When and by whom was the telephone invented? Who was the first inventor of the telephone? Americans Gray and Bell

A telephone is any device capable of transmitting voice over a distance.

The history of the invention of the telephone

People tried to transmit sound signals in different ways. The first telephone, which was invented many centuries ago, can be considered a "rope telephone". By connecting 2 empty cans with a rope, we will get its sample. When they start talking to one jar, sound vibrations are transmitted along the rope to another jar. And if you put it to your ear, you can hear the voice of the speaker.

Rope phone

Sound was also transmitted through pipes. This method of communication is still used on ships. Speaking pipes made of brass or red copper are held in protected areas of the ship. At the end points, they end with bells for transmitting and receiving sound.

Sound transmission on the ship

All these means of communication were mechanical devices. They transmitted sound using vibrations of an elastic medium. That is, the scheme was as follows: sound - medium - sound. But due to the fact that sound vibrations are strongly attenuated in the medium, acoustic telephones could not transmit sound over long distances. In addition, the speed of sound is only 340 m / s in air, so it did not arrive at its destination immediately, but after some time.

But what if the sound is converted into electrical signals and then transmitted through wires? After all, the speed of propagation of electrical signals through wires approaches the speed of light. This means that the sound will be transmitted almost instantly. Many inventors have thought about this. But the path from a mechanical phone to an electric one was a long one.

For the first time, the principle of operation of the telephone was stated in his dissertation by the French mechanical engineer and vice-inspector of the Parisian telegraph Charles Boursel in 1854.

Charles Bursel

He was the first to use the word "telephone". It must be said that this idea came to his mind as early as 1849, when Alexander Bell, who is considered the author of the telephone, was only 2 years old. It was simple: convert sound vibrations into electrical current at the transmitting station, transmit it through wires, and at the receiving station convert the current back into sound. Many experiments were done, but Bursel failed to create a telephone in practice.

In the middle of the 19th century, the Italian Antonio Meucci came to the same conclusion as Charles Boursel - sound vibrations can be converted into electrical signals and transmitted through wires.

Antonio Meucci

But he was able to create an apparatus only in 1860, when he was already living in America. He called him telephony , and published a message about his invention in the newspaper. After that, having sold his developments to Western Union due to financial difficulties, he began to wait for proposals for further cooperation, which was promised to him. He applied for a patent only in 1871, but did not complete the final registration. Unfortunately, the company showed no interest in Meucci's invention, and in 1874 informed him altogether that the documents had been lost. In 1876, he read in a newspaper that the patent for the invention of the telephone had been issued to Alexander Bell.

In 1861, Johann Philipp Reiss, a German physicist and inventor, demonstrated a device he had created that transmitted musical tones and speech sounds over wires. It consisted of a microphone, a galvanic battery as a power source and a speaker. It was the first prototype of the telephone. Reis himself named it telephone.

Johann Philip Reis

Alexander Graham Bell was a professor at Boston University in 1876 and taught the physiology of speech there. But this did not prevent him from studying signal transmission over telecommunication channels. It must be said that Bell did not try to invent the telephone, but the "harmonic telegraph". And in 1875 he was granted a patent for a "reusable telegraph", which could send 2 signals at the same time. And soon he created a device capable of converting electricity into sound.

The world's first telephone session happened quite by accident. Bell was in the attic of his house, and his colleague, mechanic Watson, in the basement. They were separated by several floors. It is said that Bell said the phrase: "Mr. Watson, come here, I need you." She got into the microphone of the device and was heard by Watson.

In the patent for his invention, received by Bell on March 7, 1876, there was no word "telephone". His apparatus was called the "talking telegraph". But he could transmit speech over a distance of 500 m. Therefore, we can say that after all it was the first telephone. But it was impossible to speak and listen at the same time with the help of this device. This had to be done in sequence. In addition, there was no ringer on Bell's phone.

Already in June of the same year, Bell demonstrated his apparatus at the World Electrical Exhibition in Philadelphia, where he became a major sensation.

