What was the telephone first called

He answered, "You said 'Mr. Watson -- come here -- I want to see you. Watson read a few passages from a book into the mouthpiece M. It was certainly the case that articulate sounds proceeded from S. The effect was loud but indistinct and muffled. Watson's journal, however, says the famous quote was: "Mr. Watson come here I want you. In his free time, Bell experimented with sound waves and became convinced that it would be possible to transmit speech over a telegraph-like system.

In , while working on his multiple harmonic telegraph, Bell developed the basic ideas for the telephone. He designed a device to transmit speech vibrations electrically between two receivers and in June tested his invention. No intelligible words were transmitted, but sounds resembling human speech were heard at the receiving end. On February 14, , he filed a U. Just a few hours later, another American inventor, Elisha Gray, filed a caveat with the U.

Patent Office about his intent to seek a similar patent on a telephone transmitter and receiver. Bell filed first, so on March 7 he was awarded U.

Three days later, on March 10, Bell successfully tested his telephone for the first time in his Boston home. In October, he successfully tested his telephone over a two-mile distance between Boston and Cambridgeport.

Alexander Graham Bell continued his experiments in communication, inventing the photophone, which transmitted speech by light rays, and the graphophone, which recorded sound. He continued to work with the deaf, including the educator Helen Keller , and used the royalties from his inventions to finance several organizations dedicated to the oral education of the deaf. He later served as president of the National Geographic Society.

Beginning in , he experimented with the possibility of flight and built giant man-carrying kites and a hydrofoil craft. He was an impassioned champion of a strong federal government, and played a key role in defending In his 84 years, Thomas Edison acquired a record number of 1, patents singly or jointly and was the driving force behind such innovations as the phonograph, the incandescent light bulb and one of the earliest motion picture cameras.

By turns charismatic and ruthless, brilliant and power hungry, diplomatic and Serbian-American engineer and physicist Nikola Tesla made dozens of breakthroughs in the production, transmission and application of electric power. He invented the first alternating current AC motor and developed AC generation and transmission technology. In , Connecticut-born gun manufacturer Samuel Colt received a U. Colt founded a company to manufacture his revolving-cylinder pistol; however, sales were slow and the The internet got its start in the United States more than 50 years ago as a government weapon in the Cold War.

For years, scientists and Developed in the s and s by Samuel Morse and other inventors, the telegraph revolutionized long-distance communication. It worked by transmitting electrical signals over a wire laid between stations. In addition to helping invent the telegraph, Samuel Morse Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. Telephone In , Bell started working on the harmonic telegraph — a device that allowed multiple messages to be transmitted over a wire at the same time.

Recommended for you. Both Bell and Hubbard knew that another inventor, Elisha Gray, was also working on telephony. Hubbard urged Bell to patent the principle of speech transmission as soon as possible, thereby gaining exclusive rights to its development.

This raised the suspicion that he had been given sight of this document in the Washington office. He always denied it. On 7 March , Bell was granted US patent A , for a method of transmitting speech by telegraphy—the telephone. On 10 March , three days after the publication of his patent, Alexander Graham Bell made history with a peremptory instruction to his assistant Thomas Watson:.

Crackly and indistinct, but intelligible, the words were the first to be spoken over the telephone. Along the way he successfully fought off hundreds of challenges to his patent. Others, including the American inventor Thomas Edison and the Welsh-born physicist David Hughes, developed improved microphones that made it easier to hear what was being said. Telephones spread rapidly from offices into homes.

Within months Bell could demonstrate conversations not over a few yards but over a few miles, between Boston, Massachusetts and the suburb of Somerville. He has gone down in history as the inventor of a device that is now ubiquitous and indispensable—but we might never know the extent to which his personal circumstances influenced his success. The novelty of being able to speak to someone many miles away was soon transformed into an expectation of hour, instant voice communication anywhere in the world.

As well as Bell, Italian inventor Antonio Meucci has a claim to the invention of the telephone, having managed to demonstrate electromagnetic transmission of his voice in Still, in Italy, Meucci is credited as the official inventor of the telephone.