What Is the Phone? Essay Example

If there is a device without which one cannot picture everyday routine, it is certainly the phone. It has come to serve modern users not only for communication purposes, but as an efficient personal assistant, a digital hand and a friend of its own. Mobile phones are an integral part of business life, culture, education etc. Today your phone is certainly something you cannot live without.

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Mobile phones immediate ancestor is a telephone. A telephone (from ancient Greek tle tele "fern" and fwnh phone "sound, voice", term coined by Philipp Reis) is a means of communication used for the transmission of sounds and especially of speech by means of electrical signals. The telephone system contains three main components: the apparatus for converting sound into electrical signals and back, as well as components for controlling the connection, the actual telephone set (also terminal); the switching system (local switching center); the transmission channel.

The first experiments in this area were carried out by the American physicist Page in 1837. Of course, Pages device was far from the transmission of human speech, but his experiment proved that the transmission of sound by an electrical signal was possible and one only needed to construct more advanced sending and receiving devices. The first phone capable of transmitting human speech and music was the Reis telephone. By 1860 the English inventor had designed a dozen different transmitters. It was possible to transmit complex musical phrases and partially human speech, but the sound quality was very poor because of the side noises (Moss).

In 1875, Alexander Graham Bell began to develop a better sound transmission means. He applied for a patent for his invention in the Washington Patent Office on February 14, 1876. On the same day, the inventor Elisha Gray of Chicago filed a preliminary application for an apparatus for transmitting and receiving vocal sounds by wire. Gray soon abandoned his application. Consequently, there have been numerous disputes of who first invented the telephone. March 7, 1876 Bell received a patent for the invention of the telephone. Curiously, Bell was trying to invent not the phone, but the "harmonic telegraph". In June 1876, Bell first demonstrated his telephone at the first World electrotechnical exhibition in Philadelphia. Telephone, patented by Bell, was called "speaking telegraph". It did not ring, and later this feature was invented by Bells colleague T. Watson (1878) (Moss).

For a long time, Bell was considered to be the official inventor of the telephone, and only 11 June 2002, the US Congress in its resolution number 269 recognized the right for the invention of the telephone by Antonio Meucci. In 1871 Meucci filed his patent caveat No. 3335 in the U.S. Patent Office titled "Sound Telegraph", but after two years had passed he did not renew it again. The first US demonstration of the Meuccis invention took place in 1860, of which there is an article published in an Italian newspaper in New York. The device transmitted sound with high precision, but with a very weak signal. Unfortunately, severe burns, poor knowledge of English and little capacity for business meant that Meucci was unable to develop his invention and implement it in the commercial sector (Moss).

In 1910, the American journalist Robert Sloss predicted the emergence of the mobile phone and described the consequences of this invention. In 1947 the research laboratory of Bell Laboratories (owned by AT & T's) made a proposal to create a mobile phone. But only in 1973 Motorola DynaTAC, the first prototype of a portable cellular phone, was released. DynaTAC weighed about 1.15 kg and had a size of 22, 5 12,5 3,75 cm. On the front panel, there were 12 buttons including 10 digits and two keys to send call and terminate the conversation. DynaTAC had no display and did not have any additional functions. In standby mode, it could work up to eight hours, but its talk time was around an hour (The History of Cell Phones).

By 1983 5 different prototypes of DynaTAC had been created and in 1984 the final model DynaTAC 8000X went on sale. Consumers were so struck by the ability to stay connected with the help of a portable phone that the queue for the purchase of DynaTAC 8000X recorded thousands of people, despite the impressive original price of the communication device it was an amazing sum of 3995 dollars (The History of Cell Phones).

A modern cell phone is a mobile phone, designed to work in cellular networks. It uses the radio transceiver and the traditional telephone switching for telephone services in the territory of the network coverage area. Currently, cellular communications are the most common of all types of mobile communication, so a cell phone is usually referred to as a mobile phone, but, in fact, satellite telephones and cordless phones are also mobile.

The cellular network includes base stations (VHF multifrequency transceivers) distributed throughout the coverage area of the cellular network. Cell phone receives a signal from the base station and sends back a unique IMSI of the SIM-card as well as a unique phone IMEI. The network computer verifies the authenticity of the caller by transmitting a random number that the SIM-card processes using a special algorithm and sends the result to the nearest base station. The base station transmits the information to the control computer, which is checked against the computer calculated code. When they match, the mobile phone is allowed to access the network. The reliability of the identification is considered to be quite high. The cell phone and the base station maintain constant radio contact. When you move the cell phone periodically switches from one base station to another, selecting the station with the strongest signal. This process occurs even if the phone is in standby mode.

