- Home
- Courses
- Media Technologies
- Media Technologies: Telephone
- Invention of telephone
- improvement to the existing telegraph
- vocal sounds over electrical current
- simultaneously discovered
- coincidentally patented February 14, 1876
- Alexander Graham Bell
- teacher of deaf students
- professor of elocution
- wife and mother were deaf
- developed telephone to amplify voice
- worked on a harmonic telegraph
- “phonautograph”
- sound waves
- electrical currents
- Elisha Gray
- started Western Electric, 1865
- simultaneous discovery of telephone
- filed patent caveat on same day as Bell filed patent
- Patent Battle
- common in the 19th century
- February 14, 1876
- liquid transmitter
- Bell’s patent application
- Gray’s patent caveat
- Patent granted to Bell, March 7, 1876
- March 10, 1876
- Philadelphia Exposition
- Centennial exposition
- 1876
- Bell publicly introduced the telephone telephone
- “My God, it talks”
- telephone became a popular hit of the exposition
- Commercial Application
- doctors and merchants
- rented, not sold telephones
- social tool as expressed in slogans
- Telephone Apparatus
- single megaphone
- transmitter
- receiver
- improved by Emile Berliner’s microphone
- unlike the telegraph, telephone entered the home
- Telephone Switching
- switchboard
- women operators replaced messenger boys
- telephone numbers
- automatic dialing
- public branch exchange (PBX)
- local area networks (LAN)
- Western Union
- rebuffed Bell’s $100,000 offer
- later seen as short-sighted
- enabled Kronos effect
- established own competing service
- sued by Bell for patent infringement
- lost to Bell and exited telephone business
- Growth of Bell Telephone
- National Bell
- American Bell
- American Telephone and Telegraph
- Growth of AT&T
- Bell Telephone
- local exchanges
- bought competing services
- established long-distance network
- expanded AT&T owned network
- Western Electric
- phone manufacturing
- launched by Elisha Gray, 1865
- supplied electrical equipment to Western Union
- sold to Western Union, 1875
- acquired by AT&T, 1881
- Bell Laboratories
- founded 1925
- research and development
- originated some of the biggest innovations of the 20th century
- radio astronomy
- transistor
- laser
- charge-coupled device (CCD)
- Unix operating system
- C, C++, and S programming languages
- AT&T the Monopoly
- Theodore Vail
- “One Policy, One System, Universal Service” (1907)
- Kingsbury Commitment (1913)
- anti-trust exemption
- natural monopoly
- universal service
- closed network
- Universal Service
- standardize service
- party lines
- black telephones
- Long Distance Communication
- Lee de Forest, Western Electric, 1906
- audion triode vacuum tube
- light bulb
- Fleming valve
- amplified electrical signals
- making long-distance voice transmissions practical
- AT&T Expands Long Distance
- 1915: transcontinental line, New York to San Francisco
- 1918: transoceanic line
- 1927: Radiotelephony, New York to London
- 1947: replaced vacuum tubes with transistors
- 1956: transatlantic cable, high speed data
- 1989: transpacific fiber optic cable, California to Japan
- Telstar
- communication satellite
- continental and oceanic footprint
- connecting North America with Europe
- launched 1962
- used for telephone, radio, and television
- Opening of AT&T Network
- Hush-a-Phone (1956)
- introduced 1922
- acoustic aid for privacy and hearing
- AT&T declared an unauthorized “foreign attachment,” 1948
- FCC agreed, 1955
- US Court of Appeals overruled FCC, 1956
- Carterphone (1968)
- two-way radio transmitter
- acoustically connected to the telephone
- allowed receiving of calls away from the phone
- FCC allowed devices to connect to AT&T’s telephone network, 1968
- paved way for answering machines and fax machines
- Breakup of AT&T (1984)
- “natural monopoly” since 1913
- local telephone
- long-distance
- broken up in 1984
- seven “Baby Bells”
- AT&T retained long-distance market
- new long-distance competitors
- Effects of AT&T Breakup
- New Hardware
- Fax machines
- Answer machines
- Touchtone telephones
- Modems
- Long Distance Competition
- Analog
- a form of the original source
- an analogy of the original
- human voice
- electrical current
- signal is proportional to the source
- Digital
- a form of computer code
- digital representation of an electrical signal
- original source
- electrical current
- digital signal is binary code
- Telephone 2.0
- convergence of media
- mobile telephone is the primary screen
- voice communication
- information services
- streaming audio and video
- The Cycle
- Described by Tim Wu
- Media Technologies, mentioned in The Master Switch
- invention
- disruption
- consolidation
- division
- reorganization
- Telecommunications Act 1996
- Replaced Federal Communications Act
- consolidated telecommunications industries
- local telephone
- long distance telephone
- multichannel video
- wireless telephone
- Reorganization
- Baby Bells grew after TCA96
- Three major companies
- Verizon
- Qwest
- AT&T, formerly Southwest Bell
- Reach expanded to wireless (mobile) telephone