As the words ”Mr. Watson, come here. I want to see you.” on March 10, 1876 were spoken into the telephone the rest was history. After the telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell it was used for communication “across and between major cities”. Cities beginning to use this technology could only talk over a short distance until the callers voice was lost completely.
The fix to this problem would reveal itself as Sir John Ambrose Fleming invented the vacuum diode in 1904. Even though the vacuum diodes were invented it would be a few more years before they are implemented in aiding telephone conversations over long distances. These vacuum diodes made it possible for long distance calls because when the diode is placed on telephone line it self it amplifies the signal allowing it to travel a longer distance. This made possible the first trans-continental phone call, placed in 1915 by Alexander Graham Bell from New York, NY to San Francisco, CA. Even as developments were being made to improve the telephone, there were still many limitations.
At first every caller had to talk to an operator to route their call to the person they wanted to talk to. But in 1919 switchboards and dial telephones were introduced to the public allowing for “customers to place calls without an operator.” The rotary dial telephone was used because it interrupted the signal within the telephone wire, which enabled customers to call a certain number. Each number listed on the phone was represented by a certain number of interruptions in the signal within the telephone line. Up until 1920 telephone lines were only able to handle one call at a time per line, but during 1920 an idea called frequency multiplexing was invented and put into use. Frequency multiplexing allows for multiple calls on a single telephone line, which allowed for a greater volume of calls. As the telephone’s popularity increased the major telephone companies began to implement the numbering system we are all familiar with today.
The system is called the North American Numbering Plan and was implemented in 1947, but did not take full affect until 1951. The first three letters refer to the area code, the next three are the prefix, which narrows down the area even further, the final four digits are the direct line to the telephone the person is trying to reach. The plan today includes 19 countries, including the United States. 1951 is also the year long distance was made available without going through an actual human operator, otherwise known as direct dialing.
In 1949 AT&T introduces the model 500 telephone, which is the standard rotary telephone everyone knows. Shortly after, in 1956, the first Transatlantic telephone cable was installed between Nova Scotia and Scotland. This allowed for “telephone service between North America and the United Kingdom.” With the development of the telephone and all of the services along with it millions of people’s lives were forever changed.
The telephone at the turn of the century allowed people to communicate like never before. Before the telephone there was the telegraph, which still took time to deliver the telegraph by hand to the person. Now people could communicate in an instant and actually have a conversation instead of sending a telegraph or a piece of mail to the person and having to wait.
Since the telephone was a newly popular item some marketing gimmicks were done to boost the use of the telephones. Some of the gimmicks were “wake-up calls and telephone-delivered sermons.” And like every new technology the price in the beginning was rather staggering, but as the years progressed the prices fell. At the turn of the 20th century, “the Bell system charged $99 per 1,000 phone calls… by the early 1920’s a flat monthly residential rate of $3 was typical.” As the telephone spread some people were scared the “community ties and old forms of civility were fraying.”
As for marketing of the telephone itself it changed as trends in marketing changed. When the telephone was invented it was right around the time particular brands began to come about. The telephone companies at the time, two of which were AT&T and Bell Telephone System, like a lot of the companies in the early days of the brand wars relied on hard-selling because everyone that bought their product wanted to know what it could do for them. So the companies had technical information about their product in the ads they produced and what it specifically could do for you. Then as time went on the marketing switched to soft-selling. Soft-selling happened when brands were becoming established and more common place in the work place and home as well. This allowed for the companies to move away from what the product could do for you to marketing towards the person themselves.
In a way the telephone did not need any marketing in the beginning for the simple fact that it had changed to way we live. And the concept of the telephone changed very little during this time because the telephone was invented to speak to someone over a distance and that is it, nothing else. Now today it is a very, very different story.
Works Cited
“Telephone Timeline”. November 23, 2008 http://www.greatachievements.org/?id=3625.
The fix to this problem would reveal itself as Sir John Ambrose Fleming invented the vacuum diode in 1904. Even though the vacuum diodes were invented it would be a few more years before they are implemented in aiding telephone conversations over long distances. These vacuum diodes made it possible for long distance calls because when the diode is placed on telephone line it self it amplifies the signal allowing it to travel a longer distance. This made possible the first trans-continental phone call, placed in 1915 by Alexander Graham Bell from New York, NY to San Francisco, CA. Even as developments were being made to improve the telephone, there were still many limitations.
At first every caller had to talk to an operator to route their call to the person they wanted to talk to. But in 1919 switchboards and dial telephones were introduced to the public allowing for “customers to place calls without an operator.” The rotary dial telephone was used because it interrupted the signal within the telephone wire, which enabled customers to call a certain number. Each number listed on the phone was represented by a certain number of interruptions in the signal within the telephone line. Up until 1920 telephone lines were only able to handle one call at a time per line, but during 1920 an idea called frequency multiplexing was invented and put into use. Frequency multiplexing allows for multiple calls on a single telephone line, which allowed for a greater volume of calls. As the telephone’s popularity increased the major telephone companies began to implement the numbering system we are all familiar with today.
The system is called the North American Numbering Plan and was implemented in 1947, but did not take full affect until 1951. The first three letters refer to the area code, the next three are the prefix, which narrows down the area even further, the final four digits are the direct line to the telephone the person is trying to reach. The plan today includes 19 countries, including the United States. 1951 is also the year long distance was made available without going through an actual human operator, otherwise known as direct dialing.
In 1949 AT&T introduces the model 500 telephone, which is the standard rotary telephone everyone knows. Shortly after, in 1956, the first Transatlantic telephone cable was installed between Nova Scotia and Scotland. This allowed for “telephone service between North America and the United Kingdom.” With the development of the telephone and all of the services along with it millions of people’s lives were forever changed.The telephone at the turn of the century allowed people to communicate like never before. Before the telephone there was the telegraph, which still took time to deliver the telegraph by hand to the person. Now people could communicate in an instant and actually have a conversation instead of sending a telegraph or a piece of mail to the person and having to wait.
Since the telephone was a newly popular item some marketing gimmicks were done to boost the use of the telephones. Some of the gimmicks were “wake-up calls and telephone-delivered sermons.” And like every new technology the price in the beginning was rather staggering, but as the years progressed the prices fell. At the turn of the 20th century, “the Bell system charged $99 per 1,000 phone calls… by the early 1920’s a flat monthly residential rate of $3 was typical.” As the telephone spread some people were scared the “community ties and old forms of civility were fraying.”
As for marketing of the telephone itself it changed as trends in marketing changed. When the telephone was invented it was right around the time particular brands began to come about. The telephone companies at the time, two of which were AT&T and Bell Telephone System, like a lot of the companies in the early days of the brand wars relied on hard-selling because everyone that bought their product wanted to know what it could do for them. So the companies had technical information about their product in the ads they produced and what it specifically could do for you. Then as time went on the marketing switched to soft-selling. Soft-selling happened when brands were becoming established and more common place in the work place and home as well. This allowed for the companies to move away from what the product could do for you to marketing towards the person themselves.
In a way the telephone did not need any marketing in the beginning for the simple fact that it had changed to way we live. And the concept of the telephone changed very little during this time because the telephone was invented to speak to someone over a distance and that is it, nothing else. Now today it is a very, very different story.Works Cited
“Telephone Timeline”. November 23, 2008 http://www.greatachievements.org/?id=3625.
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