It is impossible to transmit the human voice over wires

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1893.... voice on wires may be possble but unlawful:
 

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there's no mention of music in the Bell warning so we are probably OK.

Not sure about the thoroughly compressed and distorted cr*p that's prominent today ... with or without wires.
 
were transformers involved in this process?

why yes, modulation transformers, output transformers, high level matching transformers, plate, crystal, photocell and bridging transformers, input transformers, line to line transformers, it was like heaven on earth, all those transformers,
now look at us with our smart phones, nary a transformer to be found,  ???
what's next on the extinction list, capacitors?
filter capacitors, coupling capacitors, voltage doubler capacitors, mylar capacitors, teflon capacitors, tantalum capacitors, blue shrink wrapped Phillips capacitors...
 
CJ said:
were transformers involved in this process?

why yes, modulation transformers, output transformers, high level matching transformers, plate, crystal, photocell and bridging transformers, input transformers, line to line transformers, it was like heaven on earth, all those transformers,

I thought we were not allowed to discuss religion!  ;)

But can you explain the sacrifices?
 
> no mention of music in the Bell warning

An interesting point.

The Bell patents are not about the wires (or transformers) but the methods to put an "undulating current" on or off the wire. (Undulating opposed to the Gray device which put an intermittent current on the wire; Gray proposed variable-resistance but did not produce a working device.) This is the electrodynamic transducer, with stationary field magnet and voice coil, moving iron diaphragm.

While two such transducers "can" make a telephone, it is entirely passive and typically very lossy, so the talkers have to be very motivated to deliver enough sound to the distant ear.

What made the telephone practical, and highly profitable, was the battery powered microphone, an amplifier. Variable pressure usually on powdered carbon. It is not clear today who thought of this. it was probably hanging-around without any use. It has many inventors because it is VERY hard to make it good. Edison and Berlinger both filed patents which appeared to interfere. The case dragged on for *14* years. Why? Because *Bell* bought rights in both patents and played one against the other *until* the electrodynamic receiver patent was about to expire, thus extending Bell's effective monopoly far into the 20th century.

(OTOH, Bell was very laggard about Strowger switches and customer-dialing. And perhaps slow to see that the growth in the US was outside the downtown of old cities. Non-Bell companies with lower operating (operator) costs grew in the suburbs and prairies. Eventuall Bell bought-out many of these and bought-in or self-invented dialing and switching systems.)

Voice or music? In the 1930s someone invented a guitar pickup. His lawyer told him that Bell had locked-up nearly all such ideas, but bought the idea for a few bucks. Sold it to a guitar-parts company and wrote-up the application for "musical instruments". The patent office felt that this did not interfere Bell's patents.

However the 1876 patent clearly says "motion can be imparted to the armature by the human voice or by means of a musical instrument."

Perhaps the fine-line is that a mike in front of a guitar is sensing air waves, while the guitar pickup senses the string in a magnetic field (no air required).
 
PRR wears his knowledge like clothing, and we are ALL immensely enriched by his accumulated wisdom and his musings.

John Roberts, Abbey Road D'Enfer and others are similarly wealthy seams of brilliance.
 
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