What Makes the Telephone Work?

What makes the telephone work? A telephone works through an electrical circuit that is connected to a worldwide network, allowing the user to be in, say, New York City and talk directly with someone in Singapore, or someone across the street. How is this possible, though, and what is the technology behind what makes the telephone work?

Ultimately, technology is what makes the telephone work. The reason it is possible for you to pick up the phone and hear someone half a world away is due to a multi-step process. The process is as follows:

• As the user’s voice is transferred by the microphone inside the handset to the circuit inside the phone, the sound wave created by the person’s voice is translated into voltage or an energy signal.
• This energy signal is transferred through the circuit to the network.
• It is then translated by the input circuit in the phone of the person listening on the other end, allowing the incoming signal to be turned back into voice as it passes through the circuit into the speaker in the other user’s handset.
• This is done through a series of transponders and transducers that are able to convert sound into energy, and then energy back into sound.

This simple, yet complex, process is what makes the telephone work.

Telephone Networks

The other crucial element to the telephone’s function is the network that has evolved over the course of time. The phone network has changed from a switchboard-operated network, where the caller had the operator at the phone service station manually connect the phone lines between two parties, to a worldwide network that contains satellites and fiber optic cables.

The cables and technology connect phones digitally to a network that is completely wireless (in the case of cellular telephones), and is even able to connect several people on the same call, regardless of the location of each party. Whereas early telephone users were bound by the phone’s location and the length of the cords attached to them, they can now call home from the grocery store with the push of a button. 

Changes to How Home Telephones Work

The home phone has also been modified, from the wired, rotary-dialed mechanism to a cordless, push-button unit that also has its own memory system, allowing the user to not only view who’s called, but also to view on an LED screen the number and name of a caller before the phone is answered. This technology, which is most commonly referred to as “caller I.D.” has also been extended to cellular telephones.

Most phone systems are also commonly equipped with digital memory banks for messaging, or “voice mail” services. These new features have all but eliminated the use of at-home answering machines.

Phone networks are also often run on the same fiber optic cables as the cable and Internet networks, allowing users to view on their television or computer screen the name and number of the person calling before they pick up their phone to answer.

Thus, although the basic technology for how the telephone works was developed years ago, there have been many advances and changes in the way people use phones to interact with friends, family and the world.