Page 138 - Expanded Media & the MediaPlex

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Alexander Graham Bell: Telephone 1877
With his upbringing and early education in elocution, diction and hearing, it is not surprising that Bell became a scientist, and was particularly interested in the propagation of the voice and the telecommunication of this important human attribute. He made two very important inventions relating to this abiding interest - the wire-telephone (1877) and the photo-phone (1880). Both propagated the human voice - one by means a modulated electric current carried by copper-wire, the latter by means of modulated light-waves - the earliest form of wireless transmission: “We have found that the simplest form of apparatus for producing the effect consists of a plane mirror of flexible material against the back of which the speaker’s voice is directed. Under the action of the voice the mirror becomes alternately convex and concave and thus alternately scatters and condenses the light.” (Bell, quoted in various IEEE journals). These telephonic inventions were just part of his polymathic interests, but they made the most impact, and they made him very, very wealthy, much praised in scholarly circles, and world famous.
Of course, when Bell launched his telephone, only the very rich and the politically or strategically important were connected. Compare this with the ubiquity of the phone in the 21st century. When one arrived in London in the late 1960s, the first thing you had to do in your new flat was to order a phone - it was an essential antidote to the potential loneliness of the city-dweller. Like many others, I told the GPO Telephone Service that a phone was essential for my business, hoping to avoid the usual 3-month waiting period. From your first experience of having your own phone you never looked back. In the mid-1980s I was flying back from Greece and sat next to a salesman who told me about the new generation of mobile cellular phones soon becoming available in the UK. The light of vision was in his eye as he predicted the everyone-connected future. He wasn’t wrong.