Alexander Graham Bell demonstrates his invention

It must be said that on February 14, 1876, the day Bell filed an application with the Patent Office for his invention, 2 hours later, another American inventor, Elisha Gray, also filed an application for"A device for transmitting and receiving vocal sounds by telegraphic means". But he soon abandoned it.

Elisha Gray

Soon Bell founded the company Bell Laboratories Telephone, which took up the introduction of the phone into everyday life. And after 2 years in the United States in the state of Connecticut, the only telephone exchange in the world at that time was launched, which had only 21 subscribers. But the connection was rather unstable due to interference.

Despite the fact that Alexander Bell is considered the inventor of the telephone, disputes about who nevertheless invented the telephone earlier have been going on for a long time.

Phone in Russia

Pavel Mikhailovich Golubitsky

Although the first telephone lines opened in major Russian cities in 1881, first Russiantelephone was created in 1878 by the inventor Pavel Mikhailovich Golubitsky. After 4 years he created desk phone, which he demonstrated in Europe in 1883. His telephone provided excellent communication without interference over a distance of more than 350 km. In the same year he created special telephone equipment with excellent call quality for railways. Golubitsky is the author of a microphone with carbon powder, as well as a telephone receiver, in which he combined a microphone and a device for receiving sound.

Telephone set Golubitsky

In 1886, he created a switchboard that connected several telephone lines in pairs. And in the same year, the Golubitsky telephone exchange, the first Russian exchange, was installed in the General Staff of St. Petersburg.

How the phone works

1 - handset; 2 - microphone; 3 - telephone; 4 - call; 5 - push-button dialer (tastatura); 6 - electronic switching and control devices

We often refer to a telephone as a telephone. But to be precise, telephone - this is not the whole telephone set, but just that part of the telephone receiver, which is applied to the ear in order to hear what they say on the other end of the electric wire. This is a device that receives electrical vibrations transmitted through wires and converts them into sound. In addition to the telephone, the handset contains microphone - a device that receives the sounds of our voice and converts them into electrical signals, which are then transmitted through electrical wires. These signals are received by the other phone. This is how sound is transmitted over a distance.

To call the desired subscriber, a series of electrical impulses is sent from the telephone set, corresponding to the code of the called subscriber. They are formed when the contacts are closed at the moment of rotation of the disk of the device or by pressing the corresponding keys.

Microphones and telephones transmit sound with a frequency of 300-3400 Hz well. Therefore, speech is transmitted and received distinctly.

Modern telephones have built-in memory, which stores the phone numbers entered into it. This allows automatic dialing of any of them. The carbon microphone has been replaced with an electric one. The sound in such devices can be heard not only in the handset, but also on the speakerphone. Appeared in them and the function of tone dialing.

Outwardly they have changed too. In some devices, all parts are placed in a structure resembling a talking tube. Such telephones in everyday life are called handsets. Their They are connected to the telephone line through a device called base . And the handset has a special transceiver that receives radio signals from the handset and transmits them to it. Several handsets can be connected to the base, which can communicate both with the base and with each other.

Modern telephone connection

cellular

Nowadays, wired communication is being actively replaced by mobile radio communication. Instead of telephone lines, radio channels are used for communication.

Mobile communication is divided into cellular and satellite.

Cellularconsists of a large number of base stations. They are interconnected by central switches. When turned on cellular telephone registers at the base station closest to it. If a call arrives at his number, the central switch transfers the call to the base station closest to the phone. Base stations are cell towers. While moving, the call is transmitted from one tower to another until it arrives at the one closest to the subscriber. And her signal will be received by the subscriber's phone.

Mobile phone transmits and receives information through a special communication satellite, the coverage area of ​​\u200b\u200bwhich can be the entire Earth. The satellite phone is similar to the first mobile phones that we used in the 90s, but unlike them, it has an additional antenna.

Recently, it has become possible to transmit voice digitized and compressed using special digital methods through networks created on the basis of computer technologies ( IP -technologies). Skype was created in 2005 e , through which people from all over the world communicate.

