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The First Phone Call Was 133 Years Ago
magacious writes "March 10 is the 133rd anniversary of the first telephone call. It occurred between Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant Thomas Watson back on this day in 1876. But there is some debate about whether Bell is actually the rightful owner of the crown for such invention. Having worked on the idea of transmitting speech using electricity for some time, Bell filed his patent on 14 February 1876, either just before or just after his main rival for the title of inventor of the telephone, Elisha Gray, filed his own. Bell won the patent and Gray died in obscurity."
was using his electromagnetic telephone to talk to his wife from his basement lab to their second-floor bedroom in 1856.
Of course, the light bulb was only invented in 1879.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
How amazing, dont you think? Can you believe how far we'v...[NO CARRIER]
Hello, hello.... anyone there?
NO CARRIER :)
Some of the latest research into Bells own lab notes is showing that he saw Grays pre patent applications for a liquid based microphone before hand. In fact what gave it away was his (Bells) notes are an exact copy of Grays patent that and the fact Bell never even looked at this type of configuration until he went to Washington then changed his research completely.
The reply: I, for one, welcome my now slightly distant overlord
If he's the Walrus then can I be a penguin please?
To hearing "the call to the number you have requested can not be completed at this time" or "the number you have dialed is out of network or turned off".
Every problem has a solution that is simple, easy and wrong. Selling our Liberty for a little Security is a much too de
is such an important number that it's worth a news story by its own
started "can I speak to Mr Alexander Bell" .... Hello Mr. Bell, how are you today. I wonder if you would take a few minutes to answer some questions ... hangs up in disgust
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Watson, come here. I need you.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Er.. no. Patents are good. It's only *some* patents that aren't, like software patents, and generally all obvious patents granted by shitty examiners.
The fact that Bell was able to patent his invention means that (1) he was able to profit from it, and (2) his invention was fully disclosed and available to the rest of humanity.
In short, patents are a good thing. Don't mindlessly follow the Slashdot groupthink please...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Bell was a fucking faggot for not making encryption part of his specification.
Shoulda read TFA first, what a ... Anyhow, does anyone know about Roentgen and Bucky? I heard that something similar went down on the priority, but it's a little too obscure.
The fact that Bell was able to patent his invention means that (1) he was able to profit from it, and (2) his invention was fully disclosed and available to the rest of humanity.
But as the summary implies and history records the patent application in this case was a race to the patent office. Several people had developed working telephones at that point.
So while it is good that Bell benefited from this invention it is bad that other inventors did not.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
If I remember correctly, Elisha Gray's patent application for this was one of several that he submitted that day, only a few hours after Bell's went in.
Please remind us next year again, as 134 is a highly significant number for me.
Paul Beardsell
> So while it is good that Bell benefited from this invention it is bad that other inventors did not.
There was no need for him to profit, given the large amount of people inventing the concept, the idea was not non-obvious, and as such would have become public knowledge in the short term anyway.
Thus the patent, particularly since it was wrong anyway, only served to add cost and hinder innovation. It was of advantage only for Mr. Bell and of a disadvantage to all of society, or in other words the exact opposite of what patents were supposed to be.
This is a classic example why patents are bad. When the time is ripe for a technology to emerge it will emerge in several people's minds and not just in a lone genius' mind. This is called progress and mere progress should not be patented. There are no inventions but there is progress.
Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer. - Ludwig von Mises
They gave it to him instead of others who developed a phone, because they thought history would prefer that somebody named "Bell" invented the telephone, like how Sir Thomas Crapper is credited with inventing the flush toilet even though he really didn't invent it.
---------
There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
I don't think that's really the the point. The patent system isn't about making inventors money, its about providing them a monetary incentive for invention. As long as the potential for profit is there to be chased it doesn't really matter who gets it (within reason of course).
Anyone else suprised kdawson posted this article? Yeah, me neither. Starting reading, realized the article was crap (and even if it wasn't, what's so special about 133?), though, "who posted this crap?.. it couldn't be...yeah, kdawson figures".
Yeah, Gray sure died in obscurity but still manages to send out a press release every year to make us remember.
