Telephonograph

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The telephonograph was an invention of the French engineer Jules Ernest Othon Kumberg in 1898; it is a very early forerunner of the modern answering machine .

The same artificial term from telephone and phonograph was briefly used by Valdemar Poulsen in Copenhagen for his invention of the first functional recording device for sound via electromagnetic induction . When he learned that the same name was also claimed by Kumberg, the Dane decided on the name Telegraphon . Just like Poulsen, Kumberg pursued the idea of ​​finding a technical solution to the problem that a caller could not leave a message if the person called could not be reached immediately. In contrast to Poulsen, however, he used the conventional one for his device, already fromThomas Alva Edison has known the technique of recording on a wax cylinder since 1888. In the United States, he applied for a patent for his proposal on August 14, 1899, and received it six weeks later on October 31, 1899.

Kumberg's invention could be switched to the telephone line if required, but could also be disconnected from it again at any time for normal telephone operation. An automatic system should be able to record messages when a call is received or to play back messages that have already been recorded. A planned variant was the installation of recording components on both sides of the line so that not only the person called, but also the caller could receive a wax cylinder with the recording of his message as a copy.

A working model was presented in London and tested at the Exchange Telegraph Company on one of their lines five miles away. The London daily The Times quoted a participant in the telegraph company who said the quality was comparable to a normal phonographic recording. The editor of the article referred to a great need in smaller offices with few employees and almost literally suggested the standard announcement text that is common today for answering machines.

However, the device could not prevail. The poor quality and volume of the recordings, in spite of the contrary information, the too complicated operation for inexperienced persons, which was already acknowledged in the newspaper article, and a high susceptibility to errors prevented the devices from spreading. The first working answering machine is therefore often only seen as the "Textophon" produced by C. Lorenz in Berlin in 1933 . It was a wire-tone device and thus rather a successor to Valdemar Poulsen's telegraph.

literature

  • Archibald Williams: The Romance of Modern Invention , Seeley & Co Ltd., London 1910. Published by the Library of Alexandria. ISBN 1-4655-6292-3
    ( limited preview in Google Book Search)
  • The Kumberg "Telephonograph" , In: The Electrician , September 21, 1900. James Gray, London, p. 828
  • New Device for a Telephone , In: Chicago Tribune , June 30, 1900. p. 9

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Telephonograph , U.S. Patent No. 636,209 of October 31, 1899. In: freepatentsonline.com, accessed November 8, 2015
  2. ^ The Telephonograph . Reprinted from the London Times on October 27, 1900. In: Science , New Series, Vol. 308, November 23, 1900, p. 812
  3. ^ The Telephonograph . Reprinted from the London Times on October 27, 1900. In: Science , New Series, Vol. 308, November 23, 1900, p. 813
  4. ↑ Answering machine. On the website of the Museum Foundation Post and Telecommunications , accessed on November 8, 2015.