Fig. 122. THE ORIGINAL TYPEWRITING MACHINE PATENTED BY W. A. BURT, JULY 23, 1829
Alexander Graham Bell began working on the problem in 1874 and invented the first electric speaking telephone which he patented, showed in operation at the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia in 1876 and shortly after a company was formed to float it. Edison made a big improvement in the telephone in 1878 when he invented the carbon transmitter. Other rivals appeared in the field and after long years of costly law suits the rights of Bell were sustained by the courts and the Bell Telephone Company has had a practical monopoly of the business in this country ever since. The invention made Bell and its owners enormously wealthy.
The Typewriter.—This useful machine was invented by Charles Thurber in 1843, but it was not until about 1875 that a practical machine was put on the market. Millions of dollars have been made out of the typewriter industry, subsequent inventors coming in for their big shares, but it is doubtful if the original inventor received anything more than honorable mention in the encyclopædias and a monument in some cemetery for the great benefit he conferred on mankind.
Fig. 123. THE FIRST PHONOGRAPH
The Phonograph.—This wonderful instrument for recording and reproducing speech and other sounds was invented by Edison in 1877 and improved by him in 1888. In 1887 Emile Berliner invented and patented the graphophone in which the vibrations are recorded on a disk instead of on a cylinder as it is in the Edison phonograph.
The phonograph was placed on the market in 1888 and the manufacture of graphophones began in 1897 when both the machines and the records became popular and rapidly grew into a great industry. The phonograph is only one of Edison’s 700 inventions and from some or all of them he has amassed a fortune of $10,000,000, and Berliner, who is also an inventor of renown, is very wealthy.
The Storage Battery.—Like many other great inventions the storage battery has made millions, but from the time it was invented by Gaston Planté in 1860 until it became a commercial product in 1880 was too long a stretch for the originator to have received his just reward. But those who followed with their little and big improvements made small and large fortunes out of them when the Electric Storage Battery Company of Philadelphia was organized to take over all the smaller concerns.