The Telephone And How It Works

Definition of a telephone– A telephone, technically, is a device that is able to transmit sounds over a distance by the use of electricity, The word telephone comes from the Greek words “tele” which is Greek for “afar”, and “phone” which is Greek for “voice”. Official dictionary definition of what is meant by telephone is “an apparatus for reproducing sound, especially that of the voice, at a great distance, by means of electricity; consisting of transmitting and receiving instruments connected by a line or wire which conveys the electric current.", and “An instrument that converts voice and other sound signals into a form that can be transmitted to remote locations and that receives and reconverts waves into sound signals.”

Telephones make use of electricity in order to transmit and receive sounds, They work by the use of vibrations. Specifically, when someone talks into the microphone part of the telephone (transmitter part), their voice makes the carbon diaphragm vibrate, which results in making the electricity that runs across the connecting wires vibrate, and when the electricity reaches the receiver end it makes the carbon diaphragm at the receiver's end vibrating and thus duplicates the original sound.

Originally the diaphragms within telephones'  were made out of carbon, but the telephones we use in the modern era use two different devices for the transmitting telephone and the receiving telephone. The telephone that is transmitting sound uses electret microphones, whilst the receiving telephone uses piezoelectric transducers. The way the modern telephones work is essentially the same as their ancestors with the use of vibrations, but in the modern telephone, when the transmitting phone is spoken into, it causes a thin metal coated diaphragm to vibrate, which creates variations in the electric field across a small air gap which lies between an electrode and the diaphragm. On the receiving end, the receiving telephone then translates the mechanical stress of the sound waves into varying electrical signals. 

The transmission of messages across a wire – For this to occur, humankind needed to master the art of electricity, otherwise there could be no thought of ever being able to create a telephone system. The first ever successful transmission of electricity over a wire occurred in 1729, by one Stephen Gray, a Chemist from England. In 1746 came up with a means for storing electricity. This was the achievement of one Peter Van Musschenbroek of the Netherlands, and Ewald Georg von Kleist of Germany. The idea that electricity might be used for the transmission of messages came up in an article published in 1753 in a magazine called the Scot's Magazine. The author was anonymous. The first successfully produced battery came in 1800, by one Alessandro Volta. These battery could hold the electricity for a lot longer period than the electricity storage device produced by Stephen Gray, which could only hold the charge for a few days. Electromagnetism, the key to developing electrical power and creating the ability for communication, came in 1820, and was the brain child of Christian Oersted of Denmark. Michael Faraday back in 1821 created the first electric generator which allowed the conversion of mechanical energy to electrical energy. The proof that electricity could be used for communication came in 1830, when Professor Joseph Henry of the USA successfully produced the first electrical signal. This led to the first true telecommunications system, created by Samuel Morse of the USA in 1837.