patent right and stopped setting foot in the telephone industry, in exchange for sharing Bell's 20% income within 17 years.