The First Photophone

On June 3, 1880, Alexander Graham Bell successfully sent the world’s first wireless telephone message using a remarkable invention called the “photophone”.  Most people know Bell as the inventor of the telephone, but he believed the photophone was actually one of his greatest achievements.  
 
The device worked by using sunlight and mirrors to transmit sound through a beam of light, without wires.  During the experiment in Washington D.C., Bell spoke into the transmitter while sunlight reflected off a vibrating mirror.  The light beam carried his voice to a receiver hundreds of feet away, where the sound was converted back into speech.  
 
Amazingly, this happened more than a century before modern fiber optics, cell phones, and wireless communication became part of our everyday life.  Bell said later, the photophone was:  “The greatest invention I have ever made.”  
 
Although, the technology was limited by weather and available materials at the time, Bell’s experiment laid important groundwork for future communication technologies that would eventually help shape the modern world.  Today many of the systems that power the internet, fiber optics and digital communication still rely on the basic idea Bell explored in 1880 – transmitting the information through light.  

Sometimes history’s greatest inventions begin as ideas far ahead of their time.