The life of a modern person is closely connected with mobile phones, and there is a lot of evidence for this. Imagine, for example, the situation that you accidentally left your beloved, irreplaceable and precious smartphone at home. How will you feel at this moment? At the very least, it's uncomfortable, isn't it? However, there were times when people did not have phones at all, and not only mobile, but also stationary. How did they manage without them? Read our article.

Life without phones

Even some 200 years ago, people did not know what phones were. Previously, whistles, gongs, bells and drums were used to send messages over a distance.

However, all these methods were imperfect.

By the way, in order to transmit the signal as far as possible, it was necessary to create intermediate points where people were on duty. The sound in this case came to the addressee along the chain. We all understand that it was a very long process. Of course, this problem could also be solved, for example, by transmitting information through water and metal. In this case, the signal would propagate faster and decay much later. But for some reason this was not done, at least not everywhere.

Invention of the first telephone

We traditionally associate the appearance of the telephone with the name of the American inventor Alexander Bell. The famous explorer actually took a direct part in the development of the revolutionary apparatus. However, other people also played a crucial role in the creation of the first telephone.

In 1860, the naturalist Antonio Meucci published an article in an Italian newspaper in New York, in which he spoke about his invention, capable of transmitting sounds through electrical wires. Meucci named his apparatus Teletrofono. In 1871, he decided to patent the Teletrofono, but due to financial problems, he was unable to do so.

A year later, in 1861, the German physicist and inventor Johann Philipp Reis demonstrated his "mobile phone" at a meeting of scientists of the Physical Society. The device could transmit musical tones and human speech over wires. The device had a microphone of original design, a power source (galvanic battery) and a speaker. Reis himself called the device he designed Telephon. Many sources of that time claim that the first message that the physicist transmitted on his phone was the phrase "Das Pferd frisst Keinen Gurkensalat" ("The horse does not eat cucumber salad"). The absurdity of this information made it possible to make sure that the words were heard correctly, from this it follows that the transmitter worked as it should.

Despite all these inventions, the laurels of the discoverer still went to Alexander Graham Bell.

So, on February 14, 1876, Bell filed an application with the Washington Patent Office, on March 7, 1876, the American received a patent. He called his device "the talking telegraph". Bell's tube could take turns transmitting and receiving a signal. The telephone of an American scientist did not have a call; it was invented a little later, in 1878, by Thomas Watson. When someone called the subscriber, the telegraph began to whistle. The range of such a line did not exceed 500 meters.

Note that Alexander Bell was officially considered the inventor of the telephone for a long time. And only on June 11, 2002, the US Congress, in resolution No. 269, transferred this status to Antonio Meucci.

Turning a talking telegraph into a landline phone

Bell's talking telegraph went through many metamorphoses before turning into a modern smartphone.

So, in 1877-1878. American inventor Thomas Edison improved the device. He introduced an induction coil into the circuit, and replaced the carbon powder with a carbon rod in the microphone (such microphones were used until 1980). This made communication clearer and louder. Now telephones, unlike public telegraphs, have become household appliances.

In 1878, the first telephone exchange appeared in New Haven. Paris took over the following year. From 1881, telephone exchanges began to open in Berlin, Riga, and Warsaw. In Russia, namely in Moscow and St. Petersburg, they appeared in 1882.

It is worth noting that the first telephone exchanges were manual - the connection was made by a telephone operator. But in 1879 the American engineers Connolly and McTite invented the automatic switch. Now people could call each other by simply dialing a number.

Early 20th century marked by a real telephone boom. All over the world there was an active construction of telephone exchanges, of which by 1910 there were more than 10 thousand, and long-distance lines serving more than 10 million telephones.

It turns out that in just some half a century, the telephone has gone from a pipe dream of inventors and enthusiasts to the most massive phenomenon that allows millions of people to communicate at a distance. Since that time, humanity can no longer imagine life without this apparatus. But when did he start to turn into a smartphone?

