Alexander Graham Bell and the Birth of the Telephone   

• The telephone revolutionized communication, allowing voices to travel across distances almost instantly. History was made on March 10, 1876, when Scottish-born inventor Alexander Graham Bell spoke to his assistant, Thomas A. Watson, from another room: “Mr. Watson ? come here ? I want to see you.” It was the first successful transmission of spoken words over a wire. Bell’s device converted voice vibrations into electrical signals, which traveled through wires to a receiver and were transformed back into sound. A key component was the diaphragm, a thin membrane that vibrated when someone spoke to start the signal process. Before Bell’s breakthrough, other inventors had explored similar ideas. In the 1860s, German scientist Johann Philipp Reis created a device that transmitted sound but could not carry clear speech. Bell’s design was the first to reliably carry voices over long distances. At a time when letters could take days or weeks to arrive, the telephone brought incredible speed to communication. Within decades, telephone networks expanded globally, laying the foundation for modern technologies ? from landlines and mobile phones to the internet. Nancy Ahmed Dagba For The Junior Times junior/1756433565/1613367831