Phone History
England. The beginning of the last century. Outstanding inventor George Stephenson is testing the first locomotive. Slowly, a locomotive moves along the rails, and a man steps in front of him. No, he does not examine the path so that the accident does not happen. This is a boxer, and his task is to protect the locomotive from the peasants who gathered to smash the "monster" into pieces. The hatred for the novelty was raised by various medical societies that frightened the newspapers with the fact that the locomotive would poison the air with its breath and the birds would fall dead on the fly, and passengers would inevitably be poisoned by gas when passing a train through the tunnel.
Transmission and reception of sound on wires.
This story is very revealing. Such is the fate of many ingenious inventions - they literally "fists" made their way to people through the walls of ignorance, disbelief and ridicule. Did not escape this fate and the phone.
"All intelligent people, of course, know that it is absolutely impossible to transfer a human voice over distance by wire, and even if it were possible, it would be completely useless" - as one American newspaper wrote in 1895.But fortunately, there were two "unreasonable" people - the physicist E. Gray and the teacher of the deaf-mute school A. Bell, who on February 14, 1876 independently submitted applications for the devices they invented to transmit sounds for a distance with the help of electricity. True, Bell brought his application two hours before Gray, and therefore the primacy in the invention belongs to him.
How did Bell invent his device? In 1873-1876, he considered three ideas at once: a phonograph, a multichannel telegraph and a telephone. With the help of a phonograph autograph, which makes it possible to make sounds visible, Bell hoped to facilitate the training of deaf-mutes. He did not succeed, but became interested in the new question: is it possible to create sound with the help of a membrane? The work on the multichannel telegraph helped in turn to understand how the signals are transmitted over the wires. Bell was coming closer to creating a "talking telegraph".True, he lacked knowledge of electrical engineering - had to urgently study the basics of a new science. As a result, in early 1876, a telephone apparatus appeared. Was he first, or did he have any predecessors?
There were. Here are just some of them. During the excavation of one of the palaces in Peru, archaeologists discovered two pumpkin vessels connected by a string. The scientists came to the conclusion that this is one of the ancestors of the phone( the idea is alive and now - which of us did not suit the "phone" of matchboxes connected by a thread in childhood)? The age of the pumpkin intercom is about a thousand years old.
Office telephone set. The end of XIX century.
Masters in acoustics were known and the ancient Incas. With the help of special pipes laid in the walls of the palace, the lord, sitting on the throne, gave orders throughout the palace and talked with his wife, who was six floors below.
Wall-mounted telephone set. The end of XIX century.
Wireless "telephones" - narrow channels in the walls - some buildings of medieval Pskov were equipped. Apparently, in the Postnikov Chambers( XVII century), the gatekeeper sent up messages about the arrival of guests and received orders from the owners. But all this, of course, is nothing more than primitive ancestors of the phone.
For more than 10 years before Bell received a patent for his invention, a telephone conversation had already taken place using a rather complicated device. And this conversation looked something like this."The horses do not burst a cucumber salad," Phillip Reis shouted into the socket of his intricate apparatus."This I know without you, an old ass!" - answered the voice of his friend, who spoke in the same apparatus, but in another room. This happened in 1860.The creator of the "device for voice transmission over distance" is the German teacher Reis. His apparatus was far from perfect. He gave a satisfactory tone, but distorted the timbre of the voice. The inventor himself did not realize the importance of his discovery.
The phone, created by Bell, did not resemble the modern device, but the principles of his work have survived to this day, and Bell is rightfully considered the "father" of the phone. The caring "parent" promptly introduced his offspring into life. January 25, 1878, the company founded by him opened the world's first telephone exchange in America. If the subscriber of this station wanted to communicate with someone, the telephone operator - as a rule, young people( telephone girls appeared later) - answered the call and made a connection using a special plug. From that time the phone began to conquer the world.
The residents of Berlin, at the end of the last century, liked the post office on the street Unter den Linden or on the Leipziger-Platz square most of all. Here there were the first in the city automatic phones. At that time, the city network had 48 subscribers. But those who did not have more phones, also wanted to talk, and many families of the Berliners were divided: some went to the post office, others went to the square. And they talked to each other. Especially since the first pay phones were free.
In Moscow in 1882, a telephone communication with the Bolshoi Theater was opened. In Leontief Lane in a large hall, 12 telephones were installed, and microphones were placed on both sides of the theater stage. It was possible to buy a ticket for a 10-minute session, and "... after both phones are attached to the ears, there is an indistinct buzzing, but then all the sounds differ very clearly, only softened by the distance," wrote the newspaper Moskovskie Vedomosti"."Telephony" did not leave indifferent even the Vatican. The telephone station appeared in the palace chambers at the personal instruction of Pope Leo XIII.In the library with its help internal offices were maintained, where books and important documents were stored.
