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SOCIETÀ/SOCIETy
Storia, evoluzione e sociologia
di un apparecchio che ha cambiato
la vita di tutti: il telefono
di Fabio Lagonia
orse oggi ne facciamo un meno lontanamente immagina- hisTory, eVoLuTioN aND soCioLo-
uso esagerato e smodato, bile, ancorché oggi l’uso che se ne gy of a DeViCe ThaT has ChaNgeD
ma resta sempre e comun- faccia sia diventata un’abitudine eVeryoNe’s Life: The TeLephoNe
Fque uno degli oggetti più scontata. Parliamo del telefono. In this month of March two fun-
rivoluzionari e utili della storia In questo mese di marzo ricorro- damental dates related to the tele-
dell’umanità. Un’invenzione che no due date fondamentali legate a phone occur: on March 7, 1876 the patent
ha cambiato il mondo e la vita questo strumento: il 7 marzo 1876 of this revolutionary device was filed by
di tutte le persone, innanzitutto veniva depositato il brevetto del Alexander Graham Bell, while just over a
century later, on March 6, 1983, the first
avvicinandole e mettendole in telefono da Alexander Graham mobile was put on the market . Let’s retrace
relazione in un modo prima nem- Bell, mentre poco più di un secolo the evolution of an object that has now
become inseparable and an integral part
of our daily lives. Twenty-nine year old Bell
registered patent no. 174465 in order to
protect - as he himself said - “the method
and the apparatus for transmitting the
voice or other sounds by means of electric
ripples”. But this patent is at the center of a
great dispute that spanned the twentieth
century. The first experiments were made
by other inventors, including the Floren-
tine Antonio Meucci who already built the
first prototype in 1854. Unfortunately for
economic reasons he was unable to pat-
ent it, but when he moved to New York to
open a candle factory, in 1871 he had the
opportunity to resort to at least a tempo-
rary patent that cost him $ 10 a year until
1873. It seems that Bell, a university pro-
fessor in Boston, came into possession of
Meucci’s original studies, thus managing
to complete his invention about three years
Alexander Graham Bell Antonio Meucci, in una foto del 1878 later and go down in history as the official
inventor of the telephone. A dispute that
went on for long decades that found justice
dopo, il 6 marzo 1983, veniva mes- only in 2012 when the United States House
so in commercio il primo cellula- of Representatives recognized Meucci’s
re. Ripercorriamo allora, seppur merits. Returning to the practical history
of the social evolution of this instrument,
sommariamente, l’evoluzione di we know that it was a bank in Boston that
un oggetto ormai divenuto inse- installed the first telephone in its building.
parabile, decisamente utile e parte Shortly afterwards the connections be-
integrante della nostra quotidia- tween several telephones began to devel-
nità. Il ventinovenne Alexander op and the first telephone exchanges were
born which switched the calls manually,
Graham Bell, ingegnere britan- through switchboard operators. Shortly
nico naturalizzato statunitense, thereafter, the evolution would deliver fur-
depositò il brevetto n. 174465 allo ther and direct passages. In the early 1940s,
scopo di proteggere – come lui when the telephone began to spread, it
stesso disse – “il metodo e l’appa- was not uncommon to see the devices,
especially in public places or hotels, with
padlocks: a decisive mechanical limiter
that many decades later would have been
Una delle prime vesioni di telefono replaced by access codes, pins, passwords,
