![[Telephone]](images/boxphone.jpg) |
While Alexander Graham Bell was experimenting
with telegraph instruments in the early 1870s, he realized it might be possible to
transmit the human voice over a wire by using electricity. By March 1876 he managed to
make a transmission, but the sound was very faint. He improved the results with a series of experiments over the next few months, including a critical test with this instrument on November 26. That day he transmitted sound clearly over a wire between Cambridge and Salem, Massachusetts. This design, used for both the transmitter and the receiver, became standard for the commercial instruments introduced in1877. Adapted from America's Smithsonian, Celebrating 150 Years, © 1996 Smithsonian Institution
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| "Box"
Telephone, 1876, invented by Alexander Graham Bell Courtesy of the National Museum of American History, gift of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, 1923. |