1875 telephone from Boston
All of us have long been accustomed to the fact that we can communicate with each other, being at great distances, in different cities, countries and even in different parts of the planet. In this we are helped by such a means of communication as the telephone. And how difficult it is to imagine that once people did not have such an opportunity at all. After all, the first telephone was invented only 135 years ago.
The very first telephone in the world was invented in 1875 in Boston. Two scientists Alexander Bell and Thomas Waston decided to use a pair of membranes, with the help of which the electromagnets were controlled, which later became the basis of the entire design of the telephone.
First phone device
Since ancient times, mankind dreamed of learning how to transmit information over long distances. The idea of \u200b\u200bcreating a telephone was in the air. Then drums, messengers, as well as various conventional signs, such as the smoke of a fire, the color of the sail, and so on, acted through communication.
The Gallic screamers, arranged in a chain, notified their city of the advance of Caesar's army, while the speed of information transfer reached only 100 km / h. And the medieval buildings of Pskov harbored narrow passages within their walls, with the help of which messages were transmitted and received in their time.
In France, in 1789, the mechanic Claude Chappe proposed to set up towers around the country and install devices made of strips on them that would be visible from a great distance, and light fires on these strips at night. The telegraph operator had to change the planks, focusing on the previous tower, and the next one therefore copied it. Thus, the message was transmitted along the chain.
The use of electricity to transmit sound was first thought of by the American Page. Graham Bell from America and his assistant Tom Watson and Philip Reis from Friedrichsdorf took part in the improvement of this technology.
In 1876, on February 15, Graham Bell patented his invention in the United States - the telephone. And in the same year, on March 10, the first transmission of a voice message was made with its help.
Elena Polenova, Samogo.Net
The life of a modern person is closely connected with mobile phones, and there is a lot of evidence for this. Imagine, for example, the situation that you accidentally left your beloved, irreplaceable and precious smartphone at home. How will you feel at this moment? At least uncomfortable, isn't it? However, there were times when people did not have telephones at all, and not only mobile, but also stationary ones. How did they manage without them? Read in our article.
Life without phones
Some 200 years ago, people did not even know what telephones were. Previously, whistles, gongs, ringing bells and drumming were used to transmit messages over a distance.
However, all these methods were imperfect.
By the way, in order to transmit the signal as far as possible, it was necessary to create intermediate points where people were on duty. In this case, the sound came to the addressee along the chain. We all understand that this was a very long process. Of course, it was possible to solve this problem, for example, to transmit information through water and metal. In this case, the signal would travel faster and decay much later. But for some reason this was not done, at least everywhere.
The invention of the first telephone
We traditionally associate the appearance of the telephone with the name of the American inventor Alexander Bell. The famous researcher actually took a direct part in the development of the revolutionary apparatus. However, other people played a vital role in the creation of the first telephone.
In 1860, the naturalist Antonio Meucci published an article in an Italian newspaper in New York, in which he talked about his invention, capable of transmitting sounds through electrical wires. Meucci called his apparatus Teletrofono. In 1871, he decided to patent Teletrofono, but due to financial problems, he could not do this.
A year later, in 1861, the German physicist and inventor Johann Philip Reis demonstrated his "mobile phone" at a meeting of scientists of the Physical Society. The device could transmit musical tones and human speech over wires. The device had a microphone of an original design, a power source (galvanic battery) and a speaker. Reis himself called the device he designed Telephon. Many sources of the time claim that the first message that the physicist sent on his phone was the phrase "Das Pferd frisst Keinen Gurkensalat" ("The horse does not eat cucumber salad"). The absurdity of this information made it possible to make sure that the words were heard correctly, from this it follows that the transmitter worked as it should.
Despite all these inventions, Alexander Graham Bell still got the pioneer laurels.
So, on February 14, 1876, Bell filed an application with the Washington Patent Office, on March 7, 1876, the American received a patent. He called his device "the talking telegraph." Bell's tube could take turns transmitting and receiving the signal. The American scientist's phone did not have a ring; it was invented a little later, in 1878, by Thomas Watson. When someone called the subscriber, the telegraph began to whistle. The range of such a line did not exceed 500 meters.
Note that Alexander Bell has long been officially considered the inventor of the telephone. And only on June 11, 2002, the US Congress in Resolution No. 269 transferred this status to Antonio Meucci.
Turning a talking telegraph into a landline telephone
Bell's Talking Telegraph went through many metamorphoses before becoming the modern smartphone.
So, in 1877-1878. American inventor Thomas Edison improved the device. He introduced an induction coil into the circuit, and in the microphone replaced the carbon powder with a carbon rod (such microphones were used until 1980). This made communication clearer and louder. Now telephones, unlike public telegraphs, have become household appliances.
In 1878, the first telephone exchange to New Haven. The following year, Paris took over the baton. From 1881 telephone exchanges began to open in Berlin, Riga, and Warsaw. In Russia, namely in Moscow and St. Petersburg, they appeared in 1882.
