Hello, welcome to the fourth weekly reflection on my blog. This week, we had to look into the CBC archives to find an archive that related to our podcast topic. With my podcast topic being about technology, I looked into the technology category to try and find something that related to my podcast topic. I found something that caught my eye called “Transatlantic phone cable officially opened”.
This archive was about the first telecommunications between Britain and Canada across the ocean. It was an audio clip of a special radio program featuring Queen Elizabeth and John Diefenbaker. They had a short discussion on the phone and Queen Elizabeth brought up the point that this new technology will bring Great Britain and Canada Together. That had me wondering, who created very first telephone?
The first telephone was created by a man named Alexander Graham Bell in 1876. He first started working on a device called the harmonic telegraph which was a device that allowed for multiple messages to be transmitted over a wire. After he completed his device, he immediately patented his invention. A few days later, he made the first-ever phone call with his partner Watson.
In 1887, Alexander Graham Bells’ company “Bell Telephone Company” was created. Today, that company is known as AT&T. Along with that, in 1915, Alexander Graham Bell made the first transcontinental phone call to his partner Watson from New York to San Francisco.
After that, the phone started showing up as a novelty item that only kings and queens had access to. Now, everyone in the world has a phone in their pockets. In 1998, there was one phone for every man, woman, and child in the U.S.
Overall, I now better understand how important the telephone was to the world. It connected the world and open opportunities for many new ideas. Along with that, I now better see how the telephone has advanced and changed throughout the decades. It evolved in stages from the harmonic telegraph to a candlestick telephone that was able to make calls across the ocean, to a small device that fits into your pocket. Without the telephone, we wouldn’t be able to efficiently communicate with different people around the world like we can today.