The advent of mobile phones. The history of the modern smartphone

In 1969, the world leaders in the telecommunications market began to think about improving the wired apparatus. They wanted each subscriber to have their own number, which would be relevant not only in the country where it was issued, but also abroad. Stockholm Technical School graduate Esten Mäkitolo was one of the first to come up with the idea. However, the practical implementation of the Myakitolo concept required powerful technologies that appeared only in the 1980s.

Therefore, only in 1983, Motorola was able to release the world's first cell phone. Although experimental calls from a prototype were made in the 1970s.

It was a handset weighing about 0.8 kg and measuring 22.5x12.5x3.75 cm. The battery allowed us to communicate for as long as 35 minutes, but it took a little more than 10 hours to charge it. Of course, it cannot be compared with modern devices, but for that time it was a huge breakthrough.

Motorola very quickly had competitors who each time began to release more and more advanced and intelligent models. So, over time, a calculator, an alarm clock, a calendar, a camera and many other applications and functions appeared in the phone. In the 2000s phones began to appear with an operating system, which turned them into personal computers. Today, using a smartphone, you can not only call a friend or send a message. For him, it's primitive. It can communicate with satellites, take large-scale pictures, play music, not to mention reading books, watching movies and multitasking.

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My phone rang. Who is speaking? Elephant! The telephone is an invention that changed the world. Since all our modern activities are so tied to this thing, we decided to trace the history of its development, and at the same time understand how it works.

Do you know someone who doesn't have a phone? Perhaps it is perhaps very old grandparents. Well, or guys from the Tumba-Yumba tribe. Although they probably already have. The telephone appeared a century and a half ago, and here is the result: each person calls the phone about 1,500 times a year!

Development of telephony

The first telephones had a range of only 500 meters, they did not have a call, and the call had to be made using a whistle. After the introduction of a carbon microphone and an induction coil into the phone, the range of the device has increased significantly.

The first telephone exchanges could not connect subscribers directly. In order to “call”, you had to pick up the phone and start turning the lever. After connecting with the telephone operator, she was told the subscriber's number, she stuck the plug into the socket, and only after that the conversation began.

Calling directly has become possible since the 20s of the last century, although an automatic switchboard that can replace the work of telephone operators was proposed back in 1887 by the Russian scientist K.A. Mostitsky.

Now we are used to 7-digit numbers and international dialing codes. And the first phone numbers consisted of only 2-3 digits.

In 1927 it was already possible to call from New York to London. Telephone networks began to actively cover the globe.

By the way, call us anytime! For our readers there is now a 10% discount on

The principle of operation of the phone "on the fingers"

Why on fingers? Because before you deal with something complicated (for example, the principle of operation of a modern mobile phone), you always need to deal with the simplest things, from which everything started.

Phone signals are electric. Human speech is a sound signal. The phone converts sound signals into electrical signals and vice versa.

We speak into a microphone, the membrane vibrates, its vibrations in a magnetic field create a current in the coil, which is transmitted through the wire to the interlocutor. At the other end, the reverse process occurs: the current flows in the moving coil of the speaker, because of this, the membrane vibrates and “sways” the air. As a result, we hear sound.

Now phones can be divided into:

• conventional landlines;
• radiotelephones;
• Cell Phones;
• satellite phones;
• telephones operating in IP-telephony.

The advent of modern telephones, mobile communications

The significance of the invention of the mobile phone was also revolutionary. And the first mobile phones appeared in 1976. They were huge and the cost was also huge. In the 1980s, you could already buy a cell phone in America for $3,500. For comparison: a new Ford Mustang cost 6500.

It is believed that it was invented in the USA, but there is a version that the first mobile prototype was developed in the USSR in 1973. Like many interesting developments, the Soviet mobile phone remained unknown to the world.

In the CIS countries, mobile phones became widespread in the 90s of the 20th century.

Prospects for the development of phones

Scientists, futurists and social scientists believe that in the future, smartphones are likely to replace such separate devices as a computer, laptop and camera. The capabilities and power of phones will allow you to simply connect a monitor and keyboard to them, turning your smartphone into a full-fledged personal PC.

