1 83210 June1day, a cruise ship named "Sally" sailed from le havre port in northern France to new york, USA. On the way, the cruise ship encountered a storm. Many people get sick because of seasickness, but they can't get in touch with the shore. Morse, a famous American painting professor, was also on board. He vomited repeatedly and felt extremely uncomfortable. Because of this trip, Morse, 4 1 year-old, decided to give up his successful painting career and study and invent a method of sending letters by electricity-telegraph.
Morse embarked on the rugged road of scientific invention. Having no knowledge of electricity, he is eager to study. When he met a problem he didn't understand, he asked the electrician for advice. He turned the studio into an electrical laboratory, with easels, brushes and plaster statues piled up in the corner, making wires, batteries and lights the "protagonists" of the room. A few years later, Morse finally mastered the knowledge of electricity, but he had exhausted all his savings and lived in poverty. In a letter to a friend, he said, "I am overwhelmed by life!" My stockings are broken and my hat is out of date. "
In order to make a living, Morse had to return to his old job and become a professor of art and design at 1836 new york University. However, he was still obsessed with researching and inventing the telegraph. In his spare time, he continued his research work of inventing the telegraph.
"What symbols should be used instead of 26 English letters?" Morse thought hard. He thinks that scientists before him often designed extremely complicated devices to express 26 letters, and the result was failure again and again. He realized that it was necessary to simplify the information transmission method of 26 letters, so that the structure of the telegraph would be simple. So Morse drew many symbols again and again: points, lines, long lines, short lines, curves, squares, triangles and so on. Finally, he decided to use "dot, horizontal line and blank" to undertake the information transmission task of the transmitter. He designed representative symbols for each English letter and Arabic numeral. These symbols consist of different dots, horizontal lines and spaces. This is the earliest code in the history of telecommunications, and later people called it "Morse Code".
With the code, Morse immediately set out to develop the telegraph. In extreme poverty, he successfully developed a transmitter on September 4, 1837. Its device is very simple, consisting of an electric key and a set of batteries. Press this key and the current will flow. The length and length of pressing indicate different signals. After that, Morse constantly improved the transmitter.
1844 In March, Morse was going to build a line about 64 kilometers long between Washington and Baltimore. To this end, he asked the US Congress to subsidize 30,000 US dollars for the experiment. After a heated debate, Congress finally passed a bill to fund the Morse experiment.
1844 On May 24th, the experiment of sending and receiving telegrams was conducted in the conference hall of the Federal Supreme Court of the Capitol in Washington. Morse, who was over half a century old, sent the first telegram in human history to Baltimore with great excitement at the appointed time. His assistant immediately received a telegram with only one sentence: "What a miracle God has created!" " Afterwards, Morse explained: "When an invention finally comes out of fantasy and becomes a living reality, nothing is more appropriate than this pious sigh."
Morse is both a painter and a self-taught scientist. He opened a new page in the history of human telecommunications with his great pioneering work of inventing telegraph.
2. The invention of the telephone
The invention of the telephone is not the credit of anyone, but the result of the joint efforts of a large number of scholars. As early as 1876, many scientists have explained this communication method in theory. But historically, it is generally believed that the first telephone was put into use in the United States in 1876, and the invention right of the telephone should belong to alexander bell in the United States. However, this great invention was inspired by an accidental accident.
187 1 year, Bell returned to the United States from Scotland and became a professor of sound physiology at Boston University. Bell's father is a famous linguist and the inventor of sign language for the deaf. Bell's wife used to be his student, a deaf girl. In addition to studying acoustics and teaching sign language, Bell also devoted himself to developing multiplex telegraph systems. /kloc-one day in 0/875, Bell and his assistant Watson collaborated in the experiment in two rooms. Because of mechanical failure, an iron piece on the transmitter under Watson's care kept vibrating in front of the electromagnet. This vibration causes the fluctuating current to propagate along the conductor, which causes a piece of iron in the adjacent room to vibrate in the same way. The faint sound of vibration was heard by Bell, which aroused the great concern of this young man who is good at discovering and thinking, and inspired him to produce novel associations and ideas. 1875 In June, Bell and Watson developed the world's first sound transmission machine-magnetoelectric telephone, and submitted a patent application to the US Patent Office in February 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, and the vibration of the diaphragm drives a magnetic spring to vibrate accordingly, so that an induced current is generated in the electromagnetic coil, and the current is transmitted to the receiver through the wire, and the diaphragm on the receiver vibrates accordingly, and the sound is restored.
However, the machine really started working on 1876, and in March 10. Bell was doing an experiment and accidentally spilled sulfuric acid on his feet. He couldn't help shouting into the microphone at Watson in the other room, "Watson, come and help me!" " "Unexpectedly, this cry for help became the first voice transmitted by telephone in the world, and Watson clearly heard Bell's voice from the receiver.
Bell invented the telephone, and Gray invented the liquid telephone with the same principle. Coincidentally, on the same day Bell filed a patent application, Gray also filed a patent application with the new york Patent Office and resold the patent invention right to Westinghouse Telecom, the largest company in the United States. As a result, a long-running lawsuit on the right to telephone invention lasted for 10 years. Later, after detailed investigation, it was found that Bell applied for a patent in Bigret about two hours in advance, and the court ruled that the telephone invention patent belonged to alexander bell.
Since then, the great inventor Edison has also devoted himself to the improvement of the telephone. 1878, he developed a carbon microphone and obtained a patent. His invention greatly improved the performance of the telephone. Until today, most of our phones still use carbon microphones. The original telephone body should have its own battery and hand-cranked generator to send out call signals, which can only be used for fixed calls. From 1880 to 1890, a kind of "* * * telephone" appeared, which can use the power supply of the telephone office together. This improvement greatly simplifies the telephone structure and is convenient to use. Pick up the phone and you can make a phone call. Automatic telephone is a small dial telephone based on * * * telephone. From then on, people can call anyone through exchange.
With the rapid development of electronic technology, not only the number of modern telephones has surged, but also the varieties and functions are not the same as before. In addition to the traditional manual telephone and automatic telephone, there are many special telephones. If you can act as a "secretary on duty", you can make a recording phone and writing phone, an instant hearing TV phone, a convenient cordless phone and a portable mobile phone. In addition, there are "digital phones", "oral mobile phones", and even "deaf mobile phones" that can make deaf people talk have been successfully trial-produced.