It should be noted that the first telephone exchanges were manual - the connection was made by a telephone operator. But in 1879, American engineers Connolly and McTight invented the automatic switch. Now people could get through to each other simply by dialing a number.
Early XX century marked by a real telephone boom. All over the world, there was an active construction of telephone exchanges, of which there were more than 10 thousand by 1910, and long-distance lines serving more than 10 million telephones.
It turns out that in just some half a century, the phone has gone from an impossible dream of inventors and enthusiasts to the most massive phenomenon that allows millions of people to communicate at a distance. From that time on, humanity can no longer imagine life without this apparatus. But when did he start turning into a smartphone?
The emergence of mobile phones. The history of the modern smartphone
In 1969, the world leaders in the telecommunications market began to think about improving the wired apparatus. They wanted each subscriber to have his own number, which would be relevant not only in the country where he was issued, but also abroad. Esten Mäkitolo, a graduate of the Stockholm Technical School, was one of the first to come up with this idea. However, for the practical implementation of the Myakitolo concept, powerful technologies were required, which appeared only in the 1980s.
Therefore, it was not until 1983 that Motorola was able to release the world's first cell phone. Although experimental calls from the prototype were made in the 1970s.
It was a tube weighing about 0.8 kg and measuring 22.5x12.5x3.75 cm. The battery allowed to communicate for 35 minutes, but it took a little more than 10 hours to charge it. Of course with modern devices not to compare, but for that time it was a huge breakthrough.
Motorola quickly emerged with rivals, which each time began to release more and more advanced and intelligent models. So, over time, the phone has a calculator, alarm clock, calendar, camera and many other applications and functions. In the 2000s. phones with an operating system began to appear, which turned them into personal computers... Today, using a smartphone, you can not only call a friend or send a message. It's primitive for him. It can communicate with satellites, take large-scale pictures, play music, not to mention reading books, watching movies and multitasking.
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PHONE, if you understand this word literally (tele - far, background - sound), was known long before our era.
The Persian king Cyrus (6th century BC) had about 30,000 people who were called "royal ears". This group consisted of people with a keen ear and a loud voice.
Located on the tops of hills and watchtowers at some distance from each other, they conveyed messages and orders intended for the king.
The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus (1st century BC) writes that in a day, news on such a telephone was transmitted over a distance of thirty days' march.
Julius Caesar mentions that the Gauls had a similar communication system. He also indicates the speed of transmission of messages-100 km per hour.
Bell's ingenious invention
The electric telephone dates back to 1875. Its inventor, Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922), made his discovery almost by accident.
Bell worked on the creation of the multiplex telegraph - a device that would allow multiple telegrams to be transmitted simultaneously over a single wire.
Just before that, in 1866, after several unsuccessful attempts, a transatlantic telegraph cable was laid between Europe and America, and the company that laid the cable was concerned about how to use it more efficiently.
A big prize was announced to anyone who comes up with a way to simultaneously transmit several messages over one wire. Bell worked on the creation of such a telegraph.
Bell's receiving apparatus included several thin, resilient metal plates attached at one end and located above an electromagnet.
The plates were of different lengths, and each of them began to vibrate only at a certain frequency of the current. Currents of different frequencies were obtained using the same plates in the transmitting apparatus - by vibrating, the plates broke the battery circuit.
On June 2, 1875, Bell and his assistant, Watson, were tweaking their devices in different rooms about 18 meters away. Watson, fiddling with the transmitting device, could not release one of the movable contacts, which had been soldered to the fixed one.
At the same time, he accidentally touched other plates, which emitted rattling sounds when touched. Bell, who had a fine ear, heard a light sound in the receiver and rushed into Watson's room.
What were you doing now? he asked his assistant excitedly. Watson explained.
Bell realized that the contact plate in the transmission apparatus worked like a primitive membrane. The plate induced electromagnetic oscillations, which, in turn, entering the electromagnet of the receiving device, made the contact plate of this device rattle.
That same evening, Watson received an assignment from Bell to make a telephone - a device for transmitting sounds over a distance. Therefore, June 2, 1875 can be considered the birthday of the telephone, although a long time passed before the telephone "spoke" for real. For a long time, Bell's phone transmitted only individual sounds and did not want to transmit coherent human speech in any way.
In November 1875, Bell applied for his own. On his phone, the transmitting and receiving devices were identical. The sound vibrations caused the metal membrane to vibrate.
These vibrations changed the magnetic field and created a continuously changing electricity, which went through the wires to the receiving device and caused the membrane to vibrate. These vibrations gave birth to sound. Bell's phone allowed him to talk at a distance of no more than a few kilometers.
Two hours after Bell, another inventor, E. Gray (1835-1901), applied to the patent office with a similar application.
This circumstance later served as a pretext for numerous lawsuits directed against Bell. There were about 600 of them, and Bell won all of them. The newspapers of those years were surprised not that Bell had to defend his invention in so many court hearings, but that he won all these trials, although powerful telegraph and telephone companies opposed him.