Modern mobile phones have either an external or built-in (internal) antenna. They differ in the number of displays: one, two, rarely three. They can have both a conventional and a touch screen. As for the keyboard, it can be a normal telephone 3 4 keyboard, an extended (eg. BlackBerry) keyboard, full (or truncated) QWERTY-keyboard, or the Braille keyboard. There can be one or two (stereo) embedded speakers.

In addition to their main task to serve as, namely, a telephone, modern cell phones have many more functions. Base functions of mobile phones include a phonebook, voice control, vibrating alert, removable ring tones, a headset connection (Hands Free, headphone + microphone), a speakerphone, a clock and an alarm clock, a stopwatch and a timer, the calendar, a calculator, as well as different storage options (built-in flash memory, support for removable flash memory cards), games and applications.

While modern mobile phones are invaluable business assets, they have a number of relevant business functions, such as a currency converter, a voice recorder, an organizer, conference call mode, password organizer. Multimedia functions of modern cell phones are the radio, a digital player, a video player, a TV tuner, a digital camera and a video camera, simple graphics and video editors, TrackID service, which allows to find out the title and author of a musical piece. Messaging functions are comprised of SMS (Short Message Service), EMS (Enhanced Message Service), MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service), built-in or optional installed IM-client, CB (Cell Broadcast, reception of messages from the operator). Communication functions of a cell phone allow the user to communicate by fax, through a modem, via built-in WAP-browser, through built-in or optional Web browser, by means of e-mail, via data cable, via IR, via Bluetooth, via WiFi, via NFC.

Sometimes manufacturers of cellular telephones include more exotic function, e.g. GPS, Push-to-talk (in this mode, the phone simulates a walkie-talkie), a flashlight, a printer, an image scanner, a compass, a fingerprint reader, a solar panel (allows you to charge your phone from the sun), a pedometer, a TV tuner (analog or digital), and many others.

The newest development in the field of mobile phones is a smartphone. A smartphone is a mobile phone with the complete functionality of a Pocket PC. Although mobile phones have almost always had additional functions (calculator, calendar), more intelligent models were eventually issued. To underscore the increased functionality and processing power of such models the term "smartphone" has been introduced. Smart phones differ from ordinary mobile phones by the presence of a well-developed operating system that is open to the development and installation of third-party software. Installing add-on applications can significantly improve the functionality of smartphones as compared to conventional mobile phones.

Though today mobile phones seem absolutely indispensable, more and more people are trying to limit their usage due to health concerns. Currently, there exists an extensive literature on the impact of radiation emitted by the wireless devices on health. The most large-scale among the primary sources is the international epidemiological study INTERPHONE, conducted in 2002-2011 under the auspices of the World Health Organization. The aim of the research was to show whether the global use of wireless communication devices can lead to the development of various types of malignancy (the development of cancer diseases). The result of this study was the conclusion that continued use (e.g., talking on a cell phone for 30 minutes per day for 7-10 years) can lead to a significant increase in the risk of malignancy (Interphone Study). According to the World Health Organization and the International Agency for Research on Cancer on May 31, 2011, cell phone radiation was classified as a "probably carcinogenic to humans" factor, thus appearing in the same group with chloroform, ochratoxin A, and so on (Interphone Study). In any case, parents are strongly advised to limit children's chat on mobile phones. Discussions are encouraged to maintain using a headset or replace communication by messaging.

Dangerous or not, mobile phones have become first-aid objects both in routine and emergency situations. Moreover, today they are seen not only as useful tools but also as means for self-expression and fashion items. As such, mobile phones will certainly continue to proceed on their way to conquer the world.

Works Cited

Interphone study on mobile phone use and brain cancer risk. WHO/Europe, World Health Organization, 8 June 2010, www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/noncommunicable-diseases/cancer/news/news/2010/7/interphone-study-on-mobile-phone-use-and-brain-cancer-risk. Accessed 18 Feb. 2017.

Moss, Alissa. History of the Telephone. Independent Telecommunications Pioneer Association, www.nationalitpa.com/history-of-the-telephone.html. Accessed 18 Feb. 2017.

The History of Cell Phones. The History of Cell Phones, 11 Mar. 2016, www.tech-faq.com/history-of-cell-phones.html. Accessed 19 Feb. 2017.