Telephone

Engineers and scientists were excited that data could be transmitted using electric dot and dash signals through a wire, but encoding and decoding the signal wasn’t easy and required specialized training. They reasoned that there just might be a way to encode and transmit the human voice.  Elisha Gray, Antonio Meucci, Alexander Graham Bell and others were working on creating a talking telegraph. Eventually in June 1875, Alexander Graham Bell was the first to be officially awarded a patent on the telephone. 

Key Takeaways:

• Human voices could now be transmitted across distances. Human-to-human communication via phone was now fast and personal.
• A much greater amount of information could be communicated in real-time using voice.
• Telephone service progressively expanded from telegraph offices in town all the way into family homes. Voice communication was commonplace.