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TELEGRAPH POLES

Dotted throughout our infrastructure these poles are often ignored. With the increased use of mobile phones and the development of the internet the older landline telephone system is disappearing from our public consciousness. The telegraph pole, however, is an integral part of this system, carrying the copper wires connect each phone to the exchange from where they are linked to all the other phones across the world. 

HISTORY

Innocenzo Manzetti first proposed the speaking telegraph In 1844 and 17 years later in Frankfurt, Johann Reis managed to transmit music but the speech was indistinct. Then in March 1876 Alexander Graham Bell made the first, and now famous, successful speech transmission followed 10 months later by his patent for his electromagnetic telephone system. However others were working in same area and in April 1877 Thomas Edison filed his patent for a graphite transmitter. The legal wrangles that followed delayed its full publication for 15 years before his patent was granted. Also in 1877 Trividar Puskas an Hungarian engineer invented the telephone switchboard. He contacted Edison and they worked together on the first telephone exchange which he set up in Paris in 1879.

From these competitive starting points the world telephone network developed into the current 1.3 billion phone lines that are connected today. 

MAKING

There are four basic elements which each perform a distinct function in the phone system. There is a speaker which converts sounds into electrical impulses. These are transmitted to the earpiece which reverses the process turning the impulses back into sounds. However, to make this into a functioning system the phone network needs a dial or keypad to enter the number required and a ringer to let the person at the other know that there is an incoming call.

The phone is connected by a pair of wires to the global network. The signals pass through a series of switching centres which have taken the place of the old switchboard operator enabling the connections to be made to link the caller to the recipient.