From Innovation to Invention

Much before the first telephone was successfully demonstrated, transmitting speech over electric lines was an idea that challenged the imagination of many a researchers. The first recorded work on this came in 1854, when Charles Bourseul, a Belgium-born French researcher, wrote about a possible sound transmission system that would employ a flexible disk to make and break electrical connection to reproduce sound. But he stopped there. 

His idea was put to test by Johann Phillip Reis, a German schoolteacher, who in 1861, tried to build a telephone using a diaphragm making and breaking contact with the electrical circuit. This was the first attempt to build a telephone. Reis’ instrument–made using a cork, a knitting needle, a sausage skin, and a piece of platinum–however, could not transmit speech and was able to carry only some sounds. 

As later developments showed, Reis’ approach (based on Bourseul’s idea) was wrong. Human voice is too complex and fast flowing for this. This, however, as Reis’ work showed, carried distinct sound beats. Reis never developed the idea further. 

Not much progress was made till the mid-1870s, when both Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell started actively pursuing the research to invent the telephone. Gray was more professional, well educated, and recognized. Bell, on the other hand, was devoted and passionate about his dream. Another difference between these two great men was that while Gray was more interested in what was known as the harmonic telegraph–a telegraph that could send multiple messages on a single wire–Bell, despite working on the harmonic telegraph, saw telephone as a goal of the lifetime. And just to remind, telegraphy was already a big business. Any new invention in that field would have its immediate reward. In fact, Bell’s partner and financier GG Hubbard wanted him to focus his research on telegraphy, which Bell was also doing to a great extent. But then as is usual with great minds, the challenge of innovation in telephony was much more important to Bell than the money. 

And he had done all sorts of experimentation to achieve his objective. That included working on a device called the phonoautograph for teaching the deaf where he used a dead man’s ear. Speaking to the device made the membrane of the ear vibrate, making a connected lever to write on a smoked glass. Bell thought he could use that in telephony. Speaking to the membrane would vibrate it making it to change the resistance in the electric circuit, thus changing the current. The changing current would cause the same vibration in another membrane, replicating speech. Though use of a dead man’s ear sounds horrendous now, the principle discovered–variable resistance–was the first correct step towards telephony. 

While he continued his work in telephony, Bell’s financiers continued to pressurise him to work on telegraphy. It was at this time (March 1875) that Bell met Joseph Henry, the pioneer of electromagnetism who had helped Samuel Morse with telegraphy. He seemed disinterested in Bell’s work in telegraphy and asked Bell to step up his work in telephony, calling it a potential “great invention”. Bell’s decision was made. And a talented young man by the name of Thomas A Watson joined him as his assistant at this juncture.

But Bell had a problem. He understood speech and acoustics only too well but knew little of electricity. He lacked the necessary knowledge in electricity. “Get it,” said Henry. There was no looking back. 

On 2 June 1875, Bell and Watson were testing the harmonic telegraph that accidentally transmitted the sound of plucking a tuned spring. Though surprised, Bell could find out the reasons quickly. A contact screw was set too tightly, allowing current to run continuously–the essential element needed to transmit speech. Soon, they built a telephone, called the Gallows telephone. It substituted a diaphragm for the spring of the harmonic telegraph. However, it did not work the way they thought it would. Some sounds were transmitted, but they were still far from speech transmission. 

However, Bell was working on how it could be done. Without a working model, Bell’s partner (and father-in-law), GG Hubbard, filed for a patent for telephone on 14 February 1876 in US Patent Office. The same day Elisha Gray also filed his notice–just three hours after Bell filed his. 

Controversy surrounds on what happened that day. Bell’s patent application described the principle of variable resistance only in a margin–many say as an afterthought–which Gray wrote in his patent. However, the Patent Office awarded the patent to Bell. Yet, Bell used this principle in his design of an actual instrument. Many still wonder whether it was Elisha Gray who found the “correct” way first. But then, let us not forget that it was during his work on phonoautograph that Bell had also understood the principle of variable resistance. 

Finally on 10 March 1876, Bell called Watson, which was accidentally transmitted by their liquid transmitter. The legendary words, “Mr Watson, come here I want you” was the first speech transmitted electrically. The telephone was born. And The Father was exactly 29.