The telephone is an instrument used to transmit and receive sounds, most commonly the human voice. The word telephone comes from the Greek words “tele” meaning “far” and “phone” meaning “sound”. The telephone works by converting sound waves into electrical signals and by converting electrical signals into sound waves. The history of the telephone is controversial because many inventors were involved in its development but only Alexander Graham Bell obtained a patent for the telephone in March 1876.

  Alexander Graham Bell was born in Scotland and worked as a professor of vocal physiology at Boston University in Boston, Massachusetts.

  The telephone was a very important invention of the nineteenth century which helped improve communications between people at a distance. The first telephone exchange that linked many people who had telephones together, so that they could communicate by telephone was implemented in Hartford, Connecticut in 1877 and the first telephone exchange that linked two cities was implemented in 1883. This exchange connected the cities of New York and Boston.

 The use of the telephone was applied to education in the 1980s.  Many universities in the United States offered remote classroom teaching whereby a teacher at one campus taught in real-time to other campuses in other parts of the state. The motivation behind this initiative was to offer the same educational opportunities to all students no matter where they were located (Bates and Poole, 2003, p. 123)

  The invention of the telephone provided an important device for facilitating human communication in many areas. For example, It was used as a broadcasting medium like the radio which allowed the audience to respond to the commentator in a simultaneous moment. Besides, this invention was also used in France to broadcast operas. Nowadays, the telephone has evolved and communication was transformed into wireless technology maintaining people from all over the world connected at the same time, not only by phone but also the internet and other technological devices.

https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540sept09/2009/11/01/invention-of-the-telephone/

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a) The Telephone was invented in the eighteenth century.    T   F

b) The first two cities to communicate via telephone were Boston and California.    T   F

Responder las preguntas:

a) When did Graham Bell obtain the patent for his invention?

b) Was the telephone only used for trivial conversations among people? What was it used for?

3- Transformar las siguientes oraciones de voz activa a voz pasiva.

a) Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone.

b) University teachers delivered lessons over the phone 40 years ago.