Even now, a modern phone is a real research station that collects a huge amount of data. In the future, the quantity and quality of data will increase. The collected information can be used for a variety of studies: from the behavior of groups of people to earthquake prediction and weather forecasting. Bank cards will also become a thing of the past. Already, there is a technology that allows you to pay with your smartphone, using it instead of a card.

But that's all in the future. So far, no matter how smart a smartphone is, it will not be able to write a term paper or test for you. A special student service can help with this, providing services to professionals in all areas: from agronomy and accounting to electronics and nuclear physics.

The opportunity to contact relatives and friends at any moment today seems natural to us, like breathing, but this was far from always the case.


Even mobile phones became widespread no more than 15-20 years ago, and wired telephones appeared a little over a hundred years ago. Do you know who invented the telephone and in what year did it happen?

In almost all modern textbooks and encyclopedias, the American Alexander Bell is named the inventor of the telephone. However, this is not entirely true: Bell turned out to be just the person who was able to first patent the telephone, and this happened in 1876.

The real inventor is Antonio Meucci, born in Florence, Italy, who later moved across the ocean and settled in the United States. He founded the world's first factory producing paraffin candles, but later became fascinated with the idea of ​​transmitting sounds over long distances. His work progressed successfully, and already in 1860 the inventor showed the public a device that he called a telephotophone. It used the principle of converting sound vibrations into electromagnetic waves and vice versa, which subsequently formed the basis of all telephone sets.

Unfortunately, shortly after the demonstration of the new invention, a misfortune occurred, and the designer went to bed for a long time. During this time, his factory went bankrupt, and in order to somehow live, his wife had to sell some devices made by Meucci, including a telephotophone. Later, he was able to restore his invention and in 1871 he tried to get a patent for it. However, due to extreme poverty, Meucci was unable to pay for the services of the patent office, and soon died in poverty and obscurity. Only in 2002, justice was restored, and the US Congress recognized the Italian emigrant Antonio Meucci as the inventor of the telephone.

Few people know that the first mobile phone was created in the USSR in 1957. It consisted of the phone itself and the base station, which was connected to the usual city GTS. The telephone set weighed about 3 kg, and Leonid Kupriyanovich became its inventor. The designer continued to work on his development, and by 1961 the weight of the handset was reduced to only 70 grams. The distance between the handset and the base station reached 80 kilometers on flat terrain. In 1957, the inventor received a patent for his development, number 115494.


The disadvantage of Kupriyanovich's device was the small number of phones that could connect to a single base station. Their number was limited by the number of frequency channels allocated to the station. According to the inventor, in order to block the entire area of ​​Moscow, it would be necessary to install no more than a dozen base stations. Subsequently, based on the development of Kupriyanovich, since 1965, the Bulgarian enterprise Radioelectronics has been producing mobile mini-ATS for 15 subscribers. They were used mainly at large construction sites as departmental communications.

The inventor of the world's first cell phone is Motorola employee Martin Cooper. He made the first copy of a mobile phone operating on a cellular principle in 1973. The device weighed over a kilogram and was subsequently named the Motorola DynaTAC. There were only 12 buttons on the handset, of which 10 were digital, and the other two were used to call and end the conversation.

The first cell phone did not have a display, and the battery provided no more than an hour of conversation, but it was charged for as long as 10 hours in a row. In total, until 1983, Motorola released five different prototypes of the DynaTAC phone. The first cell phones went on sale in 1983 under the name DynaTAC 8000x. They were sold for $3,995, which was a very large amount for that time, but the queues for their purchase reached several thousand people.

The first phone equipped with a touch screen was manufactured in 1993 by employees of the famous IBM computer corporation. It was called the IBM Simon, and its black-and-white screen was controlled by a stylus, although some operations could also be performed with fingers. The phone weighed about 0.5 kg.

The battery charge was only enough for an hour of talking or 8-10 hours of waiting. Although the novelty aroused the interest of buyers, the too high price and frequent breakdowns of the gadget quickly brought it to naught. The IBM Simon was soon discontinued.

