EARLY TELEPHONES

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 52, Issue 3750, 1 May 1936, Page 3

EARLY TELEPHONES

“LISTENING” WITH ONE’S . MOUTH.

The telephone has just- celebrated its diamond jiibilee. February 14th, 1876, was the day on which the telephone officially saw the-light of day when Professor Graham Bell filed his patent for the first phone. The telephone of those early days would look queer indeed beside the efficient “ streamlined ” instruments of to-day. Bell’s early phone was simply a small box with a hole on one side. This hole was used for both speaking and listening. However, phone users so often got mixed up between their mouth and their ears that the telephone companies had to caution them “ not to listen with their mouths or talk with their ears.”

There were no bells on the early phones. A “thumper” was used to tap the diaphragm of the phone, the sound issuing from the mouthpiece at the other end of the line as a series of taps, thus telling the subscriber that he was wanted on the phone.