Some might say Gray is still with us.
How about just give them money then? You don't have to give them a monopoly.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1156061&cid=27145551
In many cases the reality is that new things were invented by many people working in parallel and sharing the use of public knowledge. It might be better if patents recognise this by being granted to multiple people.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Call me again in five years.
When it's 3213 then it may be considered 'news for nerds'... otherwise it's just the aniversary of the phone...
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
That's Mr. Watson to you, ya little whippersnapper!
And where does this money come from? Certainly not from a sense of entrepreneurship.
And tomorrow marks the 133rd anniversary of the first telemarker.
-David
Wait. Are you trying to tell us that Alexander Graham Bell was also secretly Sherlock Holmes?!?
How could he have died in obscurity if we're discussing him today? I'm still trying to find out who, from the US, invented the automobile (according to Obama). Now, *THAT GUY* died in obscurity.
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
But I WAS FIRST POST!
Sincerely,
Elisha Gray
rewriting history since 2109
I mean, if it were 128 years, sure, that would be newsworthy but what's special about 133 years?
At the time patent duration was shorter, per the patent act of 1790, and was decided by a board, not to exceed 14 years. In addition, it wasrequested that you have a working prototype of your invention that you could demonstrate for the patent office for the purposes of the parent examination process. There were other hard requirements: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_Act_of_1790.
So it's a little disingenuous to claim this as an example of why patents are a bad thing.
-- Terry
Suprised this doesn't have a patent troll tag. Obviously that practiced started very soon.
...who also invented an early telephone. In 1861!
Watson, come here. I need you.
"Oh Mr. Bell, you have no idea how long I've been waiting to hear you say that!"
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
Bell. Well, we did it Watson. What an afternoon. We finally perfected the first telephone.
Watson. Yeah, uh, hey listen, somebody called me today. Uh, whoever it was, said some very sexual things, very angry, sexual things.
Bell. Oh, really? Probably just some teenagers somewhere...
Why a race to the patent office? If working telephones already were developed he could have called!
What you're implying is that there is no way that two scientist could invent the same invention simultaneously, without one copying the other. (When in fact this has happened numerous times) Why is it in your opinion that the other scientist should be unable to profit from his invention?
Someone making fun of TWSS...
If the reason for granting patents is to generate innovation for the betterment of society, the money will come from the betterment of society.
We will be more wealthy as a society because of the innovation. Our businesses will have to compete to stay ahead, but every worthwhile invention will receive funding.
Of course, there's no reason for the patent office to grant patents so quickly anymore. And the focus on innovation will move to supplying the item to market, rather than simply controlling a monopoly.
Steven Landsburg had an idea I liked to solve that.
It works on the theory that the entire value of a patent comes from the extra money you will be able to charge so it essentially comes from all of society.
What you do is instead have government buy the patent at a fair market price and make the results public domain.
Since society saves the money on the purchasing part, the tax dollars are a wash, and as an added benefit to society at large the idea is truly open to be built upon. Also, it avoids the potential for getting burned with a submarine patent.
As for determining a fair market price, this is done with a public auction where all interested parties can blind bid for the rights, with the government purchasing at the second highest bidders bid only 3/4's or 9/10's of the time. The rest of the time, the highest bidder gets to buy the invention.
This allows for there to be private interests to help determine what a fair price is for the invention, and still keeps the majority of patents open for all.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Leonardo da Vinci built the first telephone. Unfortunately, it took somebody over 400 years to build another one, during which time poor Leonardo had nobody to talk to.
Of course, Leonardo being dead for the last 300+ of those years, it would have been a rather one-sided conversation anyway once Bell/Gray/wotsizname finally got connected.
Not exactly.
I know a friend who is an inventor.
His thinking is very different and his inventions are also quite different - and which I feel are very good for the society.
Now, he is pursuing his inventions just because of the concept of patent. He is not at all a businessman - he is extremely shy and does not speak to anyone. So if concept of patents are not there, he would not even pursue his inventions because he is sure to lose out in the game.
