EOTO Presentation

Telephone

 History

    The first time that people learned about and talked about the telephone was when Alexander Gram Bell patented his idea in 1876. Bell started the idea of the telephone due to his interest in transmitting information over wires. Bells idea led to the first ever telephone line and switchboard being constructed between 1877 and 78. In just 3 years the number of telephones being used was almost 49,000. Later in 1890 Bell started to combine his company with others. This led to the creation of the American Telegraph and telephone company or AT&T.

Impact

    The telephone had major impacts on communication and society no matter how you look at it both good and bad. Some of the good impacts it had on communication was it made it much easier to contact someone a large distance away almost instantly from home or someplace close by. Before the telephone many people had to ether use the mail system and letter to contact a distance relative or friend or pay large amounts of money to get a telegraph sent out to them. Another good impact that the telephone had was make tons of jobs with the need for more construction of phone lines and people to work the switchboards. Then there are the down sides with the phone lines taking up a huge amount of space in the cities and scaring many people with the idea of harm from these lines. Another downside that has happened more recently with line taps and surveillance is that it has become extremely hard to talk to people on the phone privately as someone from your phone company or government is most likely listening or recording the call.