It should be noted that Bell submitted his application for a ready-made working device, while E. Gray wanted to patent the idea. On March 7, 1876, Bell was granted a patent, and three days later, the inventor conducted another test of his brainchild, which finally convinced Bell that the device he had created was working.
This time Bell told his assistant on the telephone connecting the apartment to the laboratory in the attic of the same building, “This is Bell. If you can hear me, then go to the window and wave your hat to me. "
The next second Bell saw Watson leaning out of the window, frantically waving his hat. “It works! My phone is working! " Bell shouted happily.
The telephone is one of those technical innovations that were immediately understood and appreciated by contemporaries. A large number of inventors rushed to improve and improve the Bell apparatus.
Suffice it to say that by 1900 the number of patents, one way or another related to the telephone, exceeded three thousand.
Of these, it should be noted: the switchboard of the Hungarian inventor T. Puskas (1877), the microphone designed by the Russian engineers M. Makhalsky (1878) and, independently of him, P. Golubitsky (1883), the first automatic switchboard by K. A. Moscitsky (1887), the first an automatic station for 10,000 numbers of S. M. Apostolov (1894) and the first automatic telephone exchange of a step-by-step system for 1,000 numbers of S. I. Berdichevsky (1896).
As you can see, our compatriots have made a significant contribution to the development of telephony.
Bell lost interest in the telephone shortly after the creation of the telephone and gave others the opportunity to improve and refine his invention. Bell himself took up sheep breeding, aviation and hydrodynamics.
Bell was also very pleased to provide financial assistance to young aspiring scientists - he was now a rich man and could afford it. But even without Bell's participation, his phone made a triumphal march across the planet.
By the end of the 19th century, there were more than one and a half million telephones in the United States alone, and on the day of Bell's funeral, 13 million telephones were turned off for one minute in the United States as a sign of farewell to the great inventor.
This is the story of the invention of the telephone.
The first telephone lines
The first telephone line in our country was launched on June 8, 1881 in Nizhny Novgorod. Its length was 1,550 meters. In the same year, the construction of telephone exchanges began in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Riga and Odessa. The next year they entered service. The stations were equipped with switches for 50 numbers each. 16 switches each were installed in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
The first intercity telephone line in our country was built in 1882 between St. Petersburg and Gatchina (52 km). The following intercity communication lines were built between Petersburg and Peterhof (1883, 25 km) and between Petersburg and Tsarskoye Selo (1885, 28 km).
In the same 1885, the telephone connected Moscow with some of the nearest cities: Bogorodsky (now Noginsk), Khimki, Kolomna, Podolsk and Serpukhov. In 1893 a telephone line was extended between Odessa and Nikolaev (128 km), and in 1895 between Rostov-on-Don and Taganrog (96 km). Finally, in 1898, under the leadership of engineer A. A. Novitsky, a telephone line was built between Moscow and St. Petersburg (660 km).
After the invention of radio by Alexander Stepanovich Popov, a radiotelephone appeared. It was he who made it possible to carry out the first conversation between Europe and America across the Atlantic Ocean.
The first transatlantic telephone cable (TAT-1) went into operation in 1956. Its length is 3,620 km and 102 amplifiers are built into it. Half of them work when transmitting a signal from east to west, the other half in the opposite direction.
In 1959, the second transatlantic telephone cable TAT-2 was laid, and by the end of 1963 there were already five of them. Currently, submarine cables cross the globe in many directions, and their total length reaches 200,000 km.
These days for long telephone connection serve not only wired, cable and radio relay linesbut also communication satellites.
Such, say, as the Soviet satellite of the Molniya series. The first Molniya was launched on April 23, 1965, and by now several dozen artificial satellites of the Molniya-1 and Molniya-2 types have been in orbit.
These satellites are intended for long-distance radiotelephone communication, and for telegraph, and for phototelegraph, and for relaying television programs on the "Orbit" system.
Over the past decade, our earthly telephone has also undergone noticeable changes. Telephone communications have become automatic everywhere, the era of "telephone ladies" is over.
Automatic long-distance communication and even international communication have already become commonplace. And behind this is not only the introduction of automatic machines for connecting subscribers, but also a sharp increase in the number of channels on long-distance communication lines.
Because only with a large number of free channels, you can count on dialing the desired number in another city and do without endless busy signals. Modern coaxial cable allows you to conduct almost 100 thousand conversations simultaneously.
And there may be completely new types of fiberglass cables ahead. These are "wires" for laser beams, with the help of which it will be possible to simultaneously transmit up to 100 million two-way telephone conversations.
The telephone network itself is constantly expanding, the number of its subscribers is growing. In our country alone, more than a million new devices are added annually. Telephone communication is penetrating more and more remote corners of the globe, and experts believe that by the year 2000, it will be possible to call any country, to any city in the world from any telephone set using automatic communication.
