https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/there-are-officially-more-mobile-devices-than-people-in-the-world-9780518.html
" The GSMA real time tracker puts the number of mobile devices at 7.22 billion whilst the US Census Bureau says the number of people is still somewhere between 7.19 and 7.2 billion."
This figure shows how much phones are in demand. Companies are constantly developing new models for their customers. They are competing with competitors and the features competitors phones have.
Apple's last iPhone cost over €1000 and people are willing to pay that much for a phone.
Friday, November 30, 2018
Sunday, November 25, 2018
How is the object used?
Telephone was first created to transmit sound waves across a wire from a transmitter to a receiver. The telephone has evolved over the years. Nowadays it is used to communicate with people at distance. There are multiple ways one can do this on a phone. They can call, text, email, send a snapchat, tweet even. Phones are used to research anything online, play games, listen to music, read, watch videos and so much more. The Phone has multiple functions.
In society the phone is used in a way to put the user in a bubble and isolate them from others around them. People have become social awkward and automatically go on their phones to avoid communicating with others. We are more familiar with communicating through this device than face to face.
In society the phone is used in a way to put the user in a bubble and isolate them from others around them. People have become social awkward and automatically go on their phones to avoid communicating with others. We are more familiar with communicating through this device than face to face.
Sunday, November 18, 2018
In what way is the object valuable?
I believe this object is valuable because it allows people to communicate from long distances. I have family in New Zealand that I FaceTime every weekend. If telephones didn't exist we would still be relying on letter writing in order to get in contact with someone who lives far away.
I feel as though the telephone/mobile phone brings us closer together but also puts a distance between us. It's like Sherry Turkle said, not too far, not too close, just right. My generation are so used to using our mobile phones that we are almost use them more than actually communicating with the person face to face. I am in my final year so I don't really have time for a social life. I have gone weeks without seeing some of my friends and the only way I am in contact with them is through social media.
There are many advantages and disadvantages to phone. With new technologies your phone is a mini computer with all the information in the world in it. On the other side you start to depend on it. It's glued to you hand and is by you at all times. It's almost like another limb that you can't live without because otherwise you'll feel lost. I was 11 when I got my first phone and my mother was in her 20s when she got her first phone. I remember asking her how did you find out information for projects, etc. She told me she went to the library. With the Internet on your phone you can find out the weather in a country on the other side of the world. I just couldn't imagine a time without the Internet. I asked my grandmother how they got in contact with someone if they wanted to meet up. With phones you could just send a message and get a reply almost instantly. She said they wrote letters or else when they saw each other made a plan to meet up again. It's so bizarre to hear what life was like before technology took over.
I feel as though the telephone/mobile phone brings us closer together but also puts a distance between us. It's like Sherry Turkle said, not too far, not too close, just right. My generation are so used to using our mobile phones that we are almost use them more than actually communicating with the person face to face. I am in my final year so I don't really have time for a social life. I have gone weeks without seeing some of my friends and the only way I am in contact with them is through social media.
There are many advantages and disadvantages to phone. With new technologies your phone is a mini computer with all the information in the world in it. On the other side you start to depend on it. It's glued to you hand and is by you at all times. It's almost like another limb that you can't live without because otherwise you'll feel lost. I was 11 when I got my first phone and my mother was in her 20s when she got her first phone. I remember asking her how did you find out information for projects, etc. She told me she went to the library. With the Internet on your phone you can find out the weather in a country on the other side of the world. I just couldn't imagine a time without the Internet. I asked my grandmother how they got in contact with someone if they wanted to meet up. With phones you could just send a message and get a reply almost instantly. She said they wrote letters or else when they saw each other made a plan to meet up again. It's so bizarre to hear what life was like before technology took over.
What other things could influence the style of the object
I think there are many factors that have influenced the style of the telephone over the years. The first one was created to transmit sound at a distance. I believe when developing the style of the object they had to take into consideration the different types of people using this object. Age, disabilities such as blindness and deafness would have been a factor.
On this website there are many different types of telephones for the blind and people who are hearing impaired. https://assistech.com/store/telephones-for-the-blind-and-visually-impaired
With the new smart phones you can go hands free and command the virtual assistant to call people, send msg, book appointments, send emails and so on.
https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/deaf-blind-woman-first-to-use-new-phone/2777539.html
In 2013 a woman in Australia who is blind and has poor hearing was the first person to use a braille phone.
On this website there are many different types of telephones for the blind and people who are hearing impaired. https://assistech.com/store/telephones-for-the-blind-and-visually-impaired
With the new smart phones you can go hands free and command the virtual assistant to call people, send msg, book appointments, send emails and so on.
https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/deaf-blind-woman-first-to-use-new-phone/2777539.html
In 2013 a woman in Australia who is blind and has poor hearing was the first person to use a braille phone.
Sunday, November 11, 2018
Ted Talks: Sherry Turkle
https://www.ted.com/talks/sherry_turkle_alone_together#t-1038042
I watched this Ted talk by Sherry Turkle about humans and technology. A lot of the things she was saying were completely true.