Even now, somebody might make a fool of him, but atleast he has the hope to make money using his inventions. Such people would lose out - and thereby the society - if patents are removed.
Yeah? Well the rest of you can GET OFF MY LAWN!
What?
As long as the potential for profit is there to be chased it doesn't really matter who gets it (within reason of course).
It matters a lot. Different inventors have different abilities to turn the idea monopolised by a patent into reality.
If Elisha Gray invented it first, then who was phone?
I like this story. See, I married into the family... Mr. Watson is my wife's great great grandfather. He left his family with an estate in New Hampshire which we go to every year and in this estate there are 2 telephones. An interesting family tradition in her branch of the family is to give the male children the middle name of Watson. Anyway, to place a call, you crank a generator which causes a bell to ring at the other end of the line, then the person at the other end of the line picks up and the call is connected.
Today we all have cell phones (and ironically, the cell phone reception isn't that great - verizon or AT&T - we brought an iPhone last summer to the estate, and it browsed the web painfully slowly - a 28K modem with AOL and all the ads would beat it), but how many people can say that they have talked on a phone made by hand by the inventor of the telephone in this day and age where cell phones can make video calls and store books and play video games and browse the web?
No, I'm sure it was:
"This is the second notice that the factory warranty may be expiring on your car!....."
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
You completely missed the points _of this case_:
1) Bell was not the only one, so even among the _inventors_ the majority lost _due to patents_
2) Since there were others doing the same thing there would have been others doing the invention anyway.
So if your friend is doing something unique, the original idea of patents still applies and my post says nothing against them.
If however your friend does the same kind of stuff another thousand to hundred-thousand people are doing at the same time, then honestly it would probably be better for all including him if he stopped, or at least he would know for sure he could actually make use of his invention in the end and wouldn't have to pay royalties just because someone else was a minute faster.
That was the point of my post, and I think you missed it completely.
I think because it keeps wealthy people from dominating the arena. If someone creates a product or process and it is free to be duplicated by anyone, people with more capital will always be able to run those people out of business. By providing rights to production you allow those people who developed the idea to get some head start on building on their idea.
Now we see the violence inherent in the system.
Bell: Hello, Watson?
Other person: Oh I'm sorry, I think you have the wrong number. What did you dial?
Bell: Three.
Other person: Ah, this is two.
Bell: Oh, simple mistake to make, sorry to bother you.
*hangs up*
Homonyms are fun!
You're driving your car, but they're riding their bikes there.
I love how everyone loves to paint poor Elisha Gray as this hard working guy, but, he was actually by no means a poor man himself. He had a nice little business that he sold to Western Union for a healthy chunk of change. Viewed in that context, what we're really talking about here is the then giant Western Union, via Elisha Gray, versus the then tiny Bell, fighting over the telephone. If anyone was the "tiny" guy fighting the system at that time, it was in fact, Alexander Graham Bell!
This is my sig.
So far it looks like the companies with thousands of patents get to prevent the one person with a few good ideas from actually making stuff. Because that one person is likely to have to infringe on something in order to make stuff.
And those companies that have thousands of patents, if those companies actually make stuff themselves, they are also vulnerable to extortion from companies that just own patents and don't make any stuff.
Because companies that don't make any stuff, won't infringe on any patents, so they don't need to cross license.
That's what actually is happening.
Whereas with my prize based idea, the inventor doesn't really have to care if China copies his invention, in fact if a bunch of factories in China copy his invention and millions more people benefit from it, that just makes him more likely to win a Prize for Innovation (public award) - since it increases the odds of people voting for his invention.
I sumbmitted the story four times but it was rejected.
It sounds more like a problem with the use of law in dealing with patents than that actual patents themselves. Similar to filing frivilous lawsuits to stop activties someone is against. It is not the legal process but the use of it that causes problems. Also, where does this prize money come from and would it be of sufficient size to provide the drive for innovation? I admit I have little understanding of patent law so that lack may be keeping me from understanding fully these ideas.
Now we see the violence inherent in the system.
...in this case was a race to the patent office...
