Alexander Graham Bell's Telephone on This Day in History

 

The first successful test of a telephone was made by Alexander Graham Bell on this day in 1876. 

The concept of the telephone dates back to the string telephone or lover's telephone that has been known for centuries, comprising two diaphragms connected by a taut string or wire. Sound waves are carried as mechanical vibrations along the string or wire from one diaphragm to the other. The classic example is the tin can telephone, a children's toy made by connecting the two ends of a string to the bottoms of two metal cans, paper cups or similar items. The essential idea of this toy was that a diaphragm can collect voice sounds from the voice sounds for reproduction at a distance. One precursor to the development of the electromagnetic telephone originated in 1833 when Carl Friedrich Gauss and Wilhelm Eduard Weber invented an electromagnetic device for the transmission of telegraphic signals at the University of Göttingen, in Lower Saxony, helping to create the fundamental basis for the technology that was later used in similar telecommunication devices. Gauss's and Weber's invention is purported to be the world's first electromagnetic telegraph.

This Kindle book, The Dark History of Christmas, is now available on Amazon by clicking here...and it is only $1.99 and The Strange History of Easter and the Christian Cross is on Amazon for only $1.99 

The Telegraph and the Morse Code on This Day in History

 

This Day in History: Samuel Morse sends the message "What hath God wrought" (a biblical quotation, Numbers 23:23) from a committee room in the United States Capitol to his assistant, Alfred Vail, in Baltimore, Maryland on this day in 1844, to inaugurate a commercial telegraph line between Baltimore and Washington D.C.

Thus was born one of the dominant methods of communication over long distances that would continue to be used for well over a century. Telegraphs aided in saving lives as well:

"On April 15, 1912, telegrapher John G. Phillips sent out the following Morse code message: 'CQD CQD SOS SOS CQD DE MGY MGY.' CQD stands for 'Come Quick Disaster' and SOS stands for 'Save Our Ship or Save Our Souls.' And DE MGY stands for 'from the RMS Titanic.'

We are all familiar with the fate of the RMS Titanic, but many of us fail to recognize that this Morse code message (and the other messages sent as soon as the ship struck an iceberg) is what led to the rescue of more than 700 passengers." Source

"At one point in the 1920s, Western Union and its army of uniformed messengers were sending more than 200 million telegrams every year. But the advent of faxes, then emails and finally SMS messaging saw the numbers dwindle, bringing to an end the golden age of the telegram." Source