The ability to contact family and friends at any moment seems natural to us today, like breathing, but this was not always the case.
Even mobile phones became widespread no more than 15-20 years ago, and wired telephones appeared a little over a hundred years ago. Do you know who invented the telephone and what year it happened?
In almost all modern textbooks and encyclopedias, the American Alexander Bell is named the inventor of the telephone. However, this is not entirely true: Bell was just the man who was able to first patent the telephone, and this happened in 1876.
The real inventor is Antonio Meucci, who was born in Florence, Italy, who later moved overseas and settled in the United States. He founded the first factory in the world to manufacture paraffin candles, but later became interested in the idea of \u200b\u200btransmitting sounds over long distances. His work progressed successfully, and already in 1860 the inventor showed the public a device that he called a telelectrophone. It used the principle of converting sound waves into electromagnetic waves and vice versa, which later formed the basis of all telephones.
Unfortunately, soon after the demonstration of the new invention, disaster struck, and the designer went to bed for a long time. During this time, his factory went bankrupt, and in order to somehow live, his wife had to sell some devices made by Meucci, including a telephony. Later he was able to restore his invention and in 1871 tried to get a patent for it. However, due to extreme poverty, Meucci could not pay for the services of the patent office, and soon died in poverty and obscurity. Only in 2002, justice was restored, and the US Congress recognized the Italian émigré Antonio Meucci as the inventor of the telephone.
Few people know that the first mobile phone was created in the USSR in 1957. It consisted of the telephone itself and a base station, which was connected to an ordinary city GTS. The telephone set weighed about 3 kg, and Leonid Kupriyanovich became its inventor. The designer continued to work on his own development, and by 1961 the weight of the handset was reduced to only 70 grams. The distance between the handset and the base station reached 80 kilometers on level ground. In 1957, the inventor received a patent for his development under the number 115494. 
The disadvantage of Kupriyanovich's device was the small number of phones that could connect to one base station. Their number was limited by the number of frequency channels allocated to the station. According to the inventor, in order to cover the entire area of \u200b\u200bMoscow, it would be required to install no more than ten base stations... Subsequently, on the basis of the development of Kupriyanovich, since 1965, the Bulgarian enterprise "Radioelectronics" has been producing mobile mini-automatic telephone exchanges for 15 subscribers. They were used mainly at large construction sites as departmental communications.
The inventor of the world's first cell phone is Motorola employee Martin Cooper. He made the first copy of the telephone mobile communicationsacting on cellular principle, in 1973. The device weighed over a kilogram and was later named Motorola DynaTAC. There were only 12 buttons on the handset, of which 10 were numeric, and the other two were used to call and to end a conversation.
The first cell phone did not have a display, and the battery provided no more than an hour of talk time, but it was charged for 10 hours in a row. Until 1983, Motorola had released five different prototypes of the DynaTAC phone. The first cell Phones went on sale in 1983 under the name DynaTAC 8000x. They sold for $ 3995, which was quite large sum, but the queues for their purchase reached several thousand people.
The first telephone equipped with touch screen, was manufactured in 1993 by employees of the famous computer corporation IBM. It was called the IBM Simon, and its black and white screen was controlled by a stylus, although some operations could be performed with your fingers. The phone weighed about 0.5 kg.
The battery charge lasted only an hour of talk time or 8-10 hours of standby. Although the novelty aroused the interest of buyers, the excessively high price and frequent breakdowns of the gadget quickly brought it to nothing. The production of the IBM Simon was soon discontinued.
As you know, iPhones are produced by the American corporation Apple, which has gained popularity due to its non-standard and high-tech solutions. The main generator of ideas at Apple since its inception was the legendary computer scientist and entrepreneur Steve Jobs, creator. In 1999, Jobs came up with the idea that the company, in addition to computers, should make the best mobile phones in the world. He came up with the concept of the iPhone, but the idea was realized only in 2005 together with Motorola specialists. 
First apple phone called Purple-1, it was a symbiosis of a telephone and an audio player. It did not receive the expected popularity, but the Apple team continued to work, and in 2007 in San Francisco the iPhone was first presented to the public, which later became the iconic phone. Today, millions of people around the world are happy owners of iPhones.
With the history of the creation of the telephone (from the Greek "tele" - far away and "background" - sound), as well as with other great discoveries, many disputes, ambiguities and misunderstandings are associated. Despite the fact that Alexander Bell is considered to be the creator of the telephone, in fact, several people approached its opening almost simultaneously. German inventor Johann Philip Reis at a meeting of the Physical Society, held in 1861 in Frankfurt am Main, made a report about a wire device he had created for electrical transmission of sound over a distance.
But since this device, called Reis a telephone, poorly conveyed the tone and greatly distorted the timbre of sound, contemporaries recognized it as a "useless toy". Another 15 years passed, and two Americans simultaneously discovered the "telephony effect." One of them was Elisha Gray, the other was Alexander Bell. And both of them filed applications for the invention of the principle of telephony on the same day - February 14, 1876, although neither one nor the other had a working telephone set at that time. It so happened that only 2 hours of difference brought Bell fame, money and world recognition, and Gray - a humiliating lawsuit and oblivion.
