A Call That Made History, 100 Years Ago Today 51
alphadogg writes These days, making a call across the U.S. is so easy that people often don't even know they're talking coast to coast. But 100 years ago Sunday, it took a hackathon, a new technology and an international exposition to make it happen. The first commercial transcontinental phone line opened on Jan. 25, 1915, with a call from New York to the site of San Francisco's Panama-Pacific International Exposition. Alexander Graham Bell made the call to his assistant, Thomas Watson. Just 39 years earlier, Bell had talked to Watson on the first ever phone call, in Boston, just after Bell had patented the telephone.
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Maybe he highlighted the first two paragraphs then clicked the middle button (:
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Why the upside-down smiley face?
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That's the style these days.
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That's the style these days.
I was into upside down smiley faces before we even knew what they were.
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Back in my day upside down smiley faces were used by left handed people.
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Back in my day upside down smiley faces were used by left handed people.
I thought that was called "The Stranger"...
or was that just right handed people using their left hands?
Done without negative feedback (Score:5, Interesting)
Notably, this was accomplished before the negative feedback amplifier [wikipedia.org] was invented in 1927.
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Negative feedback was known about at the time.
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C'mon, Murray. That's not so.
What about ordinary criminals -- the kind who get their revenue without requiring you to do paperwork -- muggers and burglars and such?
Re:Done without negative feedback (Score:4, Funny)
Negative feedback amplifier?
Is that what a person upmodding a troll AC post is? ;)
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An amp with degenerative feedback has less gain. I don't understand the connection?
This type of amplifier was known but rose to popularity only with the rise of solid-state circuits because of the transistor's problems with thermal runaway. Especially perplexing comment because it's just becoming (begrudgingly mine you) acknowledged that what looks nice and linear through a simulated resistive load on a piece of paper becomes notably non-linear through an actual, complex load. A long cable is a complex load
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What it loses in gain it gains in bandwidth: While the gain-bandwidth product is a constant, one may trade gain to obtain bandwidth. In addition, the bandwidth was settable by external components, rather than by the parasitic reactances inside the tube (valve) itself -- an important property given the (relatively) short lives of the tubes, and the manufacturing variations between different copies of them.
Negative feedback was very popular with vacuum-tube (valve) amplifiers of the 1930s and 1940s, for jus
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Does this mean that Alexander Graham Bell made the very long range call to his assistant in 1915, but that until 1927 it was just a bunch of garbled noises that no else but the assistant could understand?
Hopefully, AT&T will jump on that expired patent. It would be nice if AT&T allowed its cell phones to do the same thing by year 2027
They should've made the call in Panama (Score:2, Funny)
The historical date of the first transcontinental call could've been many years earlier.
First ever phone call? Doubt it (Score:5, Interesting)
However, the Canadians got really mad about it... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... [wikipedia.org]
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Canadians can approve any motion they want, that doesn't magically change the fact that Meucci invented the phone way before Bell.
By the way, Meucci's wikipedia entry was clearly edited by some canadian trolls: since in his patent caveat he says "sound" but not "voice", then he didn't invent the phone. LOL! No better proof that wikipedia is becoming trashier every day, it's time to stop donating money.
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I rarely see people do this. Are you the type of guy who would blow somebody away for texting the babysitter during the trailers
After the patent? (Score:4, Insightful)
really? He patented it before ever testing it? Same shit, different millennium, eh?
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That's bound to happen when you ask government for everything from education to health cost, retirement fund and even jobs and training.
People in 1700s didn't fight over a few jobs left - they created it. They didn't need the government to babysit them. We all do now and that's what we end up.
It will get worse and worse.
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But making a long telephone transmission is much more difficult than making a long telegraph transmission, which just needs to determine whether the guy on the other end is charging or discharging the cable at any instant. Bandwidth, and all that?
Re: BOO to a DOUCHE (Score:2, Funny)
Tesla didn't do squat when the Martians invaded Earth. Edison commanded a fleet of electric ships armed with disintegrator beams and kicked their asses.
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So you insult the guy who used science to invent stuff that is practical and has in general enhanced our lives.
While you fully support a guy who had difficulty making a device that can be used.
Now don't get me wrong, I look up to Tesla as the better scientist. But Edison had the vision to use science to solve problems. Yes He made money from it. But I wouldn't say he is a sell out, he started inventing stuff as a way to make money.
The Bell Telephone: Patent Nonsense? (Score:5, Interesting)
Bell's telephone sketch [sciencephoto.com]
Elisha Gray's sketch of a telephone [visualphotos.com]
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Then as it is now, technological progress was a full-contact sport.
Re:The Bell Telephone: Patent Nonsense? (Score:4, Funny)
"On May 22, 1886 .. Zenas F. Wilber, a former Washington patent examiner, swore in an affidavit that he'd been bribed by an attorney for Alexander Graham Bell to award Bell the patent for the telephone over a rival inventor, Elisha Gray, who'd filed a patent document on the same day as Bell in 1876." ref [washingtonpost.com]
Bell's telephone sketch [sciencephoto.com]
Elisha Gray's sketch of a telephone [visualphotos.com]
You have to admit, both of thoes were pretty sketchy.
It's nonsense all right, I'll grant you that. (Score:4, Informative)
On May 22, 1886 .. Zenas F. Wilber, a former Washington patent examiner, swore in an affidavit that he'd been bribed by an attorney for Alexander Graham Bell to award Bell the patent for the telephone over a rival inventor, Elisha Gray, who'd filed a patent document on the same day as Bell in 1876.
But read on...
His October 21, 1885 affidavit directly contradicts this story and Wilber claims it was ''given at the request of the Bell company by Mr. Swan, of its counsel'' and he was ''duped to sign it'' while drunk and depressed. However, Wilber's April 8, 1886, affidavit was also sworn to and signed before Thomas W. Swan. These conflicting affidavits discredited Wilber.
Elisha Gray and Alexander Bell telephone controversy [wikipedia.org]
There were 600 lawsuits over Bell's patent, none successful, and a bad smell about the business from the start.
Others also laid claim to inventing versions of the telephone, including a Mr. Rogers, manager of the Pan-Electric Telephone Company. Rogers distributed his company's stock to members of Congress, including Senator Garland, (soon to become Attorney General) in the unstated hope of favorable treatment. If the Bell patent were to be invalidated, the Rogers patent and the Pan-Electric stock could become very valuable.
On This Day - February 13, 1886 [nytimes.com]
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Bell did NOT invent the phone. (Score:1)
And neither did Elisha Gray.
The phone was invented in 1860 by Johann Phillip Reiss, a german self-taught engineer and scientist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Philipp_Reis
Want to guess ... (Score:3)
Notable achievement, but hardly revolutionary (Score:2, Interesting)
With all due respect to the accomplishment, recall that transcontinental telegraphs had been operating for over half a century prior to this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Transcontinental_Telegraph), and the transcontinental telephone was strictly a wealthy person's luxury at the time, with a 3-minute call costing USD $20.70 at the time (worth something on the order of USD $400 in today's currency)...
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so, they weren't using their own network.. they were roaming on verizon's?
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Yes, transcontinental, as in, "across continent." Perhaps you are thinking of intercontinental ("between continents")?
Boston University professor ... (Score:1)