The telephone---and subsequent forms of instant communication---are a massive game changer. Both in terms of private use (being able to talk and now also see my family in Ukraine for free is insane, when you stop to appreciate it), but also from the perspective of all the coordination it enables. Remote teams working together, scientists across the world being able to work on shared projects, etc.
I always knew the famous quote (the first ever phonecall) but didn't know it was improvised. I assumed it happened in a controlled setting in front of an invited audience, etc.
The interesting thing about all these historical quotes is how few of them can really be verified. The more we learn, the more we understand embellishments and quips to make the inventor/actor/whatever seem smarter or more prescient.
Tell me a bit about your family in Ukraine some time!
What I love about this is it reminds me of the joy in exploration and experimentation. Of tinkering to understand how something works, and then if that works, what about this, and what about this...
Yes! The sense of wonder is really something else. I'm not envious of the tens of thousands of hours of failed experiments, but that's exactly what made this moment so awe-striking.
The Telephone is truly an incredible invention. Fun fact: I had no idea how this analogue technology worked until today. Thanks to this article, now I do.
Radio is such an insanely important one. The telegraph allowed for instantaneous communication, but was encoded, not super useful unless you were around someone who knew Morse code (as Eli pointed out earlier). The telephone was great for talking to one person, but without it being wireless, you wouldn't be able to communicate with everyone at once (broadcast). Radio put it all together, allowing you to talk to a bunch of people, or to one person at a time, all wirelessly.
Just imagine if we had to connect wires to everything we ever did! Go back to the 1930s, and I don't think our technology would have progressed all that much beyond that. I think there's little chance the Internet takes off without first having gone through the TV era, and it's hard to imagine a TV era without good old fashioned rabbit ears.
I think each technological progression builds on the previous. So yes I think the internet was a natural progression that more than likely wouldn't have happened if TV and radio and more importantly the telephone (as we can't forget dial up internet) hadn't have happened. I am totally old enough to remember rabbit ears!
It was so frustrating, sometimes I'd have to take aluminum foil and kind of attach it to the back of the TV if there wasn't an antenna, or if it was somehow damaged. Weird flashbacks!
Bell lived large portions of his life in Canada. He lived as a young man in Ontario and lived his later years in Nova Scotia, where he played a major role in developing the country's involvement in aviation.
The acid story, true or not, reminds me of Fleming’s runny nose that caused him to discover antibiotics. The telephone was certainly a huge leap forward. For the first time people could be connected to places thousands of miles away in real time with no knowledge of Morse Code. Before that, we were limited to the area that is about a day’s horse ride in any direction, now known as our county.
Excellent point. It's probably fair to say that the telegraph was a huge deal, just like the phone, but the friction of use is sort of like personal computers before the Apple II came out. Sure, they worked, but you had to have arcane knowledge in order to do anything at all.
The telephone---and subsequent forms of instant communication---are a massive game changer. Both in terms of private use (being able to talk and now also see my family in Ukraine for free is insane, when you stop to appreciate it), but also from the perspective of all the coordination it enables. Remote teams working together, scientists across the world being able to work on shared projects, etc.
I always knew the famous quote (the first ever phonecall) but didn't know it was improvised. I assumed it happened in a controlled setting in front of an invited audience, etc.
The interesting thing about all these historical quotes is how few of them can really be verified. The more we learn, the more we understand embellishments and quips to make the inventor/actor/whatever seem smarter or more prescient.
Tell me a bit about your family in Ukraine some time!
Well, among others, there was insulin, created by Canadian scientists Sir Frederick Banting and Charles Best, to the eternal happiness of diabetics.
That's a really good one. I need to write about Banting and Best (it even has a nice ring to it!).
What I love about this is it reminds me of the joy in exploration and experimentation. Of tinkering to understand how something works, and then if that works, what about this, and what about this...
Yes! The sense of wonder is really something else. I'm not envious of the tens of thousands of hours of failed experiments, but that's exactly what made this moment so awe-striking.
The Telephone is truly an incredible invention. Fun fact: I had no idea how this analogue technology worked until today. Thanks to this article, now I do.
That's awesome! Glad to give you even more curious rabbit holes to go down.
Yes it is on the top ten list
The telephone and the radio are both revolutionary inventions that we still use today and I'm kind of amazed by that.
Radio is such an insanely important one. The telegraph allowed for instantaneous communication, but was encoded, not super useful unless you were around someone who knew Morse code (as Eli pointed out earlier). The telephone was great for talking to one person, but without it being wireless, you wouldn't be able to communicate with everyone at once (broadcast). Radio put it all together, allowing you to talk to a bunch of people, or to one person at a time, all wirelessly.
Just imagine if we had to connect wires to everything we ever did! Go back to the 1930s, and I don't think our technology would have progressed all that much beyond that. I think there's little chance the Internet takes off without first having gone through the TV era, and it's hard to imagine a TV era without good old fashioned rabbit ears.
I think each technological progression builds on the previous. So yes I think the internet was a natural progression that more than likely wouldn't have happened if TV and radio and more importantly the telephone (as we can't forget dial up internet) hadn't have happened. I am totally old enough to remember rabbit ears!
It was so frustrating, sometimes I'd have to take aluminum foil and kind of attach it to the back of the TV if there wasn't an antenna, or if it was somehow damaged. Weird flashbacks!
Bell lived large portions of his life in Canada. He lived as a young man in Ontario and lived his later years in Nova Scotia, where he played a major role in developing the country's involvement in aviation.
Interesting, especially with regard to the aviation thing. I'm not sure how that... (wait for it) flew under my radar all these years.
Are there any other Canadian inventors (or Canadian-adjacent, like Bell) we should know about?
The acid story, true or not, reminds me of Fleming’s runny nose that caused him to discover antibiotics. The telephone was certainly a huge leap forward. For the first time people could be connected to places thousands of miles away in real time with no knowledge of Morse Code. Before that, we were limited to the area that is about a day’s horse ride in any direction, now known as our county.
Excellent point. It's probably fair to say that the telegraph was a huge deal, just like the phone, but the friction of use is sort of like personal computers before the Apple II came out. Sure, they worked, but you had to have arcane knowledge in order to do anything at all.