The first copies of the phones did not differ either in particular elegance or ease of use. Audibility was so bad that they came up with special tubes, in which it was necessary to thrust even the nose - the spectacle from the side was very amusing. In general, the tubes were very different - they were made separate( some - in order to speak in them, others - to listen), they were like modern, combining a microphone and earpiece. And the apparatus itself was supplied with shiny chrome-plated cups of bells, faced with mahogany, and sometimes the body was a real work of the foundry master. In short, designers did not suffer from a lack of imagination. However, not every family could afford to install the device. At the dawn of "telephonization", few could use this expensive form of communication.
Now in the world there are more than 500 million phones, and, of course, their capabilities are much wider than those of the first devices. It has long been not a novelty phone with a digital dialer( do not wait for a reverse turn of the disk).Many other innovations. When the called number is busy, the device will "remember" it and connect you with the subscriber when the number is vacated. But if they can not get through to you - he will delicately let you know about this with a slight click on the tube.
Aerial telephone wires. Philadelphia. The end of XIX century.
There are telephones without wires. Voice transmission is carried out with the help of infrared rays to a special device placed on the wall. So you can freely move about the room without thinking about the wire. A special device has also been developed( it connects to the phone), allowing owners to hear what is happening in the apartment, which they left for a long time. Can you imagine what convenience for parents who left their children at home alone? And for children?
In remote areas where there is no regular telephone service, the situation is as follows. The talk phone is equipped with a solar battery that provides power to the radiotelephone and charges the batteries in case the sun disappears behind the clouds. With the help of a similar phone, only portable, climbers talk with comrades who stopped at the foot of the mountain.
In a number of countries you can talk on the phone with a subscriber of any city during a flight on a passenger plane. The phone is even made for the deaf - a "combo".It looks like a TV, words appear on the left side of the screen, and on the right, the transmitter, you can write text. The first lines of color video-tape communication operate.
There is a phone with a sliding mirror( specially for women secretaries), telephones-calendars and watch phones, "anti-influenza" phones, the tubes of which are equipped with a special sterilizing device.
We are used to picking up the phone, you can find out the time, call a doctor or order tickets for a train or plane, but there are a lot of other services that not everyone knows about. For example, you can get information about the work of all types of transport and communications, the location of streets, decisions and decisions of local authorities and much more. Such information services exist in many countries of the world. What do not you know by dialing the number you need? In Vienna, "children's phone" has been working for many years. On weekdays from 9 am to 6 pm any child can ask a question and get an answer or advice. Most often asked to help solve the school problem, there are also complaints about the parents with whom the service employees can hold a "conversation".
In Tokyo, by phone, they learn about the state of freeways, the number of cars on the roads, receive recipes for cooking, and anglers - information where they bite better. In some cities in Brazil, you laugh at the taped witty joke, and in Los Angeles, dialing the number, you will hear a terrible attack of cough caused by long-term smoking - this is especially for those who want to give up the bad habit.
Phone has long attracted all sorts of jokers. How to call Julia Caesar? The answer to this question is known to residents of the West German city of Filingen. It is necessary to open the telephone directory and read: "Julius Caesar, profession - tyrant, phone: 8-45-36".If someone connects to this number, then the joke of the one who introduced the "certificate"( besides for a fee) was quite successful. The employees of the telephone network also joke. So, on the birthday of the Italian minister of post office attendant Palermo, serving long-distance lines, handed him the "Golden Book".In it, in alphabetical order, there are nicknames, which subscribers called telephone operators for six months. There were 2804 of them!
Unfortunately, phone jokes are not always harmless. The most common "joke" of young and old age fools around the world is the call of firefighters. In the United States, this has been blocked. After a wave of false calls paralyzed the work of the fire department of one of the cities, a new telephone booth was invented. If someone enters it and dials a fire brigade number, the door opens only after 5 minutes - quite enough for the police.
In June 1876, the St. Petersburg newspaper "Slovo" wrote: "The phone will rightfully take the most honorable place among the most useful inventions of this century. But so far the benefit brought by the phone is negligible. In hotels and rich houses phones are used to call servants and give orders to her, in some offices - for talks between the boss and the subordinates. "
A little more than 100 years have passed, and the newspaper's predictions were fully justified. The phone has become a necessary helper for all of us. It gives a huge saving of time and money. And it is impossible to express in figures the benefit brought by the lightning-fast call on the phone of the doctor in case of an accident or fire team in case of fire. ..
Do you know?
When did the word "allo" come up, from which almost every phone conversation begins?
It turns out that this word that was related to the phone was born much earlier than it. In 1803-1806 in St. Petersburg was published "New word-translator", where the word "allo" is said: "Marine speech, used on the ship, and means: listen. This word is shouted into a shout at the ship, with whom they want to talk, so that they listened to it clearly. .. "