The following is an encore presentation of Everything Everywhere Daily.

The 19th century was one of rapid technological advancement. Of all the innovations to come out

of this century, and there were many, perhaps none was more important than that of the telephone.

The telephone radically changed communications, allowing personal communications over long

distances. Despite what many people are often told, this invention wasn't simply the genius of one

man, but rather was something developed over decades. Learn more about the invention of the telephone

and the controversial story surrounding it on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

This episode is one of those that turned out to be very different coming out from what I thought

it was going to be going in. I was going to do a comprehensive overview of the telephone as

the technology and how it evolved and changed over time. And the invention of the telephone

would of course be an important part of that story. What I didn't realize was how different the invention of the telephone was from the story I always

heard growing up. The basic story I was told was probably similar to the one that you might have

heard. The telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell. To be sure, he is a part of the story, but he didn't invent the telephone

in a vacuum, and to some people, he didn't invent it at all. Before discussing the telephone

directly, it's important to understand the foundation upon which it was built. Long-distance

communications had been a challenge human sought to solve for centuries.

In ancient civilizations, communication systems like smoke signals, drum beats, and messenger

services allowed limited information exchange. However, for the most part, information could

only travel as fast as a horse could run. By the 1790s, optical telegraph systems using semaphore signals emerged

in France and elsewhere, creating the first telecommunications networks. One of these early systems in

France was known as the CHAP telegraph, which was a system of towers several kilometers apart,

which used semaphore to send messages to each other.

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