A native of Scotland, Alexander Graham Bell, who worked in Boston with hearing-impaired and speech impaired people and in 1873 became a professor of physiology at the university of this city, by the nature of his work, he had to know good acoustics and, moreover, have an acute hearing.
Once, when his assistant was pulling a plate from the transmitter, Bell was able to catch a barely noticeable rattle. Subsequently, he found out that the plate closed and opened the electrical network. So, by pure chance, the “telephony effect” was discovered, which literally turned the world upside down.
Soon the first telephone set, a leather membrane fitted with a horn to amplify the sound, was ready. At first, he transmitted only the recognizable sound of the voice, and only three days after receiving the patent, on March 10, 1876, Bell managed to modify the apparatus in such a way that it transmitted individual words.
The demonstration of the telephone made such a strong impression on the American business community that this circumstance allowed the inventor not only to found his own Bell Telephone Company, but also quickly turn it into a prosperous concern.
In 1877, the world's first telephone line connected the office of the American businessman Wildes in Boston with his apartment, and a year later, the first telephone exchange was installed in New Haven.
Undoubtedly, the telephone sets of that time were still far from perfect. So, to be heard on the other end of the line, the conversation had to be conducted, to put it mildly, in raised tones, which negatively affected the confidentiality of communication, and the range of the device was less than 250 meters. Realizing this, Bell, in search of ways to improve his brainchild, decided to use the one created by the American inventor of English origin D.E. The Yuzom compressed coal transmitter is a microphone, with which he was able to significantly increase the range, and most importantly, the sound quality.
In 1878, Thomas Edison created a fundamentally new type of telephone, introducing an induction coil into the ready-made circuit, the combination of which with a carbon black microphone made of pressed soot made it possible to significantly improve the quality of communication and ensure sound transmission over a considerable distance.
However, the improvement of telephone communication entailed the need to solve other problems. Of great importance for their resolution was the telephone exchange scheme, providing for the principle of power supply from a central battery, proposed in 1885 by the Russian inventor P.M. Golubitsky (before that, the food was "local" - each device had its own battery). This system made it possible to create central telephone exchanges with tens of thousands of subscriber points.
Another, no less important aspect of the operation of telephone networks was the switching of subscribers. Since the connection was made manually, clients could wait for hours for a conversation, therefore, it became necessary to create an automatic connection. And in 1895 our compatriot M.F. Freudenberg, after unsuccessful attempts to do this in Russia, proposed the design of the automatic telephone exchange, equipped with a device developed by him for the automatic search of the called subscriber (predsector), in England. And the world's first operating automatic telephone exchange was built in 1896 in the American city of Augusta.
In Russia, the first telephone conversation took place in 1879 on the St. Petersburg - Malaya Vishera line. Although, of course, at the end of the 19th century, having a permanent telephone connection was an unthinkable luxury that only very rich people could afford, this is why the first telephone lines were exclusively commercial. So, for example, one of the first to appear was a civil telephone line, which in 1881 connected the Georgievskaya pier and the apartments of the managing directors of the Druzhina shipping company in Nizhny Novgorod. Its length was 1,547 meters. The first city telephone exchanges began operating in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Odessa and Riga in 1882.
In December 1898, the grand opening of the longest in Europe and the first in Russia intercity line Moscow - Petersburg took place. The station serving this line is located in the Central Telegraph Office on Myasnitskaya Street, which exists in the same capacity to this day.
Since the introduction of telephone communication in Russia did not proceed at a very active pace, the government did not seek to invest in the development of a new type of communication. In 1881, he approved the "Basic conditions for the arrangement and operation of urban telephone communications in Russia", which stated that both the construction and operation of telephone lines were entrusted to investors for 20 years - the period specified in the document. At the end of this, everything built became the property of the state. As a result of the ensuing twists and turns, the rights to build a telephone network in Russia were acquired by Bell's International Telephone Company, which became a "telephone" monopoly until 1901. Over the entire 20-year concession period, Bella provided telephone exchanges with thunderstorm protection devices and made some improvements to the switching system. But in any case, by the end of 1901, the balance of the Petersburg telephone network consisted of 3.8 thousand subscribers, the Moscow one - 2.9 thousand. By 1914, these figures were respectively - 49.8 thousand and 44.3 thousand.