As you know, iPhones are produced by the American corporation Apple, which has gained popularity due to its non-standard and high-tech solutions. The main generator of ideas at Apple since its inception has been the legendary computer scientist and entrepreneur Steve Jobs, the creator of . In 1999, Jobs came up with the idea that the company, in addition to computers, should also produce the best mobile phones in the world. He came up with the concept of iPhone, but it was only in 2005 that the idea was realized together with Motorola specialists.


The first Apple phone, called the Purple-1, was a symbiosis of a phone and an audio player. It did not get the expected popularity, but the Apple team continued to work, and in 2007, the iPhone was first introduced to the public in San Francisco, which later became a cult phone. To date, the happy owners of iPhones are millions of people around the world.

Almost no modern person can imagine his life and work without a phone.

However, quite recently, on a historical scale, there were times when the phone was considered a luxury. Who invented and introduced the telephone to the general public?

Content:

Fixed line

As everyone knows, the era of telephone communications began with wired telephones that could transmit voice messages using technologies that were significantly different from modern ones.

Such a device was a major breakthrough and the first "ring" of an active scientific and technological revolution, which began almost immediately after the creation of such an innovative device.

Story

The first telephone was created in an era when the telegraph was the only way to more or less quickly transmit messages over long distances.

At that time, the telegraph was considered a perfect and fully functional means of communication with remote regions.

However, the invention of the telephone revolutionized the use of the telephone rather quickly.

It is worth noting that the invention of the telephone could not even be conceived until the moment when electricity was discovered.

When electricity became more or less widely used, the telegraph appeared - morse presented to the public in 1897 not only his alphabet, but also a broadcasting device.

The appearance of the world's first device capable of quickly transmitting information without a physical carrier over a greater distance proved that such a method of transmission is possible in principle, and gave the scientists of that time an impetus to develop methods for its improvement.

First apparatus

And at the end of the 19th century, scientists managed to significantly improve the method of transmission, give it a new format. It is believed that the telephone was invented by Alexander Bell, but this is not entirely true.

The appearance of the device would be impossible without Philip Rice- German scientist.

It was Rice who created the very basis of the future telephone.- a device capable of transmitting a recording of a human voice over some (quite large for that time) distances using galvanic current conductors. Rice's development saw the light in 1861, and during this period Bell took it as the basis for his future invention - the telephone, in the form in which it is known to us now.

So, 15 years later, namely in 1876, the first telephone based on galvanic current appeared, the inventor of which was considered Alexander Graham Bell.

At this year's World's Fair, a Scottish researcher presented his apparatus for transmitting voice messages at a distance, and also applied for a patent.

Specifications

What technical characteristics did this first device have?

It was significantly inferior not only to devices that spread in the 20th century, but also to subsequent models created by Bell a few years later.

However, at that time, its characteristics were considered premium.

The distance that the device could transmit sound was 200 m, which was a lot.

Initially, he had a strong sound distortion, but with the next improvement, Alexander Bell eliminated this problem.

And in this form, the device, invented and improved by him, existed for almost 100 years.

History of creation

Like many famous inventions that changed not only the course of scientific and technological progress, but also the course of history, this was created by accident.

Initially, Alexander Bell's goal was not to create a device that transmits a voice message, but to create a telegraph machine capable of transmitting several telegrams simultaneously.

In the process of experiments on such an improvement of the telegraph apparatus, the telephone was created.

The telegraph worked using pairs of records, and for their experience, Bell and his assistant prepared several pairs of such records, which were tuned to work at different frequencies.

As a result of a slight violation of the technology of the experiment, one of the plates got stuck.

The inventor's assistant began to express his opinion on what had happened, while Bell himself at that moment carried out some manipulations with the receiving device of the telegraph apparatus.

A few seconds later, scientists heard sounds coming from the transmitter and resembling a voice recording, albeit with very strong distortion. From that moment the history of telephone communication began. After Alexander Bell presented his device to the public, many eminent scientists began work to improve the existing device.

