1876-1877

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• 1876
  

  

  Elisha Grey
  • Bell files his patent application. First telephone patent (U.S. No. 174,465) allowed and issued to Bell on March 7th.
    • Elisha Gray files a patent application 3 hours after Bell.
    • Over 600 patent suits filed during the next 11 years. All settled in Bell's favor. Bell offers his patent to Western Union for $100,000. See story below.
    • March 10th, Bell speaks the first complete sentence transmitted by variable resistance transmitter ... "Mr. Watson, come here. I want you!"
    • Bell lectures on and exhibits telephone apparatus at the Society of Arts, Boston; the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Boston and the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition.
  • The world's first long distance telephone call (one-way) was received at Paris, Ontario by Bell from his father and uncle at Brantford, Ontario over "borrowed" telegraph lines.
  • Gardiner Greene Hubbard, one of Bell's financial backers and sharer in Bell's patents, offers to sell the telephone invention to Western Union Telegraph Company for $100,000. Western Union refuses the offer.
    

    

    Alexander Graham Bell, his wife and daughters, with Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Melville Bell and Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner Greene Hubbard on porch at Manchester-by-the-Sea
  • Swedish telecom equipment manufacturer Ericsson established. LM Ericsson 100 år, 3 volumes, 1976, ISBN 91-7260-064-0, in Swedish. Ericsson 100 Years, 3 volumes, 1977, ISBN 91-7260-065-9, English translation of the previous. John Meurling, Richard Jeans, The Ericsson Chronicle. 125 years in telecommunications, 2000, ISBN 91-7736-464-3 John Meurling, Richard Jeans, Ericssonkrönikan. 125 år av telekommunikation, 2000, ISBN 91-7736-480-5, Swedish translation of the previous
  • A telegraph cable from Australia to New Zealand is laid by EEA&C (cf 1873).
  • Centennial International Exhibition is held in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The main attractions are George Corliss' great steam engine and Bell's telephone.
  • The world's first two way long distance telephone conversation over an outdoor wire (borrowed telegraph line) takes place between Cambridgeport and Boston, Massachusetts between Bell and Watson.

            In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell and his financial backer, Gardiner G. Hubbard, 
            offered Bell's brand new patent (No. 174,465) to the Telegraph Company - the 
            ancestor of Western Union. The President of the Telegraph Company, Chauncey M. 
            DePew, appointed a committee to investigate the offer. The committee report 
            has often been quoted. It reads in part:

            "The Telephone purports to transmit the speaking voice over telegraph wires. 
            We found that the voice is very weak and indistinct, and grows even weaker 
            when long wires are used between the transmitter and receiver. Technically, 
            we do not see that this device will be ever capable of sending recognizable 
            speech over a distance of several miles."

            "Messer Hubbard and Bell want to install one of their "telephone devices" in
            every city. The idea is idiotic on the face of it. Furthermore, why would any
            person want to use this ungainly and impractical device when he can send a
            messenger to the telegraph office and have a clear written message sent to any
            large city in the United States?"

            "The electricians of our company have developed all the significant improve-
            ments in the telegraph art to date, and we see no reason why a group of out-
            siders, with extravagant and impractical ideas, should be entertained, when 
            they have not the slightest idea of the true problems involved. Mr. G.G. 
            Hubbard's fanciful predictions, while they sound rosy, are based on wild-eyed 
            imagination and lack of understanding of the technical and economic facts of
            the situation, and a posture of ignoring the obvious limitations of his device,
            which is hardly more than a toy..."

            "In view of these facts, we feel that Mr. G.G. Hubbard's request for $100,000 
            of the sale of this patent is utterly unreasonable, since this device is inher-
            ently of no use to us. We do not recommend its purchase."

• 1877
  

  

  Thomas A. Edison, 1878. Photo courtesy of U. S. Department of Interior, National Park Service, Edison National Historic Site.

• • Bell attempts to use telephone over the Atlantic telegraph cable. The attempt fails.
  • Western Union has first telephone line in operation between Somerville, MA and Boston. These were the first telephones rented for business use, on a private line.
  • First service rental paid for telephones (private use) in Charlestown, Massachusetts ($20 for 2 Telephones for 1 Year).
  • The telephone business is formally organized with the drawing up of papers to form the Bell Telephone Company.
  • First Bell Stock Issue of 5,000 shares to seven original stockholders. Alexander Graham Bell (10), Mabel G. Bell (1497), Gardiner G. Hubbard (1387), Gertrude McC. Hubbard (100), Thomas Sanders (1497), Thomas A. Watson (499) and Charles Eustis Hubbard (10).
  • December 6th, the first phonograph recording is made by Thomas Edison,who recites the nursery rhyme "Mary Had A Little Lamb."
  • The Bell Telephone Company is formed by inventor Alexander Graham Bell and his financers Gardiner Hubbard and Thomas Sanders. (cf 1875)
  • December, Stockholm's first few private telephone lines are installed. The first two lines connected the private home of Henrik Tore Cedergren (cf 1883) with a jewelery shop on Drottninggatan, and the city gas works with the gas reservoir at Klara sjö.
  • December 8, opening of an inter-colonial line, 2532 km long. Congratulatory messages were keyed along the single iron wire linking the colonies enabling Western Australia to be in telegraphic communication with the rest of the world.
  • December 7, at the offices of Scientific American magazine, Edison demonstrates his improved phonograph, using a cylinder wrapped with tinfoil instead of wax-coated paper.
  • July, inspired by Bell's telephone and his own telegraph signal recorder, Thomas Edison invents the phonograph, a predecessor of the gramophone. The first recording of the human voice is the words "Mary had a little lamb". Despite the inspiration from Bell's electric device, the phonograph was purely mechanic. Earlier inventions could trace sound waves, but Edison's phonograph was the first that could reproduce or replay the recording. Suggested reading: David Morton, Off the Record. The Technology and Culture of Sound Recording in America, Rutgers University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-8135-2746-5 (cloth), ISBN 0-8135-2747-3 (paperback)
  • August, a Norwegian engineer, Jens Hopstock, makes the first demonstration of Bell's telephone in Drammen, Norway and Stockholm, Sweden. Two Swedish companies, Joseph Leja and Numa Peterson, starts to market telephones imported from the USA. Lars Magnus Ericsson, who started a telegraph equipment repair workshop the previous year, bought a few samples for experiments and made a few copies.