The Spread of the Telephone (Blog Post #8)

                                                 

The Spread of the Telephone (Blog Post #8)

Today we are going to throw it back to Blog Post #5 and talk about the invention of the telephone. Read Blog Post #5 here. Nowadays everyone, including their grandma, owns a phone. According to Pew Research, 97% of Americans now own some sort of cell phone. This wasn’t always the case. It takes many, many years for big innovations, such as the telephone, to catch on to the entirety of society. 

Smartphones rule the world today. 

The telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant Thomas Watts in 1876. Their main goal was to find an alternative to the telegram. They figured that being able to physically hear the other person’s voice in a message was revolutionary compared to the lines and dots that are transcribed in a telegram. The first telephone was the biggest demonstration at the Centennial Celebration in Philadelphia and actually won the exhibition's grandest prize. This is when a lot of people first heard of this new innovation.

As with any sort of new innovation, people are typically slow to catch on. This could be due to time, money, or resources. However, I think the biggest thing holding people back is skepticism. They ask themselves questions like, “How do I know this product is safe?”, “Is this device even useful to me?”, and “Does this product have good quality?”. This type of skeptic person needs extra time to evaluate the product before they pull the trigger on it. Oftentimes these people are the last group to adopt the product, this is known in the Diffusion Theory as the laggards group. At first, a lot of people were actually scared of the telephone since it was a completely new concept. This fear was known as “telephone terror”.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, many people were eager to jump on this new product. The first people to adopt the telephone were doctors and businessmen who wanted a line connecting their offices to their homes. After the invention of the phone in 1876, there were nearly 600,000 phones by 1905 and 5.8 million phones by 1910. This product caught on so quickly because people recognized the benefits of the phone. This new invention allowed for a more interconnected world. It was never so easy to reach your friends and family. 

Read this article for more information: History of The Telephone. 

According to the Diffusion of Innovations theory, diffusion is a five-step process. They are:

1. Knowledge/awareness. After the phone was introduced at the Centennial Celebration, people spread the word talking about how crazy this invention was. This invention was something people could only dream of before Bell came along.

2. Persuasion. People had to be convinced that they needed a telephone.

3. Decision. Oftentimes people would turn to their friends or community to see what their opinion was on it. We, as individuals, are always concerned with what others think.

4. Implementation. This is the act of going out to buy a telephone. 

5. Confirmation/Continuation. This step is critical to if the product will stick around. If people don’t like their telephone, they will ditch it and revert back to old-school ways of communication.

It would be hard to live in today’s society without a phone. This is because the majority of the world has adopted and normalized the use of the telephone. The phones that we know today are completely different from Alexander Graham Bell’s invention. This is because people took the idea and made it even better for us. Still, the secondary invention of phone books, answering machines, and handheld cell phones wouldn’t be possible if people didn’t adopt the first telephone. This technology has come a remarkably long way. I don’t think there are any downsides to the original product because it revolutionized communications. The invention is essential to our lives today.