(SOUNDBITE OF PHONE RINGTONE)
DEBBIE ELLIOTT, HOST:
That ringtone always gives me a jolt. Like millions of you, I keep my smartphone on at all times. It wasn't always that way.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: That tone indicates everything is ready for your call. With the receiver off the hook, dial the desired number.
ELLIOTT: As part of NPR's 250th anniversary series, America In Pursuit, we're taking a look back at one of America's most significant inventions - the telephone.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: And this is the ringing signal.
(SOUNDBITE OF PHONE RINGING)
ELLIOTT: The first ever phone call took place in Boston 150 years ago. Since then, the phone has come a long way.
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STEVE JOBS: And we are calling it iPhone.
(CHEERING)
JOBS: Today...
(APPLAUSE)
JOBS: Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone.
ELLIOTT: Today, we live in the world of the smartphone, but none of that would be possible without the original inventor, the father of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell.
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ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL: Hear my voice - Alexander Graham Bell.
ELLIOTT: That's an original recording of Alexander Graham Bell from 1885. He says, hear my voice, Alexander Graham Bell.
Earlier this week, I visited the Smithsonian National Museum of American History to learn more about his invention.
HAL WALLACE: I'm Hal Wallace. I'm the curator of the electricity collections here at the National Museum of American History.
ELLIOTT: Wallace takes me to see one of Alexander Graham Bell's original telephone prototypes.
WALLACE: The electricity collections here dates back to the 1890s in the Smithsonian. And in fact, our first curator, George Maynard, was a business associate of Alexander Graham Bell's, then came over to the Smithsonian to be the curator...
ELLIOTT: Wow.
WALLACE: ...After he and Bell parted ways amicably.
ELLIOTT: So where are we headed?
WALLACE: Well, we're headed over here to an exhibition called American Enterprise. It is about, you know, American business history. So the one we're headed for over here is a magneto telephone, demonstrated by Alexander Graham Bell at the 1876 centennial. And when you speak into the mouthpiece, it makes that diaphragm vibrate.
ELLIOTT: Now, where is the mouthpiece?
WALLACE: That's the black cone-shaped piece on the end.
ELLIOTT: So kind of at the end of this...
WALLACE: Right.
ELLIOTT: ...Funnel-looking thing.
WALLACE: Right.
ELLIOTT: OK.
WALLACE: And the end of that funnel is open. So you speak into it. It makes that diaphragm vibrate. The little metal on the diaphragm interacts with the magnetic field, electromagnetic field, and it creates what Bell called an undulatory current in the wire.
ELLIOTT: Undulatory current?
WALLACE: Yes, his words - goes down the line to a very similar device on the other end, where the reverse basically happens, and you put it up to your ear, and you can hear it speak.
ELLIOTT: What would that have sounded like back then?
WALLACE: Not very loud, for one. It didn't amplify real well. This is a very early piece, so there's still some bugs to work out. Sometimes you really can't make out well what somebody else is saying, and you kind of have to listen real hard to make intelligible speech.
ELLIOTT: So why is this something that we want to highlight as the - America looks at its 250 years of history?
WALLACE: Communications has been one of the most important developments to tie this nation together. The idea of increasing the amount of information you could send over a telegraph line - that, for economic reasons - we call it bandwidth today - is very important. And people like Alexander Graham Bell, Elisha Gray, Thomas Edison, are thinking, you know, how can we send more information down a given telegraph line? And they discover that you can send tones.
Now, most of the folks who are working - swimming in this pond and working in this area are working on telegraph. Not Alexander Graham Bell - he's interested in helping deaf people hear and speak. So Bell is a speech teacher. His father had come up with a method of visualizing speech to help hearing-impaired people.
So Bell is really interested in that application and is really thinking about, can we send voice down a telegraph line in a way that all of the others really aren't? They think, well, maybe we can do it, but it's going to be more of a curiosity than anything else. There's no money there. Well (laughter), they missed the boat on that one. So...
ELLIOTT: 'Cause this was very innovative at the time, right?
WALLACE: At the time, yeah.
ELLIOTT: It changed the way we communicate.
WALLACE: Right. At first, it was intended mostly as a business tool. And in fact, early in the Bell system, when Bell and his backers are setting the system up, they're basically saying, we don't want to clog the lines with frivolous social communications.
ELLIOTT: (Laughter).
WALLACE: Yeah, good luck with that. You know, people like to talk. It's like any other new technology. It's very expensive at first. Business people do adopt it. Wealthy individuals adopt it. And as the system builds out and more and more people adopt them, the costs come down, and you have that development of the wired landline telegraphy system.
ELLIOTT: In the kitchen with a really long cord...
WALLACE: Yes.
ELLIOTT: ...So you could go in the other room if you needed to get away from your parents.
WALLACE: Yes, exactly.
ELLIOTT: Is there someone that you're following today that could be, like, the future Alexander Graham Bell?
WALLACE: The obvious name that comes up is Elon Musk's because he's into so many different things, like SpaceX and Tesla and so forth. He's the person who's most usually mentioned in such conversations like that. Steve Jobs was another.
You know, but as far as, you know, rising inventors today, in a sense, I just sit back, and I wait. This is one where, since historians study the past to understand the present, our crystal balls are about as murky as everybody else's. So we just kind of sit back and watch and see what kind of shows up. Then we start looking at where it came from.
ELLIOTT: Well, thank you so much for introducing us to this important American artifact.
WALLACE: You're quite welcome. Glad to do it.
ELLIOTT: That was curator Hal Wallace at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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