History of Telephone :Īlexander Graham Bell was born in Scotland on 3rd March 1847, belonging to a decent educational background and his knowledge towards sound and acoustics helped in the development of the telephone. And launched the Bell Telephone company in the year 1877 and had more than 18 patents for his work in communication and invention. Alexander Graham Bell is the first person who’s interested in sound technology led him to the invention of Telephone. But in the rumble and clatter of these old machines, you can glimpse a piece of how America got to where we are now - an age of smart phones, TikTok and AI.One of the finest inventions in the past, which has greatly impacted our present and future and has connected people across border and nations. The people working here say there's graceful engineering woven into a lot of these machines, important ideas that were almost lost. 'Folks who worked on these systems were highly skilled and highly trained at understanding this complex web of interrelationships.'

'I fell in love with it because it's a beautiful machine,' Autumn says.

Like Amstein, Autumn works in Seattle's tech industry.Īsked why she spent hundreds of hours of her spare time bringing this device back to life, she talks about it not like a broken appliance, but like a work of art. 'It took me about a year just poking at it before I could even begin to understand it in any real depth.' Sarah Autumn, a volunteer at the Connections Museum, helped restore the complex panel switch phone system, the last of its kind operational in the world. As Amstein dials a rotary phone, the Strowger switch registers little blips of sound, counts them and makes connections with amazing accuracy.

The device whirrs to life, sounding sort of like a drummer tapping out a beat on a cymbal. 'When I pick up the phone here, one of these machines springs into action,' he says. Inventors then started coming up with steam age machines that could also listen and make connections much faster.Īmstein demonstrates one of the earliest, most durable devices, known as a Strowger switch, invented in the late 1800s by an undertaker in Kansas City, Mo. Tinkerers find ways to automate a growing system Not practical if you want to connect thousands, then hundreds of thousands of people. 'The microphone was here, and she could hear the sound of the bells.'Ĭlever but super slow. TremaineĪt first, the technology allowing women to run the network was improvised from stuff inventors found lying around, often as simple as musical chimes or bells.įor the first generation of payphones, for example, women operators listened to musical notes rung by different-sized coins as they were dropped into the slot. Public pay phones worked on a musical chime system that allowed operators to tell whether you had paid enough money to make your call. 'This is a high tech startup story, only it's 120 years old now,' Amstein says. It's a Willy Wonka's factory of clattering gizmos, many invented by steam age eccentrics and tinkerers who managed to connect an entire world. This is a place where self-described technology nerds such as Amstein are preserving and restoring machines that ran America's first landline telephone network. 'But there are definitely some things that will give you a fairly unpleasant zap, so do be a little cautious about what you touch.'Īmstein works in Seattle's tech industry, but in his spare time he's a lead volunteer, tour guide and board president of the group that runs the Connections Museum. 'There are exposed electrical terminals, probably nothing will kill you,' he says. TremaineĪs Peter Amstein squeezes through a warren of equipment racks draped with wire and crammed with whirring machines, he offers a cheerful warning. Peter Amstein, a volunteer who serves as president of the Connections Museum board, says early phone technology shaped his IT career.

Who invented the first telephone