[f. Gr. τῆλε afar, TELE- + φωνή voice, sound, -φων-ος -voiced, -sounding (as in εὕφωνος sweet-voiced).]
1. An instrument, apparatus, or device for conveying sound to a distance. Now chiefly Obs.
† a. Name for a system of signalling by musical notes, devised by Sudré in 1828. † b. An instrument like a fog-horn, used on ships, railway trains, etc., for signalling by loud sounds or notes. † c. A tube or other device for conveying the sound of the voice to a distance, as a speaking-tube. d. Lovers’ or String Telephone, a toy consisting of two stretched membranes or metal disks connected by a tense cord which mechanically transmits sound-waves from the one to the other.
(The name has also been applied by writers to an apparatus invented by Wheatstone, called by him ‘the Enchanted Lyre,’ consisting of a rod connected with a sound-board, by which sounds (e.g., of a musical instrument) were conveyed from one room to another.)
1835. Musical Libr. [implied in TELEPHONIC q.v.].
1844. Times, 19 July, 6/5. Yesterday week was a levee day at the Admiralty, and amongst the numerous models … was Captain J. N. Tayler’s telephone instrument…. The chief object of this powerful wind instrument is to convey signals during foggy weather.
1844. Illustr. Lond. News, 24 Aug., 118/1. The Telephone; a Telegraphic Alarum. Amongst the many valuable inventions … that of the ‘Telephone, or Marine Alarum and Signal Trumpet,’ by Captain J. N. Taylor, R. N.
1849. Chambers’ Jrnl., 30 June, 408. Mr. Whishaw’s inventions: among these are speaking-tubes,… we are, it seems, to be able to speak to a distance without any connecting tube at all: across the inner quadrangle of a building, for instance, by means of large concave gutta-percha reflectors … the portable telephone would be available where the telegraph … does not admit of application.
1857. Catal. Exhibition, I. 442. [F. Whishaw’s] Gutta percha telephone.
1860. Wheatstone, Patent Specif., No. 2462. Telephones in which musical pipes or free tongues are acted upon by wind. Compressed air or gas is admitted to the pipe by means of a valve acted upon by the magnetized needle of an electromagnet. The alternation of long and short sounds may be grouped in a similar manner to the long and short lines in the alphabet of a Morse’s telegraph.
1877. Knight, Dict. Mech., Telephone, an instrument for conveying signals by sound…. The term, until lately, has been particularly applied to a signal adapted for nautical or railroad use, in which a body of compressed air is released from a narrow orifice and divided upon a sharp edge, in the manner of a steam-whistle.
1879. trans. Du Moncel, The Telephone, 2. One step more led to the membrane employed in string telephones.
2. An apparatus for reproducing sound, esp. that of the voice, at a great distance, by means of electricity; consisting, like the electric telegraph, of transmitting and receiving instruments connected by a line or wire which conveys the electric current.
a. Applied to an instrument devised by P. Reis in Dec. 1861, and called by him (in German) Telephon.
In this the sounds were received on thin vibrating membranes, whose motion was transmitted electrically to an electromagnetic receiver. This was never perfected as a practical means of communication.
1866. R. M. Ferguson, Electricity, 257. The Telephone. 158. This is an instrument for telegraphing notes of the same pitch. Reis’s Telephone (invented 1861) accomplishes this in the following way.
1883. S. P. Thompson, P. Reis, 49. We have now shown that Philipp Reis was the undisputed inventor [1861] of an instrument which he called the Telephone.
1889. Preece & Maier, Telephone, 3. Philipp Reis, of Friedrichsdorf, wrote [in German] in 1868:—I succeeded in inventing an apparatus in which also one can produce tones of all kinds at any desired distance by means of the galvanic current, I named the instrument ‘Telephon.’
b. Applied to the ‘Electrical Speaking Telephone’ of Alex. Graham Bell, introduced in 1876, and to its various modifications by Elisha Gray, Edison, Hunnings, etc.
In this the sounds of speech or music are received on and reproduced by thin vibrating disks or diaphragms. On the telephone, connected with a system of telephonic intercommunication.
1876. (May 10) A. G. Bell, in Proc. Amer. Acad. Arts & Sc. I placed the membrane of the telephone near my mouth. Ibid. (1876) (Dec. 9). Patent Specif., No. 4765. 8. The telephones being illustrated separately in figs. 19 and 20.
1878. Edison, in N. Amer. Rev., CXXVI. 534. The phonograph will perfect the telephone, and revolutionize present systems of telegraphy.
1879. Cassell’s Techn. Educ., IV. 154/2. The telephone and microphone have far distanced any previous attempts to convey sounds from one place to another.
1879. trans. Du Moncel, The Telephone, 8. Mr. Elisha Gray … arranged in fact about the 15th Jan. 1876, a system of speaking telephones.
1884. C. G. W. Lock, Workshop Receipts, Ser. III. 189/2. The telephone proper differs from other instruments of a like class, in that it reproduces instead of merely conveying vibrations.
1905. F. Young, Sands of Pleasure, II. iv. The hotel in the Rue de Calais was not on the telephone.
1906. Westm. Gaz., 29 Aug., 10/1. ‘It is the wonder of wonders’ exclaimed Sir William Thomson (now Lord Kelvin) after he had tested the first telephone shown to the public at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876.
c. transf. and fig.
1878. Mrq. Salisbury, Sp. Newsp. Press Fund, 19 May. He will see the telephone [i.e., the reporters] by which these arguments and facts are conveyed to persons still open to conviction.
1898. J. Arch, Story of Life, xvi. 396. Now the agricultural labourer has his political telephone of his vote, his Board Schools, his County Council, his Parish Council.
3. attrib. and Comb., as telephone bell, drum (sense 1 b), instrument, message, -receiver, -stud, trumpet, -user; telephone exchange, the office or central station of a local telephone system, where the various lines are brought to a central switchboard, and communication between subscribers is effected; sometimes applied to the switchboard itself, as in an ‘automatic exchange’; telephone girl, a girl employed at the switchboard to connect the wires so as to put two persons into communication.
1844. Times, 19 July, 6/5 [see sense 1].
1844. Illustr. Lond. News, 24 Aug., 118/1. The Indicator … to be placed on the Telephone Drum, to denote the signals made…. The Telephone gamut notes are arranged for numbers either by the public or private key.
1855. (May 10) Bill, Polytechnic Inst. Lecture by J. H. Pepper, Esq., on Professor Wheatstone’s experiments…, illustrated by a Telephone concert, in which sounds of various instruments pass inaudible through an intermediate ball, and are reproduced in the lecture room.
1878. Edison, in N. Amer. Rev., CXXVI. 535. Were … our telephone conversation automatically recorded.
1879. Print. Trades Jrnl., XXVIII. 6. On Saturday the Telephone Exchange commenced operations.
1889. Preece & Maier, Telephone, 111. The object of the Button Telephone is to replace the press button of an ordinary electric bell by a telephone-stud, which permits not only to ring up a person but to converse with him.
1906. Blackw. Mag., June, 832/2. The tired clerk at the telephone-receiver rebuffed our advances.
1906. Daily Chron., 27 June, 2/3. An installation which was going to do away with the telephone girl.
1907. H. Wyndham, Flare Footlights, xxviii. The warning tinkle of the telephone bell on the office wall.