The Patent Office issued hundreds of patents for devices that could modernize and improve the created phone. The most significant of them are:

1 Call T. Watson, which replaced the whistle that was originally installed on Bell's apparatus, which appeared in 1878;

2 Carbon microphone M. Michalsky, which allowed to improve the quality of transmission, and created in 1878;

3 Automatic telephone exchange for 10,000 S. Apostolov numbers which appeared in 1894.

The importance of Alexander Bell's invention can also be assessed in terms of financial parameters.

This patent became one of the most profitable in the world, it was he who made Bell a world-famous and very rich man. But was it deserved?

Meucci's contribution

In 2002, the US Congress recognized that this patent was issued undeservedly, and the true discoverer of telephone communications should not be considered the Scottish scientist Alexander Graham Bell, but the Italian inventor Antonio Meucci, who created his device for many years of Bell's dot telephone.

In 1860, he actually created the first apparatus capable of transmitting sound over wires. Meucci's device was called the telextrophone.

At the time of the creation and improvement of the invention, Meucci lived in the USA, was already almost an elderly man and was in a very poor financial situation.

At this stage, his invention and interested in a large company Western Union.

Its representatives offered the scientist to sell all his developments for a substantial amount, and also promised to assist in obtaining a patent.

The poor financial situation forced Meucci to give in to the company's demands. He received his money, but he did not get any help in obtaining a patent, so he applied himself, but was refused. And in 1876, Alexander Bell received a patent for an almost completely similar device.

This was a serious shock to Meucci, and he tried to challenge the decision to award the patent to Bell in court.

During the first stages of the proceedings, Meucci did not have enough finances to deal with a huge corporation.

As a result, the right to a patent was nevertheless returned to him in court, but only when the term of this patent had already expired.

Important! It was only in 2002 that a resolution of the Congress of the United States of America came out, according to which it was Meucci who was officially recognized as the inventor of the telephone.

Twentieth Century

Apparatuses similar to those invented by Meucci were used throughout most of the twentieth century.

They were constantly improved, and if the first models that became widespread could only communicate with the called subscriber through the telephone exchange, which required manual connection, then later these stations became automatic, subscribers were able to communicate almost directly.

The advent of such an automatic communication system was a big step towards the invention of the telephone as users know it today.

The first telephone that brought scientists closer to the invention of cellular communications was the radiotelephone.

After that, the first cell phone appeared, and relatively recently, satellite telephony.

The newest of the existing developments can be called, which already has little in common directly with the phone, but performs the same functions.

mobile connection

The history of cellular communications began with radiotelephones, the first tests of which were carried out in 1941 by G. Shapiro and I. Zakharchenko in the USSR, and by AT&T Bell Laboratories in the USA.

The system worked on the basis of radio communication and was supposed to be used for communication between cars (in the modern sense, it was more like a walkie-talkie than a telephone).

In both superpowers, the tests were successful and the system fully met the expectations of the inventors.

And already in 1947, the concept of using hexagonal cells for communication was first proposed in the United States. It was proposed for use by Douglas Ring and Ray Young, inventors working for Bell. The tests were also successful, and it was on the basis of this technology that mobile communications were further developed (and it was on the basis of this technology that it got its name).

But the real birthplace of mobile communications is still considered not the USA or the USSR, but Sweden.

Here, in 1956, a communication system between cars was launched and successfully operated, which became the first such system in the world.

Initially, the project was implemented in the three largest cities of the state - Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö.

Telephone sets of Kupriyanovich

The first telephone set that could be truly mobile and used in field devices was invented in the USSR.

The subscriber could carry it with him, it did not need to be built into cars and transported, like earlier models.

The apparatus was presented to the public by L.I. Kupriyanovich, a Soviet engineer, in 1957.

The weight of the device was 3 kg, which was very small by the then standards, while it operated over fairly long distances - up to 30 km, depending on the terrain.

The operating time of this device without replacing the batteries was 20-30 hours, depending on the operating conditions. The inventor received a patent for the engineering solutions of the device in 1957.

This engineer continued to work in this direction until 1958.

This year, he created a more compact mobile phone that works on the same principles as the previous device.

