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HISTORY OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS

1667
1667

Acoustic String Telephone

Acoustic String Telephone

Around 1664, British physicist Robert Hooke experimented with sound transmission over a taut wire or string. An acoustic string telephone is attributed to him as early as 1667.

1800
1800

Voltaic Pile

Voltaic Pile

In 1800, Count Alessandro Volta invented the first true battery, which came to be known as the voltaic pile. The voltaic pile consisted of pairs of copper and zinc discs piled on top of each other, separated by a layer of cloth or cardboard soaked in brine.

1831
1831

Faraday and Henry

Faraday and Henry

Michael Faraday and Joseph Henry developed many inventions in the field of electromagnetism, enabling future development of electronic communication.

1837
1837

Telegraph & Morse Code

Telegraph & Morse Code

In the late 1830’s Samuel B. Morse develops a method of transmitting a pattern of sounds by pressing down and releasing a button forming letters and words. This became known as Morse Code.

1844
1844

Innocenzo Manzetti

Innocenzo Manzetti

In 1843-44, Italian inventor Innocenzo Manzetti first suggests the idea of a speaking telegraph (or telephone). Later, He is said to have used the speaking telegraph to give one of his other inventions, an automaton, the power of speech.

1856
1856

Anthony Meucci

Anthony Meucci

In 1856, Italian inventor Anthony Meucci developed a form of electromagnetic telephone to communicate from his laboratory to a bedroom in his house. He is often credited with inventing the telephone before Alexander Graham Bell.

1858
1858

First Transatlantic Cable

First Transatlantic Cable

After several setbacks, Cyrus Field lays the first transatlantic telegraph cable, connecting England and the United States. It lasted only a few weeks before is stopped functioning.

1861
1861

The Horse Does Not Eat Cucumber Salad

The Horse Does Not Eat Cucumber Salad

Johann Reis transfers voice electrically over a distance of 340 feet with his Reis telephone, using the phrase “The horse does not eat cucumber salad” as an example to prove that speech can be recognized at the receiving end because this phrase is hard to understand acoustically in German.

1862
1862

First Practical Fax Machine

First Practical Fax Machine

The pantelegraph was an early form of facsimile machine transmitting over normal telegraph lines developed by Italian priest Giovanni Caselli. It could transmit handwriting, signatures, or drawings. The first “pantelegram” was sent from Lyons to Paris on 10 February 1862.

1876
1876

Elisha Gray

Elisha Gray

Elisha Gray filed a patent caveat on Feb 14, 1876 for a liquid transmitter used in a telephone, but the patent was ultimately awarded to Alexander Graham Bell.

1876

Alexander Graham Bell

Alexander Graham Bell

On the backs of other inventors, Alexander Graham Bell is awarded a patent for his telephone device.

1876

Mr. Watson, Come Here. I Want To See You!

Mr. Watson, Come Here. I Want To See You!

Bell first successfully transmits speech, saying “Mr. Watson, come here! I want to see you!”

1876

First One-Way Long Distance Call

First One-Way Long Distance Call

Alexander Graham Bell makes the world’s first long-distance one-way telephone call over a distance of about 6 miles, between Brantford and Paris, Ontario, Canada.

1877
1877

First Two-Way Long Distance Call

First Two-Way Long Distance Call

On February 12, 1877, Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant Mr. Watson demonstrated the first two-way long distance telephone call between the Lyceum in Salem to the Boston Globe in Boston.

1877

Bell Telephone Company

Bell Telephone Company

The Bell Telephone Company is organized by Alexander Graham Bell’s future father-in-law Gardiner Greene Hubbard, who becomes its first president.

1877

First Experimental Telephone Exchange

First Experimental Telephone Exchange

The first experimental telephone exchange was based on the ideas of Tividar Puskás, and it was built by the Bell Telephone Company in Boston in 1877. He would go on to improve upon his invention, developing the multiplex switchboard.

1880
1880

Bell’s Photophone

Bell’s Photophone

On June 3, 1880 Alexander Graham Bell succeeded in transmitting a wireless voice telephone message using his photophone, an invention that allowed transmission of speech on a beam of light (the precursor to both fiber optic and wireless communications).

1884
1884

Paul Nipkow

Paul Nipkow

German technician and inventor Paul Nipkow managed to transmit static image with 18 horizontal lines of resolution. His “Electric Telescope” quickly became the basis of many future mechanical television designs.

1891
1891

Almon Strowger

Almon Strowger

Almon Strowger patents the Strowger switch – the first automatic telephone exchange.

1897
1897

Cathode Ray Tube

Cathode Ray Tube

Karl Ferdinand Braun, a German physicist, invents the “Braun tube”, or Cathode Ray Tube, which would become the cornerstone of television development. Braun was the first to conceive the use of a CRT as a display device.