The handset consists of two elements - a loudspeaker (speaker) and a microphone. Although recently, thanks to the use of semiconductor electronic technology, which minimizes the number of parts and the size of the device itself, a dialer is also placed on the handset. The upper part of the tube, "responsible" for reproducing the interlocutor's voice, contains a dynamic loudspeaker with a moving coil, the vibrating membrane of which converts changes in the electrical signal into sound vibrations of the air. A microphone, mounted in the bottom of the tube, converts sound vibrations into electrical ones. In phones, where sound quality is not as important as, for example, in sound recording devices, two types of microphones are mainly used - carbon and electret. In an electret microphone, sound vibrations change the capacitance of a capacitor, one of the plates of which is a sensitive membrane, while the action of a carbon one is based on a change in the electrical resistance of carbon powder, which is affected by a sound-sensitive membrane. In our country, they followed the path of using a carbon microphone, but in Japan and in America, since the 50s of the last century, only electret ones have been used. I must say that the electret microphone is technically more advanced - it is much more compact than the carbon one, gives a cleaner sound and is less sensitive to shock. For both types of microphones, the electrical output is analogue: it is proportional to the varying volume of the sound.
A standard telephone set consists of a housing, a handset, and wires connecting them. Inside the plastic case there is a call circuit and a dialer connected to it, partially looking outward, on the outside of which there are a toggle switch and a dial (or buttons) for dialing.
The transmitting and receiving elements (microphone and loudspeaker) of the handset have two output copper wires connected to the four inner copper conductors of a spiral cord that connects the handset to the body of the telephone set.
Dialing of subscriber numbers is carried out both by pulse and tone methods. Pulse dialing is sent from machines that are primarily equipped with a rotary dial, although there are some push-button phonessending impulses - in this case, at the moment of dialing, we hear clicks equal in number of digits that make up the called number. But lately, devices with touch-tone dialing are much more widespread. When dialing tones, sounds of different heights are heard, to which the station reacts, making the necessary connection.
The basis of the operation of each telephone set is its connection with the automatic telephone exchange, on which the state of the hook switch of the subscriber's device is continuously recorded. If the line is free, the call signal is automatically sent using a call, but if it is busy, the subscriber is notified about this by a familiar intermittent signal. A continuous readiness signal heard in the receiver at the moment of its removal is evidence that the connection between the telephone set and the PBX is established, but if there is silence in the receiver, then communication may be absent for three reasons: interruptions in the operation of the PBX, malfunction of the device or the arrears in payment of telephone services.
Rotary dial telephones are true "veterans" of telephone history, serving people faithfully since 1896. Buttons appeared only in 1963, becoming an object of constant improvement and expansion of the capabilities of the services provided by telephone exchanges. Today, tone-on-tone button dialers, in addition to the long-familiar number buttons, also have additional ones that are designed for special types of service. With their help, you can, for example, set an automatic set of the most frequent or emergency calls, and also put the call on hold or redial the desired number.
2. The first telephone exchanges.
Until the introduction of automatic telephone exchanges (ATS) in 1930, subscribers were connected manually at the first telephone exchanges (TS). Several telephonists, equipped with a so-called headset (a set of headphones and a microphone), made hundreds of manual calls day and night. In 1910, each of them had from 160 to 170 calls per hour. Since the position of a telephone operator was considered quite prestigious at that time, the selection rules were extremely strict. Only girls were accepted into the service (and without the right to marry), who were tall and had an arm span of at least 154 cm (in order to reach the connecting nests). They also had to have good memory (to remember the names of subscribers, their positions and titles) and know foreign languages. The main requirements for them were: under no circumstances to leave your workplace, not to be rude to clients and not to show your own helplessness in front of an avalanche of calls. At the same time, they were entitled to a day off only once a month. But, despite all the precautions, there were failures and errors in the work of diligent telephone operators, since there was an unimaginable noise at the stations and there was simply no way to concentrate.
3. Payphones.
The first payphone, or payphone, was demonstrated in 1890 at the World's Fair in Paris. And in the same year, the first public payphone was installed in the American city of Hartford. The controller was charged with collecting fees for using this innovation. Russia "acquired" such devices much later - they appeared in Moscow in 1909 (26 payphones - within the city and 17 outside of it), and in St. Petersburg at the very beginning of the 1910s. After 2-3 years, their number increased almost 3 times, and by 1915 reached 93.
Despite the growing popularity of these convenient devices, the business of their implementation was significantly complicated by the fact that city phones were willingly ... stolen, which led to the fact that one day they began to be chained, and the Telephone Society "entered into an agreement with the guards to monitor telephone booths ". Over time, the situation returned to normal and pay phones became an integral part of city streets. Their number was constantly growing, and by 1938 it was decided to install the so-called payphone five hundred - special kits for connecting payphones at Moscow automatic telephone exchanges. At the same time, the first payphone telephone office was opened on the capital's Serpukhovskaya square. common use... By 1941, 2775 public telephones had been installed, and to date, the payphone network of OJSC MGTS numbers about 25,000 devices.
For more than a century of existence, payphones have advanced far ahead, although the task that was entrusted to them at the dawn of universal telephony remained the same - to provide communication far from the place where there is a landline home or work telephone. The most sophisticated of them are equipped with a lot of possibilities - from sending faxes to Internet access.