The new device weighed only half a kilogram, and did not exceed the size of a cigarette box.

Kupriyanovich does not stop his work in 1961.

This year, he creates a device with the same principles of operation as the previous two, but weighing only 70 grams and fits in a pocket. It is capable of communicating over a distance of up to 80 km.

According to the inventor, this device could well be adapted for serial production in order to mass-equip heads of departments and enterprises with it. Some time later, in one of his interviews with periodicals, he declares his readiness to design 10 automatic TV stations for portable phones throughout the country. But this project was never carried out in reality.

Bulgarian developments

Although Kupriyanovich himself will soon stop working, his system, in various variations, continues to be improved by other companies.

So, in 1965, the Radioelectronics company from Bulgaria presented at the Inforga-65 technology festival a system from the main telephone exchange for 15 subscribers, and 15 telephones themselves.

At the same time, they mention that the project was developed precisely on the principle of Kupriyanovich's equipment.

Work on such technology in this organization continues into 1966. At the scientific exhibition Interorgtekhnika-66, they present a set of mobile phones and a station designed to work with six devices. An industrial model is presented, ready, to a greater or lesser extent, for mass production.

In the future, the company works with this particular model, which is already significantly different from Kupriyanovich's devices.

They first create a station for 69 numbers, and then for 699.

The system became widespread, became a substitute for intercom and was widely produced by industrial enterprises to equip departmental institutions with communications, and was actively used in the country until the beginning of the 90s.

Car phones

At the same time, the development of radiotelephones for cars is being actively carried out.

They are implemented using a different technology, different from the technology of Kupriyanovich, but they are relatively popular and widely distributed in the USSR and the world at the beginning of the second half of the twentieth century.

In 1958, work began on the design and creation of mobile phones designed to equip civilian departmental vehicles.

These phones are called "Altai" and could only be used in a car.

In 1963, the Altai was already introduced into more or less mass production and relatively widely used, the technology is so far only distributed in Moscow, and then begins to be used in St. Petersburg.

Only by 1970 it was put into operation in 30 more large cities of the Soviet Union.

Commercial Cellular

The first steps towards the widespread introduction of cell phones and the commercialization of the industry were taken in 1982 by the British company Pye Telecommunications.

They demonstrated an automatic mobile phone that works as a set-top box for a walkie-talkie. Pocketphone 70. Theoretically, the device could be introduced everywhere.

Motorola

In 1983, Motorola introduced the first model of a truly commercial mobile phone, intended not only for organizations and departments, but also for individual users who simply could afford to buy a device.

The model of the device was called DynaTAC 8000X, and it took the company almost 16 years to create it.

At the same time, a huge amount of money was invested in it, according to some sources - more than 110 million dollars.

The device weighed almost 800 grams, had a length of 33 cm, a thickness of 4.5 cm, and a width of almost 9 cm.

The battery could work autonomously for up to 9 hours of standby time or 1 hour of talk time, and it was the first phone with a battery charged from the mobile network.

The device was sold at a price of almost 4,000 US dollars.

Spreading

The technology quickly became popular despite the fact that the first devices were very expensive for the average user.

But already in 1984, more than 300,000 subscribers used such phones (and the mobile communication format).

In 2003, this figure exceeded one billion two hundred million subscribers - it is generally accepted that it was in this year that the technology really became widespread throughout the world and firmly entered the life of an ordinary user.

And on July 1, 1991, the first call made in the GSM format was made in Finland. And it is this date that is considered the birthplace of a common format that we use to this day. Even with the introduction of other wireless communication technologies and networks of other types, it is this communication format that still remains the most widespread and is characterized by the largest coverage area on the globe.

In 1998, a prototype of the first device of this type with a touch-sensitive screen appeared.

This was an important step towards a qualitatively new type of mobile devices for communication, including smartphones.

This first touch phone, in fact, became the progenitor of the devices that we use today.

During the 80s and 90s, the price of mobile phones fell, and by the early 2000s, although still expensive, they were becoming available to most users.

And after 7-8 years, mobile communication almost completely replaces the stationary one.