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The Invention of the Telephone
Author: . Co-editor.
Writer Bruce Sterling said, Technology has a life cycle, just like cities, just like institutions, just like law and government.
The first stage of any technology can be called the "question mark period". At this stage, technology is just a ray of light in the inventor's eye. There was one such inventor named Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922).
Although Bell's early inventions were not lacking in ingenuity, they failed to shock the world. In 1863, the teenage Bell and his brother Melville made an artificial talking machine out of wood, rubber and other materials. This strange device has a "tongue" made of wood chips, "vocal cords" made of rubber, "lips" and "cheeks". Melville used a hair dryer to send wind into a tin tube
to imitate the movement of the lungs, while Bell manipulated the mouth, tongue and other organs to make them emit a series of sharp sounds
An incomprehensible voice.
Another invention was the "voicegrapher," which was made from real ears (dead ones, of course). Place it on a tripod and draw a sound wave pattern on the blackened glass through a straw glued to the ear bone.
By 1875, Bell had learned to use magnets, diaphragms and electric current to produce sound.
Most technological inventions reach a dead end, but if this is not the case, the second stage of technology begins, which is
the "rising period". On March 8, 1876, one of Bell's most ambitious inventions, the telephone, entered this stage. On this day, Bell became the first great inventor in the world to use electric current to transmit a recognizable human voice.
Technology at this stage often does not work well. The prototype may be novel, attractive, and appear to be of great use, but no one, including the inventor, understands its promise. People will have this or that expectation about the potential utility of technology, but these expectations are often wrong.
Bell's initial consideration of the telephone was to use it as a mass medium. The telephone acted as a sending center from which music, sermons from pastors, important speeches, etc., would be broadcast, and the recipients would be a group of paying subscribers.
At that time, many people believed that Bell’s idea was tenable. In fact, the telephone was actually used in this way. There has been practice in this regard in Hungary
Gary. From 1893 until after World War I, there was a government-operated telephone service in Budapest that provided a variety of news and entertainment programs, such as stock market quotes, dramas, concerts, etc. At a certain time of the day, the phone in the user's home will ring. At this time, just connect the loudspeaker and the whole family can sit around and "listen to the phone."
This service has disappeared today, but it can be considered a precursor to modern dial-up computer services. Its principle is not far from the electronic bulletin board system (BBS, bulletin board system). The electronic bulletin board system did not appear in the United States in the 1970s.
It quickly became very popular, and you will read a lot about it in this book.
The development of the telephone into what it is today is inseparable from the simultaneous action of a series of factors, including political decision-making, legal judgments, industrial promotion, National conditions and people's conditions, and even opportunities and luck.
When Bell and his supporters promoted new inventions in 19th-century New England, they had to contend with skepticism and industrial competition.
At that time, the United States already had a powerful electronic communication network, the telegraph network. At that time, the telegraph giant Western Union believed that Bell's invention was nothing more than an "electronic toy" and refused to purchase the patent for its use. In its view, the phone is only a so-so entertainment tool in the living room, but it cannot become a business climate at all.
An internal memo from the Western Union Telegraph Company said: "The telephone has too many shortcomings to be taken seriously as a
communication tool. This device, from Fundamentally, it is of no value to us." It soon paid the price for its shortsightedness.
The telegraph is different from the telephone in that the former can leave a permanent record of the message delivered. It can reply when the recipient is available and
convenient. It was able to cover a huge range compared to earlier telephones. These factors made the telegraph a seemingly more efficient business technology—at least in the eyes of those at Western Union.
In 1876, the United States had built 214,000 miles of telegraph lines and 8,500 telegraph offices. There are also many dedicated lines installed for business
users and stock traders, government, police and fire departments. The telegraph system seemed to have achieved an unshakable status. But Bell's things are just "toys".
The third stage of technological development can be called the "harvest period". In this stage, the technology establishes its position and transforms from laboratory results into mature things. , and start to generate benefits.
Bell and his investors discovered a year later that using the telephone as a "music box" was not the best use of the invention. Rather
use it as a personalized communication tool that transmits human conversations in real time. The phone will no longer be controlled by any broadcast center; it will become a personal technology.
When you pick up the phone, you are not receiving some cold machine output, but you are having a conversation with another person.
Once people realized the magic of this thing, the idea of ??the phone as a toy disappeared immediately. When the phone rings,
it is not a machine calling you, but usually a person you know is calling you. It's not the machine that does things for you, it's you
that do things through the machine. This shift in consciousness for the young Bell Company was unusually critical.
The first telephone network was established around Boston, and most of its users were wealthy people and people interested in technology.
(More than a hundred years later, a group of people with the same attributes began to pioneer the use of personal computers.) However, supporters of the telegraph still scorned the telephone.
But a disaster in 1878 changed people's view of the telephone. When a train crashed in Triveville, Connecticut, visionary doctors in nearby Hartford happened to install a telephone. All local doctors mobilized themselves by phone
rushed to the scene to rescue the wounded