The object I chose is the telephone and more specifically the first telephone. I wanted to explore how it was made and its main purpose and how over the years its changed. I believe its original purpose was to communicate at a distance with other people and over the years we have become familiar with this distance and we need this distance (Goldilocks effect). Sherry said that we are "alone together". If you look at a group of people at the bus stop, in a pub, in the canteen you are guaranteed to see people on the phones, possibly with headphones in. Completely isolating themselves from everyone else. I have experienced on the bus, an older person striking up a conversation with me and I really enjoyed it. It never happens with anyone my own age. We are so socially awkward because we are used to communicating through a screen. I don't see most of my friends because I'm busy with college and they have work. Our only form of communicating is on social media. When you are talking on social media you can take as much time as you want replying to them, edit what you are saying. You are literally putting a filter over everything. Even writing this blog post, I'm editing words around.
Sherry stated that "conversations happens in real time and you can't control what you are going to say."
Now if you grow up spending most of your time communicating on a digital device where you can edit everything you say and post, you won't have the complete confidence to communicate face to face with someone. I know that I get a bit flustered when I'm talking and at the end of the conversation, in my head I'm thinking of how I could have phrased that better.
Another thing Sherry said is that "no-one is listening to me".
I agree with her. I find sometimes when I'm talking to certain people they are bored with what I'm saying. I go on a passionate spiel about a topic or story and the response I get is a bored yeah. Sherry said that we" control where we put our attention". I can read peoples facial expressions, body language and I am well aware when they aren't interested in what I am saying or if they are annoyed with what I am saying. I am in my final year where I am pretty much glued to my laptop working. I don't have time for a social life. Most of the time I find that I am just talking about assignments or modules. Recently I came to the conclusion that people are finding this annoying. So I made the decisions to not talk about college with anyone. But it's all I am doing at the moment so what else can I talk to people about? This goes back to Sherry's point about "no-one listening to me". I feel as though I can't talk about certain topics to people and they are topics I need to talk about. So therefore I post my tweets online where there's "automatic listening".
"We expect more from technology and less from other".
I watched this Ted talk by Sherry Turkle about humans and technology. A lot of the things she was saying were completely true.
The object I chose is the telephone and more specifically the first telephone. I wanted to explore how it was made and its main purpose and how over the years its changed. I believe its original purpose was to communicate at a distance with other people and over the years we have become familiar with this distance and we need this distance (Goldilocks effect). Sherry said that we are "alone together". If you look at a group of people at the bus stop, in a pub, in the canteen you are guaranteed to see people on the phones, possibly with headphones in. Completely isolating themselves from everyone else. I have experienced on the bus, an older person striking up a conversation with me and I really enjoyed it. It never happens with anyone my own age. We are so socially awkward because we are used to communicating through a screen. I don't see most of my friends because I'm busy with college and they have work. Our only form of communicating is on social media. When you are talking on social media you can take as much time as you want replying to them, edit what you are saying. You are literally putting a filter over everything. Even writing this blog post, I'm editing words around.
Sherry stated that "conversations happens in real time and you can't control what you are going to say."
Now if you grow up spending most of your time communicating on a digital device where you can edit everything you say and post, you won't have the complete confidence to communicate face to face with someone. I know that I get a bit flustered when I'm talking and at the end of the conversation, in my head I'm thinking of how I could have phrased that better.
Another thing Sherry said is that "no-one is listening to me".
I agree with her. I find sometimes when I'm talking to certain people they are bored with what I'm saying. I go on a passionate spiel about a topic or story and the response I get is a bored yeah. Sherry said that we" control where we put our attention". I can read peoples facial expressions, body language and I am well aware when they aren't interested in what I am saying or if they are annoyed with what I am saying. I am in my final year where I am pretty much glued to my laptop working. I don't have time for a social life. Most of the time I find that I am just talking about assignments or modules. Recently I came to the conclusion that people are finding this annoying. So I made the decisions to not talk about college with anyone. But it's all I am doing at the moment so what else can I talk to people about? This goes back to Sherry's point about "no-one listening to me". I feel as though I can't talk about certain topics to people and they are topics I need to talk about. So therefore I post my tweets online where there's "automatic listening".
"We expect more from technology and less from other".
What is the technology?
In previous blog posts I have talked about how the first telephone works. In this post I am going to look at how newer phones work just to show the comparison between the old and new.
Similar to the first phone, the person speaks into the telephone, the sound waves created by their phone enter the mouthpiece. An electric current carries the sound to the telephone of the person you are talking to. the telephone consists of two main part: the transmitter and the receiver.
"The transmitter acts as an electric ear. It lies behind the mouthpiece of the phone. It has a 14 eardrum. The eardrum is a thin, round metal disk called a diaphragm. When a person talks into the phone, the sound waves strike the diaphragm and make it vibrate. The diaphragm vibrates at various speeds, depending on the variations in the air pressure caused by the varying tones of the speakers voice.
