Fifteen years before Bell, a German inventor's phone said the horse won't eat cucumber salad
In October 1861 Johann Philipp Reis showed the Physical Society of Frankfurt a device that turned a voice into electrical signals, and used it to transmit a deliberately odd sentence: the horse does not eat cucumber salad. He also gave the gadget its name, the telephone. Alexander Graham Bell's famous patent came fifteen years later.
Who invented the telephone is still argued over, much as with radio or the light bulb, because many people improved on each other's work. Antonio Meucci built a voice apparatus in 1849 that some credit as the first. In 1854 Charles Bourseul published a description of electrically transmitting speech. Meucci filed a patent caveat, a notice of intent rather than a patent, in 1871, but let it lapse in 1874 after renewing it for two years.
Then came an extraordinary day. On 14 February 1876 Elisha Gray filed a caveat for sending the human voice over a telegraph circuit, and Bell applied for a patent on the same date. The patent office flagged the overlap, Gray dropped his claim, and Bell's patent was granted on 7 March. Its key insight was using a smoothly varying current that mirrored the vibrations of sound, rather than on-off pulses like a telegraph. Three days later Bell spoke the first clear sentence over his device, summoning his assistant: Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.
Early instruments were rough. Many used a single wire with the earth completing the circuit, and some had just one opening, so users took turns listening and shouting into the same hole. Batteries sat in each home and had to be checked by visiting staff. Thomas Edison's carbon transmitter, far louder than rivals, became standard, and his patents helped Bell's company keep its monopoly into the twentieth century.
The word is older than the device. In 1796 Gottfried Huth proposed a telephon in which tower operators would shout through giant speaking tubes, and in 1844 a sea captain named John Taylor gave the name to four foghorns for signalling between ships.
Source: Telephone