Just a note that, in theory, there should never be such a thing as "a race to the patent office" in the United States, since the U.S. uses a "first to invent" patent system, not a "first to file" like most other countries. In other words, it doesn't matter if you file your patent before I do, if I can demonstrate that I started working on it before you did, the USPTO will (in theory) determine that the patent rightfully belongs to me.
That's what all the talk of "prior art" is about.
. . . about a decade later in a letter to Bell's father-in-law.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
As I said, you still have to register your invention to be eligible for the prize.
See: http://www.uspto.gov/go/fees/
Lotteries and bookies are familiar with the concept. They manage somehow, some even make money in the process.
And some companies might even sponsor an endowment or even the prizes every year.
Sure inventors or the companies they work for won't get billions of dollars in prize money. But should they need or get that in the first place?
The marketing budget for US drug companies tends to be bigger than their R&D budget. So I'm sure they and other companies will manage somehow. I also doubt Intel will stop investing in R&D if AMD et all can copy what they do (it's not so trivial to copy Intel even if you can read their inventions and patents - you can't reproduce their entire fab).
Whatever it is, we will need something else assuming an increasing rate of invention - the current patent system won't scale well. As the number of specialized fields increases it'll be harder and harder for an examiner to work out whether a patent should be granted or not.
Of course if we are assuming the rate of invention stagnates or even declines, then that's different. I hope that's not what we're planning for.
And furthermore, have you stopped beating your wife yet?
"idk, my bff jill?"
they say it is often more relevant then the comment above, all we know is its called the Sig!
But didn't Tesla come up with the concepts of both the telephone and radio and all Bell really did was just get the first patent?
I love phone.
I had to part with that promiscuous whore, lamp.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Randall Stross , Silicon valley historian and NY Times technology columnist, wrote an interesting biography of Edison a few years back. He compared Edison [favorably] to modern Silicon Valley entrepenuers.
With regard to telephones, Edison was obssessed with increasing telegraph line capacity. He invented several multiplexing schemes. One scheme would transmit/decode messages at different frwquencies multiplexed on the same line. His competitors made the conceptual leap of using ALL frequencies to transmit the voice instead of clicks. At least Edison developed the first useful microphone for the telephone then.
Another multiplexing scheme pre-recorded telegraph messages which would be played across the liens at superhuman speeds, recorded at the other end, then played back slow enough to transcribe. The turned into the more successful audio record player then.
More than one person inventing or discovering something at (roughly) the same time does not immediately make it obvious. If you look at the amount of time spent developing the first telephones, how to construct a working telephone was not an obvious matter, even among practitioners of the art.
Surely they can't be any less clueless then the last administration, dick head.
To commemorate this historical event, it appears AT&T knocked out all the phones here at work....
Had to unplug the Adtran unit for about 20 seconds to hard reset it, to get the voice T1 circuits to come back up again.
"obvious" in terms of patents does not mean "you do not need to work hard". It means there is no or no substantial "creative" part involved so that basically every skilled person could have come up with it if they had invested a similar amount of effort. :-P
There is no need for special incentives if there are many thousands of people who can create it, because it _will_ happen.
Giving out 15 years of exclusive use to get something maybe two years earlier is rarely a good deal. Particularly since you might actually get that thing a few years later, because people do not want to cooperate because with patents there can be only one winner.
If your goal is to reward people for doing hard work, using patents to do that is idiocy, as this example could not show more clearly, probably the person who did the least work got _all_ the reward. I can't imagine someone would claim this to be fair, I claim it to be even more unfair, particularly since without patents Bell could have more easily acknowledged the work others have done and how he profited from it.
Or to put it a mean way: don't come with the "think of the inventors!" argument, that might work out just as badly as the "think of the children!" actionism
It wasn't Elisha Gray either, it was actually Daniel Drawbaugh. And yes I'm related to him. http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WMMBG Of course everyone would know this if he wouldn't have lost the patent case.
How good can it be, if it isn't HD?
that will come 1,204 years from now. foolish n00bs :D
..it was a wrong number.
"But this one goes to 11!"
So...what are you wearing?