1900
1900

New Word: Television

New Word: Television

The word “Television” was coined during the first International Congress of Electricity at the World’s Fair in Paris by Russian scientist Constantin Perskyi in a paper read on August 24, 1900. Perskyi’s paper reviewed the existing electromechanical technologies, mentioning the work of Nipkow and others.

1907
1907

Manti Telephone Company Formed

Manti Telephone Company Formed

Manti Telephone Company was formed in 1907 by a group of business men who saw the potential that telephone service could bring to the area. The first Board of Directors consisted of A.H. Christensen, A.O. Anderson, Stanley Crawford, Quince Crawford, and E.D. Sorensen

1907

Boris Rosing

Boris Rosing

Boris Rosing managed to improve upon Nipkow’s “Electric Telescope” and produced the first fully working mechanical TV system, using a photocell detector and a CRT display. He filed a patent for his invention on July 25, 1907.

1915
1915

First Transcontinental Telephone Call

First Transcontinental Telephone Call

First transcontinental telephone call (3600 miles), with Thomas Augustus Watson at 333 Grant Avenue in San Francisco receiving a call from Alexander Graham Bell at 15 Dey Street in New York City is made.

1919
1919

Rotary Dial

Rotary Dial

The first rotary dial telephones in the Bell System installed in Norfolk, Virginia.

1919

How Big Is Your Head?

How Big Is Your Head?

AT&T conducts more than 4,000 measurements of people’s heads to gauge the best dimensions of standard headsets so that callers’ lips would be near the microphone when holding handsets up to their ears.

1923
1923

Vladimir Zworykin

Vladimir Zworykin

Russian Vladimir Zworykin patents his TV camera tube system which would later become a cornerstone of future TV technology.

1927
1927

First Transatlantic Telephone Call

First Transatlantic Telephone Call

On January 7, 1927, the first official transatlantic telephone call is made when W. S. Gifford, president of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company, calls Sir Evelyn P. Murray, secretary of the General Post Office of Great Britain, on the new commercial circuit.

1927

Videophone

Videophone

The world’s first videophone call is made from Washington, D.C. to New York City, by Herbert Hoover.

1927

“There you are – electronic television!”

“There you are – electronic television!”

On September 7, 1927, Philo T. Farnsworth’s image dissector transmitted its first image, a simple straight line, to a receiver in another room of his laboratory in San Francisco. Pem Farnsworth recalled in 1985 that her husband broke the stunned silence of his lab assistants by saying, “There you are – electronic television!”

1946
1946

Area Codes

Area Codes

The National Numbering Plan is introduced, breaking the country up into area codes for the first time.

1963
1963

Touch-Tone

Touch-Tone

AT&T commences the first subscriber Touch-Tone service in the towns of Carnegie and Greensburg, Pennsylvania, using push-button telephones that eventually replace rotary dial phones.

1964
1964

Fiber Optic Communication

Fiber Optic Communication

Charles Kao and George Hockham publish a paper proving that fiber-optic communication was possible.

1965
1965

Space…A New Frontier

Space…A New Frontier

Intelsat I was the first commercial communications satellite to be placed in geosynchronous orbit, on April 6, 1965.

1970
1970

Modularity

Modularity

Modular telephone cords and jacks are introduced, making it easier to install and move phones. Prior to modular jacks, phone were either direct-wired or used a square 4-prong plug.

1976
1976

Caller ID

Caller ID

In 1971, Theodore Paraskevakos invents a way to transmit electronic data through telephone lines, which forms the original basis for what is now known as caller ID. In May 1985, Kazuo Hashimoto invents a display device to receive Caller ID information. Caller ID is implemented nationally in the United States by 1995.

1983
1983

The End of an Era

The End of an Era

The last manually operated telephone switchboard is retired in Bryant Pond, Maine. Susan Glines (not pictured) became the last switchboard operator for a hand-crank phone when that exchange was converted.

1984
1984

Ma Bell and the Baby Bells

Ma Bell and the Baby Bells

Since the 1910s, American antitrust regulators had been accusing the Bell System of abusing its monopoly power and in 1974 the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice brought a lawsuit against Bell claiming violations of the Sherman Act. Feeling that it was about to lose the suit, AT&T proposed an alternative: its breakup. Effective January 1, 1984 AT&T completes the divestiture of its local operating companies, forming a new AT&T and the so-called Baby Bells.

1988
1988

Transatlantic Fiber

Transatlantic Fiber

The first transatlantic fiber optic cable TAT-8 is deployed.

1993
1993

Telecom Relay Service

Telecom Relay Service

Telecom Relay Service is made available for the disabled.

2006
2006

MTCC Fiber-to-the-Home

MTCC Fiber-to-the-Home

Manti Telecommunications Company begins installing their Fiber-to-the-Home network in Manti, Ephraim, And Sterling.

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