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The Invention of the Telephone
A photograph of Alexander Graham Bell during his demonstration of the telephone for Joseph Henry's Family, January 13, 1877.

A photograph of Alexander Graham Bell during his demonstration of the telephone for Joseph Henry's Family, January 13, 1877.

Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated his telephone for the Secretary of the Smithsonian Joseph Henry and his daughters at the Smithsonian, and at a meeting of the Philosophical Society of Washington that evening. Bell's first telephone patent had been issued on March 7, 1876, and a month later, Bell transmitted the first intelligible human speech over the telephone. As a judge for the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, Henry submitted a report praising Bell's invention. Bell's second patent, covering the "box" phone that he demonstrated during his visit to Washington, would be issued on January 30, 1877.

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Citation Information
“Alexander Graham Bell Demonstrates Telephone for Joseph Henry's Family,” Digital Public Library of America, https://dp.la/item/842f67237ba235315fa57a4ee10ef9d3.
Note: These citations are programmatically generated and may be incomplete.
Courtesy of Smithsonian Archives - History Division via Smithsonian Institution.

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For this source, consider:

  • the author's point of view
  • the author's purpose
  • historical context
  • audience

Item 8 of 15 in the Primary Source Set The Invention of the Telephone

Previous ItemNext Item
A Congressional tribute from 1999 to Mr. Antonio Meucci, one of the inventors of the telephone.
A telegraph register made in 1870.
A telegraph sounder.
An experimental telephone made by Alexander Graham Bell, 1876.
Alexander Graham Bell's “large box” telephone, 1876.
Alexander Graham Bell's telephone patent drawing and oath, officially approved March 7, 1876.
An excerpt from The History of the Telephone by Herbert Casson about Alexander Graham Bell’s breakthrough experiment, 1910.
A photograph of Alexander Graham Bell during his demonstration of the telephone for Joseph Henry's Family, January 13, 1877.
A diagram of Alexander Graham Bell’s speaking telephone, patented March 19, 1878.
A photograph of Thomas Edison’s parlor phonograph, which was used for experimentation by Alexander Graham Bell, 1879.
A photograph of Alexander Graham Bell in New York calling Chicago on the telephone, 1892.
A photograph of the first telephone office in the town of McGraw, New York, 1902.
A photograph of operators working the switchboard at the Utah Independent Telephone Company, 1905.
A photograph of Alexander Graham Bell and others at the opening of the first transcontinental telephone line, New York, January 25, 1915.
A photograph of workers in the Orange Central Office of the Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Company, Orange, California, 1915.

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