Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Story of Inventions: Part 1 of n: The invention of telephone

I have this old habit of daydreaming that whenever i read something, i wonder what would it be, if the things were like this, or whenever i am reading history, then i tend to visualise what would have happened, how someone would have delivered the dialogue and the response he would have got.

Graham Bell was busy in some experiment regarding sound transmission using electrical wires. He was going to be a great scientist in the future [which of course he did not know] and he had to live upto the mark of developing something path breaking. Suddenly, he heard a crackle from a distant loudspeaker which made him believe he had developed the machine to transfer noise [sound] to some other place. Graham: Hey you! What's your name- Ramu [let's call his assistant Ramu]! Come here and speak something in the microphone! Voila!! I Did it!!!
Ramu: Did what sir?
Graham: I just invented the machine which would change the world in future. It would make the place into the annals, and it would be succeeded by Mobiles. By mass manufacturing this, Someone in India would coin the sentence "Kar lo duniya mutthi mein". Now don't waste the time, and speak into the microphone, when i tell you to do so. (Ramu speaks and is a bit confused)
Graham Bell:
Voila! It works, eureka!! I did it, It's wonder...

Ramu:
Sir, i have a doubt. Since i was standing so near to you, that's why you could tell me to pick up the phone and speak into it....

Graham:
So, what's so complicated in it, Ramu that you could not fathom. Pray, continue.

Ramu:
Sir, as i was standing near to it, and i could hear you, you could convey the message directly by speaking, and if i were far off, then i could not hear you in the first place to pick up the receiver. Sir, this machine is useless in that case!

(
Graham the Great thinks and racks his brain)

Graham:
Okay Ramu, I believe i can make use of my surname and add a bell to the telephone so that it would ring and it would attract attention that someone would like to hear your voice. Brilliant! Fantastic!! Ain't I great!

Ramu:
Sir, pray if someone didn't hear the bell? I don't think this machine will ever click in the market!

Graham: In future, there would be computers in every home, and they would have Orkut, which would be a thing to scrap people. When my machine would be there, what is the need to write a scrap to people, only to get a reply after half an hour! If it were Yahoo! Messenger, it would have been realtime, or the Google mail, then it would be an e- mail all right! But you see, the scraps were completely not needed. But you would see how the world would invent the use of Orkut, and make it so popular that 55 million people would join it's network. Henceforth naive Ramu, I leave the world to find a good use to this machine, which would become giant in the coming decades.