Perhaps if there was no race to the patent office, telephones would have taken another 10 years. Perhaps those people only spent all that time on it because they wanted the patent.
Or perhaps it only took them so long because there was a race to the patent office (assuming there actually was one, I am not sure on that) and thus could not share information?
Also I think your argument assumes that getting a patent was basically the only really relevant reason to work on a telephone.
Otherwise people would not spend that little time on it so that it would take 10 years more.
In addition it's also not like they would have done nothing useful if they had not worked on the telephone, and if they had not seen any value in working on the telephone without the chance for a patent it seems unlikely that other thing would have been completely worthless.
Gray and a Bell exec named Barton got together after Grey's Western Electric was bought by ATT, and set up the wholesale telco business Graybar to supply equipment to the Bells and the independents.
he didn't get the patent, but he didn't camp out by the side of the railroad tracks, either.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Doesn't have a nice "ring".
I read "133rd" as leerd.
The fact that Bell was able to patent his invention means that (1) he was able to profit from it, and (2) his invention was fully disclosed and available to the rest of humanity.
In this situation (and perhaps most), it appears that Bell and many others were working on this and the discovery was inevitable. Thus, Bell won the lottery, but this fact probably provided no gain for society at all. Even the disclosure parts sounds pretty useless--since it was a discovery whose time had come, it would have popped into common knowledge quite rapidly.
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
I always liked the I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue joke about the first telephone. They were doing famous people's answerphone messages. Here's Alexander Bell's:
"Hello, this is Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the first telephone. If you've invented another telephone, please leave a message after the beep."
Was asking Watson if he wanted to change his long distance carrier....
The Centennial Exposition was our coming-out party.
It's heart and soul the grand Corliss steam engine which powered the exhibits - a breath-taking 45 feet high and with a flywheel 30 feet in diameter.
Eliza Gray was an electrical engineer of national reputation, an inventor with a huge and lucrative patent portfolio.
Doesn't it seem at least passing strange that he should appear as a mere spectator at so extraordinary an event?
Eakins is there with "The Gross Clinic."
Remington his typewriter. Edison his phonograph...
But in Philadelphia Eliza Gray is caught - quite literally - standing in the audience when Bell takes the stage.
Bell's demo microphones are electromagnetic. Bell's production microphones are electromagnetic.
Bell is stringing a ten mile test line in August. The first Bell exchange opens in New Haven in 1878.
Gray understands promotion. He understands the ground game. He has Western Union at his back.
If he has a telephone -
What the hell is he doing those two years?
They don't care. They don't have to. They're the Phone Company. Just ask Ernestine!
Program Intellivision!
Alexander Graham Bell:
Well, we did it Watson. What an afternoon. We finally perfected the first telephone.
Thomas Watson:
Yeah, uh, hey listen, somebody called me today. Uh, whoever it was, said some very sexual things, very angry, sexual things.
Alexander Graham Bell:
Oh, really? Probably just some teenagers somewhere... damn them.
Thomas Watson:
Well, well that's, that's the thing. I mean, there's, there's only two phones, in the, well, in the world and one of them is in my office and the other one is in your office and those two didn't even exist until a few hours ago.
Alexander Graham Bell:
Yikes, I could use a distraction right now.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
Bell wasn't first, first was Jara Cimrman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jara_Cimrman). ;-)
Er.. no. Patents are good. The fact that Bell was able to patent his invention means that (1) he was able to profit from it, and (2) his invention was fully disclosed and available to the rest of humanity.
Yes, patents are good for 'inventors' like Bell but bad for real inventors like Meuci who couldn't afford them.
k007
He certainly had the right name http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Allbutt
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
The pinball machine and Q-Bert. Now you tell me he invented the car too?
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
You people are making way too big of deal out of this... the guy that invented the telephone is not the guy that deserves all the celebration; it's the guy that invented the second telephone.
Don't feel to bad for Elisha. He was part owner of the Graybar Electric Company. Which today is still one of the largest suppliers of electric and voice data supplies who still today suck up large amounts of money for over priced items. It was that money he used to try and patent the telephone.