Long-distance small talk across the Atlantic

On this day in 1926, the Manchester Guardian published this story.

Today we have international video calling at the touch of  fingertip and we are connected within seconds. In the early 20th century the Guardian reported on how a trans-atlantic phone-call was at the height of technology.

The nature of the first talk, carried out with complete audibility by wireless telephone yesterday, between British and American journalists will do quite as much as can the staggering figures supplied by the experts about the heights of aerials and the power in kilowatts used to convince the average man that friendly, casual chats over some 3,000 miles will be a commonplace of the future. For the records of yesterday’s experiment show that the conversationalists, quite unawed by the marvel in which they were taking part, fell back as we all do on the weather, which was quite bad enough on the other side to make a strong bond of sympathy. Indeed, a more pleasantly futile dialogue could hardly have taken place over a suburban party-wall in Dulwich or Chorlton-cum-Hardy than that which so astonishingly bridged the ocean. Only one unusual item of small talk broke its commonplace flow, and we may take it that in trans-oceanic gossiping “What’s the time with you?” has come to stay as an addition to the little sociable openings which make smooth the track of converse.

It is all very reassuring for the future of inter-continental talk. But it is to be noted that as yet the experts, who are properly cautious, do not hold out immediate hopes of stimulating garrulity between the English-speaking peoples. The ether yesterday was unusually free from the riotous “atmospheric.” There is no means of relying always upon such excellent behaviour. We are, moreover, far yet from any measure of privacy in long-distance wireless telephony, and the knowledge that intimate affairs of head or heart can be shared over half the universe by any with the right apparatus is discouraging. Finally, a pound for three minutes, which is suggested as the rate, is hardly likely to popularise chats with America of the more casual sort. But it is all to the good that we should have progressed so far and so quickly as yesterday’s tests prove.

Original article from the Guardian online

Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone

On this day in 1876  Alexander Graham Bell received a patent for his invention of the telephone. 

Alexander Graham Bell was born on 3 March 1847 in Edinburgh and educated there and in London. His father and grandfather were both authorities on elocution and at the age of 16 Bell himself began researching the mechanics of speech. In 1870, Bell emigrated with his family to Canada, and the following year he moved to the United States to teach. There he pioneered a system called visible speech, developed by his father, to teach deaf-mute children. In 1872 Bell founded a school in Boston to train teachers on how to teach the deaf. The school subsequently became part of Boston University, where Bell was appointed professor of vocal physiology in 1873. Bell died on 2 August 1922 at his home in Nova Scotia.

By 1874, Bell’s initial work on the harmonic telegraph had entered a formative stage with progress it made both at his new Boston “laboratory” (a rented facility) as well as at his family home in Canada a big success. While working that summer in Brantford, Bell experimented with a “phonautograph”, a pen-like machine that could draw shapes of sound waves on smoked glass by tracing their vibrations. Bell thought it might be possible to generate undulating electrical currents that corresponded to sound waves. Bell also thought that multiple metal reeds tuned to different frequencies like a harp would be able to convert the undulating currents back into sound. But he had no working model to demonstrate the feasibility of these ideas.

Telephone patent

In 1874, telegraph message traffic was rapidly expanding and in the words of Western Union President William Orton, had become “the nervous system of commerce”. Orton had contracted with inventors Thomas Edison and Elisha Gray to find a way to send multiple telegraph messages on each telegraph line to avoid the great cost of constructing new lines.When Bell mentioned to Gardiner Hubbard and Thomas Sanders that he was working on a method of sending multiple tones on a telegraph wire using a multi-reed device, the two wealthy patrons began to financially support Bell’s experiments. Patent matters would be handled by Hubbard’s patent attorney, Anthony Pollok.

In March 1875, Bell and Pollok visited the famous scientist Joseph Henry, who was then director of the Smithsonian Institution, and asked Henry’s advice on the electrical multi-reed apparatus that Bell hoped would transmit the human voice by telegraph. He Bell did not have the equipment needed to continue his experiments, nor the ability to create a working model of his ideas. However, a chance meeting in 1874 between Bell and Thomas A. Watson, an experienced electrical designer and mechanic at the electrical machine shop of Charles Williams, changed all that.

With financial support from Sanders and Hubbard, Bell was able to hire Thomas Watson as his assistant and the two of them experimented with acoustic telegraphy. On June 2, 1875, Watson accidentally plucked one of the reeds and Bell, at the receiving end of the wire, heard the overtones of the reed; overtones that would be necessary for transmitting speech. That demonstrated to Bell that only one reed or armature was necessary, not multiple reeds. This led to the “gallows” sound-powered telephone, which was able to transmit indistinct, voice-like sounds, but not clear speech.

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