You'll never guess who made the first wireless telephone

(signoregalilei.com)

50 points | by surprisetalk 3 days ago ago

9 comments

  • jp57 35 minutes ago ago

    I think he could have gotten away with naming his daughter Photophone, but he would have to pronounce it as if she were a character from an ancient greek epic: phoTOphoNEE.

  • fph 2 hours ago ago

    Clickbait titles should be changed, as per the guidelines for HN submissions.

  • HelloUsername 2 hours ago ago

    "Antonio Meucci invented the telephone and he got robbed! Everybody knows that!"

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJDNCxMfbLQ

  • andai an hour ago ago

    As a kid I had this idea of using mirrors for wireless communication. I've never heard of this one before but it makes me very happy! I was thinking of using it for like, torrents or something though.

    • madaxe_again 39 minutes ago ago

      Just put an acoustic coupler on the back of a mirror and you’ve done half of the job. Don’t see any reason you couldn’t get modem speeds at the very least.

    • esafak an hour ago ago

      What kind of a signal were you thinking of bouncing off the mirror?

  • nephihaha 2 hours ago ago

    Alexander Graham Bell was a successful inventor and made breakthroughs with helicopters and hydrofoils. Definitely not a one trick pony.

    • lordleft 2 hours ago ago

      IIRC, Bell ended up wanting to spend his life after inventing the telephone as a scientist and a researcher, rather than tending to the running of Bell Telephone and AT&T.

  • esafak an hour ago ago

    In more technical terms, Bell used amplitude modulation of audio using light as the carrier wave, and selenium as a photoconductive transducer. Correct me if I'm mistaken.