True, Russian citizens have not yet been spoiled by the availability of such a range of services, but everything goes to the fact that in the coming years street telephones will not only become as comfortable as possible, but will also be able to provide us with all the necessary list of communication services that meet the requirements of the 21st century. The first step towards this kind of modernization of the domestic park of payphones was the transition to a card service system, although along with chip cards and STK cards (service telephone card), token and coin payphones still exist in Russia, moreover, almost 60% of domestic the park of payphones accounts for obsolete equipment. However, according to the concept developed by the Ministry of Communications, which provides for the further modernization of the payphone, by the end of 2002 in each Russian region a 5% acceptance of the ETC, or the Unified Telephone Card, designed to provide a universal service mechanism throughout the country, should be provided. In addition, it is planned to withdraw from circulation the old models of payphones, such as AMT-69, as soon as possible, to modernize the later ones and constantly introduce new, much more advanced ones, since the domestic developers of the Telta plant have already created a payphone that meets modern requirements - TMGS -15280V.6.
4. Fax communication
The modern fax machines, which almost all offices are equipped with today, have nearly 160 years of history behind them. This means that the first fax machine, born in 1843, was 33 years ahead of the invention of the telephone. The principle of operation of this apparatus, created by the Scottish inventor Alexander Bane, was that it read the text written with the help of embossed metal letters and then transmitted it over telegraph wires.
In the 30s of the XX century, facsimile (from Lat.fac simile - do something like that) machines became widespread in the work of state and police institutions, as well as in publishing, but they all worked on the basis of the telegraphic principle of information transmission, and only in In 1966 the Japanese company Xerox released the first fax machine (Magnavox. Telekopier-Fax), using a telephone line to transmit information. For that time, this innovation became a real sensation, although modern man it is already difficult to imagine that then one page of text was transmitted within 4 - 6 minutes.
As these devices improved, the transmission speed increased, albeit rather slowly: in 1974, one page could be received in 3 minutes, in 1980 - in one and only faxes of the last generation, depending on the model, are capable of transmitting a page in the range from 6 to 1.7 seconds.
And the cost of the fax machine has undergone significant changes during this time.
If the most advanced fax machine, manufactured in 1882, was sold for $ 20,000, now the most expensive machine can be purchased for $ 1,000.
The evolution of fax standards is as follows: the so-called Group 1 (the first internationally accepted standard) entered into force immediately after the introduction of telephonic fax by Xerox in 1966, Group 2 in 1978 and finally the last one, Group 3 , the fastest and highest quality in terms of transmission black and white images and which is generally used to this day, in 1980.
5. Radiotelephones.
The world owes the emergence of this type of telephone communication to the Americans. Back in 1921, the Detroit police used a mobile one-way radiotelephone (in the 2 MHz band) to transmit operational information from the central control room to the receivers that were equipped with police cars. The further development of this type of communication followed the path of an exclusively special, or departmental, application. The mass distribution of radiotelephony received only by the 70s of the last century, when it became possible to provide automatic transmission of information in both directions (earlier information was transmitted alternately - from one side to the other, moreover, using manual switching), and the range by that time was already 450 MHz. A little later, the so-called "home" wireless radiotelephones were introduced into practice, which made it possible for a person to move freely around the apartment.
The quality and range of radiotelephone communication is largely determined by the operating frequency used. Therefore, radiotelephones have also gone through their evolutionary path from initially analog modes of operation (transmission and reception occurs with the help of an electrical signal that changes in accordance with the audio frequencies of speech) to digital. And this was due to the fact that the massive use of radiotelephones led to a significant congestion of the air, and the vulnerability from unauthorized connection of unauthorized persons to the radiotelephone could not be discounted. This means that it was necessary to increase the frequencies and master new ranges. The use of modern microelectronics has made it possible to create fundamentally new models of digital radiotelephones (the speech signal is converted into digital for transmission over a digital voice channel), in particular DECT (Digital Enhanced Cordless Telehpone - Digital Enhanced Cordless Telephone), operating in the 1880-1900 MHz range. The range of operation of devices of this standard almost completely eliminates all kinds of interference, and the exchange constantly occurring between the handset and the base security code makes connecting as well as listening telephone conversation almost impossible.
6. Answering machine.
Initially, it consisted of a cassette recorder, a control device and a unit for matching the input and output of the recorder with a telephone line. But over time, cassette answering machines were replaced by digital ones, which allow you to "memorize" incoming messages in digital form in memory chips. The latter are much more compact, reliable, durable and easy to use than their predecessors. The message is played back within a few seconds by simply pressing a button, if necessary, you can delete it entirely from memory, or you can save the fragment you are interested in, you can also change the playback speed. The combination of an answering machine with a caller ID, in the event that the caller does not want to leave information, makes it possible to find out who still wanted to contact us.
