Let's bell this cat

5G holds promise of a turning point for enterprises, innovators, researchers, consumers, and all. But we need to keep some sign-boards in mind

- PRATIMA HARIGUNANI

Did you know that when Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876, no one saw its full potential, including Bell himself? Western Union’s executives shrugged it as ‘an electrical toy’. Did you know Bell’s patent number 174,465 became the single most valuable patent ever granted? But even more surprising is the fact that he merely put together the components that had existed for over thirty years and a German schoolteacher Philipp Reis had built a prototype device in 1861 itself – albeit, it did not really work because it lacked the dust and dirt required to transmit speech with stellar fidelity.

Reis had kept his equipment meticulously spic and span and, thus, never knew he had come so close to a working equipment. Did you know that Bell beat Elisha Gray with just a few hours in filing a proper patent? It was his comrade Thomas A Watson that did something really useful for expanding the functionality and reach of this invention, the patent for the distinctive ringing bell. Yes, because, believe it or not, before that, the only way to know if someone was trying to reach you was to pick up the phone every now and then.

Besides, it was a theatrical engineer Henry Dreyfuss who actually changed the ‘candlestick’ phone to the sleek and boxy modern design on which the handset could rest easily, and which allowed the user to handle the hearing and speaking functions from a single handset.

Agreed, a lot of these sentences may sound wispy and wooly. Amusing, but too amusing to be true. However, as humorous as Bill Bryson is, he does put in a lot of research in his books – so turns out that all these things about communication that we take for granted actually began somewhere.