Gadgets

The First Ever Concept Sketch Of The Telephone Turns 135-Years-Old Today

135 years ago today, Alexander Graham Bell was awarded a patent for what would eventually become known as the telephone (one of his minor inventions among many others, NBD). This is one of the first sketches that led to his Eureka! moment, complete with a description of what it was:

As far as I can remember, these are the first drawings made of my telephone—or “instrument for the transmission of vocal utterance by telegraph.” -A. Graham Bell

It’s a bit strange to imagine the telephone being such a foreign concept to people. Hopefully I live long enough to experience about an equally mind-blowing innovation. [Library of Congress via The Atlantic]

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(3 Comments)
  • [–]

    BigPete

    Tuesday, March 8, 2011 at 8:07 PM

    Not really eureka as he was simply the first to successfully register a patent for a device many people had been working on for some time http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_telephone

    Reply
  • [–]

    Bob

    Tuesday, March 8, 2011 at 9:57 PM

    Hope the iPhone drawings were better.

    Reply
  • [–]

    case

    Friday, March 11, 2011 at 11:06 AM

    “Hopefully I live long enough to experience about an equally mind-blowing innovation.”

    Yeah that internet thing isn’t mind blownig at all, just a massive network of interconnected devices that has changed and is changing the way we communicate forever.

    Reply

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