Alexander Graham Bells greatest invention was the telephone.
But if you told that to Mr. Bell, he would have disagreed.
This took place 19 years before the first wireless radio transmission.
It would be another century before Bells work would be fully appreciated.
Illustration of the photophone’s transmitter.
What is the photophone?
A strong beam of light was reflected off this vibrating mirror.
Converting the pulsating light beam back to sound proved to be harder.
In one experiment, Bell built a receiver using a deposit of lampblack.
Illustration of a photophone receiver.
On April 1, 1880, Bell and Tainter successfully communicated over a distance some 79 meters.
Bell then signaled back to Tainter by waving his hat vigorously from the window.
Franklin School where the first wireless communication took place.
The popular press of the period was not overtly impressed.The New York Timeswas openly hostile to the idea.
Bell, however, was very enthusiastic over his new invention.
He dashed off a letter to his father where he announced:
I have heard articulate speech by sunlight!
I have heard a ray of the sun laugh and cough and sing!
You are the grandfather of the Photophone and I want to share my delight at my success.
Bell hoped his new photophone could be used by ships at sea.
He could also see wireless communication displacing the tangle of telephone lines that were blooming along busy city boulevards.
Can imagination picture what the future of this invention is to be, Bell asked.
We may talk by light to any visible distance without any conduction wire….
In general science, discoveries will be make by the Photophone that are undreamed of just now.
Before long, Marconi’s radio transmissions started to far surpass the maximum range of the photophone.
Instead of wirelessly transmitting light signals, these are now carried by optical fibers across continents.
