Essays

This section is for all the stuff that doesn't fit into any of the other categories. There are a lot of little bits and pieces such as the article on plastics that may interest collectors, and some more detailed articles on some of the world's phones.

 

1. Early Transmitters

A brief look at some of the early transmitters designed to get around Bell's patents. A gas-powered transmitter? Some of the oddities as well as those that worked.

2. Emile Berliner

The man who made Bell's telephones work. He is better known for his work on the Gramophone.

3. Johann Phillip Reis

He almost certainly invented the first working telephone, but he overlooked one critical fact. He didn't realise that he had invented it.

4. David Hughes

A brilliant man who laid the groundwork for many carbon transmitters.

5. The "British Ericsson"

A popular and reliable telephone widely used in Australia.

6. Antonio Meucci

Did he really invent the telephone?

7. Clement Ader

He is mainly known for his work on powered flight, but he also designed telephones and invented the forerunner of the radio broadcasting station.

8. Electrophone

An idea before its time?

9. The Pantelephone

Obscure and rare.

10. Louis John Crossley

British inventor of a successful carbon-pencil telephone.

11. Western Electric Model 265

An attractive but rather mysterious little phone. Who really made it?

12. The Blake Transmitter

Not the best transmitter, perhaps, but it stayed in production for a long time.

13. Early Receivers

A process of steady development, unlike transmitters

14. The Grabaphone.

A successful early U.S. handset phone from Kellogg and others.

15. Plastics and the Telephone

Plastics were an essential part of the telephone from the early days. This article traces some of the more important ones.

16. The Ericsson Skeletal Phone

Call it the Skeletal, Eiffel Tower, Sewing Machine - it is one of the world's classic telephones and one of Ericssons' most successful.

17. The Western Electric No. 317

Another classic magneto telephone.

18. Indian Telephone Industries - the 332 telephones

Originals and reproductions.

19. The British Western Electric "Eiffel Tower"

Rarer than the Ericsson, practically unknown in the U.S.

20. The Telephones of Thomas Edison

This incredible inventor explored the scientific priciples used in many later telephones.

21. The British Post Office 300 Series Telephones

Used in many countries over many decades.

22. Meinrad Theiler

An early inventor of some obscure telephones.

23. Handsets

A look at the development of the telephone handset.

24. Automatic Electric Telephones

Telephones from this US manufacturer.

25. Telephone Invention Timeline

This puts many of the telephones and inventors into some sort of sequence.