Alexander Graham Bell Demonstrates Telephone for Joseph Henry's Family

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Object Details

Subject

Henry, Joseph 1797-1878

Bell, Alexander Graham 1847-1922

Henry, Caroline 1839-1920

Henry, Helen Louisa 1836-1912

Henry, Mary Anna 1834-1903

Philosophical Society of Washington

Centennial Exhibition (1876 : Philadelphia, Pa.)

Notes

Cyanotype photograph of Alexander Graham Bell, c. 1880s. Smithsonian Institution Archives, negative number SIA2012-1089.

Robert Bruce, Bell: Alexander Graham Bell and the Conquest of Solitude. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1973, pp. 174, 214.

Summary

Alexander Graham Bell demonstrates his telephone for Secretary Joseph Henry and his daughters at the Smithsonian, and at a meeting of the Philosophical Society of Washington that evening. Bell's first telephone patent had been issued on March 7, 1876, and a month later, Bell transmitted the first intelligible human speech over the telephone. As a judge for the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, Henry submit a report praising Bell's invention. Bell's second patent, covering the "box" phone as transmitter and receiver that he demonstrates during his visit to Washington, would be issued January 30, 1877.

Contact information

Institutional History Division, Smithsonian Institution Archives, 600 Maryland Avenue, SW, Washington, D.C. 20024-2520, SIHistory@si.edu

Date

January 13, 1877

Data Source

Smithsonian Archives - History Div

Topic

Telephone

Inventors

Inventions

Metadata Usage

Usage conditions apply

Record ID

siris_sic_12590