Telephone

Telephone - A machine enabling people to talk directly to each other over long distances.

Humans are social animals, but the natural desire to be able to speak to individuals who are geographically distant was frustrated until 1876, when what seemed an impossible dream became a reality. Yet the birth of what was understood as the speaking telegraph was by no means without controversy because many individuals claimed a role in its invention. 

The telephone (the name is derived from the Greek for "distance voice" developed from the electrical telegraph, an early nineteenth century invention by Samuel Morse and others. This device used electrical signals conveyed along wires to transmit individual letters that together formed a message. Useful though it was, the telegraph lacked the immediacy and depth of nuance of human speech, but in the second half of the century inventors developed acoustic telegraphy, capable of transmitting multiple messages along a single wire at the same time by using different channels or audio frequencies. From this development it was but a simple step to create a working telephone with a mouth piece that converted the signals back into sound. For the first time people could offer information or friendship to others no matter how distant they were.

Who invented the telephone is still debated as many different people were working in competition with each other at the time. The man who is usually credited is Scottish-born inventor Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922), whose patent was the first to be issued by the U.S. Patent office in Washington, D.C on March 7, 1876. Returning to his laboratory in Boston, Bell finally managed to get his telephone to work 3 days later on March 10. He uttered the immortal words, "Mr.Watson, come here. I want to see you," into the transmitter, and his assistant, listening to the receiver in an adjoining room, heard the words clearly.