7. Videophone.
Such a novelty in the field of opportunities provided by telephone communication, as a video telephone, appeared in Europe in the 60s of the last century, but it took another 30 years for such devices to become sufficiently widespread. In fact, this is the same phone, only equipped with a built-in screen, which allows you not only to hear your interlocutor, but also to see him. To do this, a television camera built into, say, your telephone set, generates a signal of your image, after which it is displayed on the screen of the device whose owner you decided to call. At the same time, you can call in this way to places of any distance. These phones also allow you to record the resulting images on video, as well as play it on the TV screen. Such a "presence effect" is convenient not only in everyday life, when communicating with people who are at distant distances, it is extremely necessary if you need to be present at some important meeting, and you, due to circumstances beyond your control, can't do it. The high cost of videophones (about $ 700) does not yet allow Russian citizens to consider them as an object of everyday use, but everything goes to the fact that in the near future they will become an integral part of our life.
8. Modem.
Back in the mid 70s of the last century, the process of computerization of society went so far that it became necessary to urgently solve the problem of exchanging information over long distances. There were two ways to solve this problem. The first is to create a dedicated cable network, the second is to use telephone lines. The second was much more reasonable and economically more profitable, but the matter was complicated by the fact that until 1975 in the United States of America there was a ban on connecting any equipment other than telephone equipment to telephone lines. The situation was saved by the Federal Communications Commission, which lifted this restriction. So the modem saw the light. This device was designed to transform digital signal computer to analog signal telephone line, that is, Modulate, as well as carry out the inverse transformation, that is, DEModulate, hence the name.
The purpose of the modem is to connect one computer to another through local area networks (LAN), and to connect to others using the telephone network computer networks, including with the system email... With its help, you can correspond with people from the most different countries the world, get the latest news, download computer programs, and receive and send faxes.
9. IP telephony.
The principle of operation of this technology is based on converting voice signals into compressed data packets, sent to another subscriber via dedicated communication channels using IP protocols (in particular, the Internet is based on this protocol), and then decoding them back into voice signals.
Using digital format and dedicated channels provides high quality communication, increased security and privacy. Unlike conventional telephone communication, IP telephony does not require an extensive PBX network and special communication lines between them, moreover, by compressing voice signals to the maximum, it allows maximum use of the capacity of telephone lines.
Since this method of connection does not involve the telephone operator of long-distance or international communication, the cost of a minute of conversation is reduced several times.
In addition, you can call any phone directly from your computer by installing a special software and equipping it with a sound card, microphone and speakers or headphones.
The system of automatic identification of the number (ANI) of the calling subscriber, which is necessary to automate the access to long-distance, and then to international communication, appeared in the middle of the 70s of the last century. This system, installed at telephone exchanges, made it possible to determine the number from which a long-distance or international call was made in order to bill the subscriber for it. Such a convenient function could not but remain unclaimed in ordinary life, and therefore already in the early 90s telephone sets equipped with the caller ID function for individual use appeared on sale.
This device, being connected to ordinary subscriber lines, allows you to determine the number of the calling subscriber in the same way as it happens on a PBX.
And if initially caller IDs were specialized and complex devices, then with the advent of inexpensive and sufficiently powerful microprocessors digital processing incoming signal has become a public feature for every subscriber.
Although, do not forget that this function additionally loads the telephone network, which means that you need to pay for it separately.
Some types of caller IDs can be combined with a computer, as well as forward to mobile phones those calls that are heard at home in our absence. And this is clearly not the limit of their capabilities.
11. Telephone expansion. Moscow
1882, July 13 - the day of the foundation of the Moscow city telephone network. Opening of the first manual station in house number 6 on Kuznetsky Most
1895 the first subscriber list was published, including 1,741 users
1911 the right of the Russian government to buy out the Moscow telephone network came into force
1916 there were 3.7 telephones per 100 city residents
1917, November 14, the central telephone exchange was captured by the revolutionary troops
1924 relay automatic telephone exchanges were installed, designed to service 200 numbers in the Kremlin and 20 numbers in the scientific and technical department of the Supreme Council of the National Economy
1935 installation of telephones was completed at all metro stations operating at that time
1941 as a result of fascist air raids, 5 automatic telephone exchanges and 5 city substations were damaged. Technical documentation and personal files of employees of the Moscow City Network destroyed
1947 a general scheme for the development and reconstruction of telephone communications in Moscow was developed
1953 The Moscow City Executive Committee banned the acceptance of new buildings into operation without telephone inputs
1961 in connection with the monetary denomination, coin-operated telephones were re-equipped for a new 2-kopeck coin
1968 the entire city network was transferred to 7-digit numbering
1972 Creation of the MGTS dispatch service to monitor the uninterrupted operation of the network during off-hours
1985 in one of the Moscow apartments installed 3 millionth telephone set
1994 for every 100 Moscow families there are 97.7 telephones
2001 the 10 millionth payphone card was released. MGTS payphone cards began to be accepted in St. Petersburg, Tver and Sochi
2002, July 13 - the 120th anniversary of MGTS was celebrated
