Alexander Graham Bell invented a technology that would later bear his name. But how much did he deserve it?
The problem that Bell solved was to turn electrical signals into sounds.
Philip Reis had already designed a sound transmitter in 1860, and Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz had already built a receiver. Bell's real contribution was "to vary the strength of the current to capture variations in voice and sound," Lemley writes.
He was racing against Thomas Edison. Even Bell's final product -- which combined transmitter, fluctuating current, and receiver -- had company.
26
94 reads
The idea is part of this collection:
Learn more about technologyandthefuture with this collection
Understanding machine learning models
Improving data analysis and decision-making
How Google uses logic in machine learning
Related collections
Similar ideas to TELEPHONE
The next idea to explore was finding a way to transmit sound to far distances. Alexander Graham Bell laid out the underlying technology for electromagnetic telephones and was granted a patent in 1876 for his improvements in telegraphy.
This introduced a new problem: what if you were not av...
Read & Learn
20x Faster
without
deepstash
with
deepstash
with
deepstash
Personalized microlearning
—
100+ Learning Journeys
—
Access to 200,000+ ideas
—
Access to the mobile app
—
Unlimited idea saving
—
—
Unlimited history
—
—
Unlimited listening to ideas
—
—
Downloading & offline access
—
—
Supercharge your mind with one idea per day
Enter your email and spend 1 minute every day to learn something new.
I agree to receive email updates