EOTO: The First Telephone

 The First Telephone 

In our world today technology is crucial to each and every one of our lives, but it hasn't always been so advanced, and there are constant improvements and changes being made to make them better. It is hard to imagine whaat life would be like today without our cellphones, as we carry them with us nearly everywhere and some of us depend on them to practically live.  But the telephone did not always look as it does today, let's just say it had a bit of a makeover. 

The picture above is the first telephone. The patent of the first telephone is credited to Alexander Graham Bell, a Scottish born inventor, scientist and engineer. On top of that, Alexander founded the American Telephone and telegraph company, or present day AT&T. 

This company became the worlds largest telecommunications company,  and "by 1939 controlling eighty three percent of all U.S. telephones and manufactured ninety percent of all U.S. phone equipment" according to Britannica. Which is fairly close to monopolization and was quickly divided into three smaller connected companies. Alexander Bell originally worked with the deaf and attempted to the deaf to speak using lip reading techniques rather than using sign language which is also referred to "oralism". Working with the deaf provided him with the opportunity to constantly study how sound is transmitted by the human voice encouraging him to improve how communication is transmitted. He had finally created his first version of the telephone and then later patented his work and developed it into a company. His ultimate goal was trying to solve or figure out how to send a human voice over wires to communicate. He worked with current and overall his work with the deaf generally encouraged him to create technology that allows communication to travel farther than it previously ever had. 

                                                        Alexander's voice on telephone

Timeline of Telephone 

The telephone has been the blueprint for all kinds of technology and encouraged others to invent better concept and improve upon the telephone all the way up until current day, the iPhone. The iPhone is constantly changing and even today there are new versions consistently coming out. Not only does the telephone provide more efficient and quicker ways to contact others but it represents change and improvement within our society. Previously many relied on letters to contact their loved ones which could take days or even weeks at a time depending on the railroad system, which was how mail was delivered at the time. So time was cut dramatically. The telegraph was also another form of communication but was just simply coding signals and was quite similar to a typewriter says encyclopedia.com.

Telegraph

The telephone, as helpful as it has been, it does have its consequences. The invention of the telephones and the improvements of it that followed has limited face to face contact and disconnect us from the real world. With the telephone rather than meeting someone or writing a sincere letter people were able to communicate over a wire and deemed certain conversations less sincere. Even today, the cell phone, a more modern version of the telephone is proven to be associated with anxiety, depression and other mental disorders if overused. Cellphones today cause distractions whether it is in the classroom, driving, and limit the attention spans of those who tend to use them.  In the article https://medshadow.org/phone-addiction-adhd/ it states that, " heavy users of digital devices are twice as likely to show symptoms of ADHD as those who are frequent users". As you can see, while the creation of the first telephone has had a vast amount of positive effects on our society as a whole, providing us with improved communications as well efficiency in the advanced version of the telephone or " cellphone"  it does have its negative effects, and can always face improvements and changes throughout the years.