Behind the diaphragm lies a small cup filled with tiny grains of carbon. The diaphragm presses against these carbon grains. Low voltage electric current travels through the grains. This current comes from batteries at the telephone company. The pressure on the carbon grains varies as sound waves make the diaphragm vibrate. A loud sound causes the sound waves to push hard on the diaphragm. In turn, the diaphragm presses the grains tightly together. This action makes it easier for the electric current to travel through, and a large amount of electricity flows through the grains. When the sound is soft, the sound waves push lightly on the diaphragm. In turn, the diaphragm puts only a light pressure on the carbon grains. The grains are pressed together loosely. This makes it harder for the electric current to pass through them, and less current flows through the grains
Thus, the pattern of the sound waves determines the pressure on the diaphragm. This pressure, in turn, regulates the pressure on the carbon grains. The crowded or loose grains cause the electric current to become stronger or weaker. The current copies the pattern of the sound waves and travels over a telephone wire to the receiver of another telephone. For more modern phones that have a telephone answering service, the sound wave is captured on a recording device which allows for the operator of the phone to playback at a later time.
The Receiver serves as an "electric mouth." Like a human voice, it has "vocal cords." The vocal cords of the receiver are a diaphragm. Two magnets located at the edge of the diaphragm cause it to vibrate. One of the magnets is a permanent magnet that constantly holds the diaphragm close to it. The other magnet is an electromagnet. It consists of a piece of iron with a coil of wire wound around it. When an electric current passes through the coil, the iron core becomes magnetized. The diaphragm is pulled toward the iron core and away from the permanent magnet. The pull of the electromagnet varies between strong and weak, depending on the variations in the current. Thus, the electromagnet controls the vibrations of the diaphragm in the receiver.
The electric current passing through the electromagnet becomes stronger or weaker according to the loud or soft sounds. This action causes the diaphragm to vibrate according to the speaker's speech pattern. As the diaphragm moves in and out, it pulls and pushes the air in front of it. The pressure on the air sets up sound waves that are the same as the ones sent into the transmitter. The sound waves strike the ear of the listener and he hears the words of the speaker."
https://www.antiquetelephonehistory.com/telworks.php
Similar to the first phone, the person speaks into the telephone, the sound waves created by their phone enter the mouthpiece. An electric current carries the sound to the telephone of the person you are talking to. the telephone consists of two main part: the transmitter and the receiver.
"The transmitter acts as an electric ear. It lies behind the mouthpiece of the phone. It has a 14 eardrum. The eardrum is a thin, round metal disk called a diaphragm. When a person talks into the phone, the sound waves strike the diaphragm and make it vibrate. The diaphragm vibrates at various speeds, depending on the variations in the air pressure caused by the varying tones of the speakers voice.
Behind the diaphragm lies a small cup filled with tiny grains of carbon. The diaphragm presses against these carbon grains. Low voltage electric current travels through the grains. This current comes from batteries at the telephone company. The pressure on the carbon grains varies as sound waves make the diaphragm vibrate. A loud sound causes the sound waves to push hard on the diaphragm. In turn, the diaphragm presses the grains tightly together. This action makes it easier for the electric current to travel through, and a large amount of electricity flows through the grains. When the sound is soft, the sound waves push lightly on the diaphragm. In turn, the diaphragm puts only a light pressure on the carbon grains. The grains are pressed together loosely. This makes it harder for the electric current to pass through them, and less current flows through the grains
Thus, the pattern of the sound waves determines the pressure on the diaphragm. This pressure, in turn, regulates the pressure on the carbon grains. The crowded or loose grains cause the electric current to become stronger or weaker. The current copies the pattern of the sound waves and travels over a telephone wire to the receiver of another telephone. For more modern phones that have a telephone answering service, the sound wave is captured on a recording device which allows for the operator of the phone to playback at a later time.
The Receiver serves as an "electric mouth." Like a human voice, it has "vocal cords." The vocal cords of the receiver are a diaphragm. Two magnets located at the edge of the diaphragm cause it to vibrate. One of the magnets is a permanent magnet that constantly holds the diaphragm close to it. The other magnet is an electromagnet. It consists of a piece of iron with a coil of wire wound around it. When an electric current passes through the coil, the iron core becomes magnetized. The diaphragm is pulled toward the iron core and away from the permanent magnet. The pull of the electromagnet varies between strong and weak, depending on the variations in the current. Thus, the electromagnet controls the vibrations of the diaphragm in the receiver.
The electric current passing through the electromagnet becomes stronger or weaker according to the loud or soft sounds. This action causes the diaphragm to vibrate according to the speaker's speech pattern. As the diaphragm moves in and out, it pulls and pushes the air in front of it. The pressure on the air sets up sound waves that are the same as the ones sent into the transmitter. The sound waves strike the ear of the listener and he hears the words of the speaker."
https://www.antiquetelephonehistory.com/telworks.php
What materials is it made of?
http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_704159
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alexander-Graham-Bell
https://www.encyclopedia.com/science-and-technology/computers-and-electrical-engineering/electrical-engineering/telephones
The Internet is an endless hole of information and sometimes you don't get the answers you're looking for. Today I tried to find out what materials the first telephone was made out of. The Internet gave me many different answers. This answer appears in more than one website so I hope this is true.
"Bell created a magnetic telephone which was the precursor to modern phones. This design consists of a transmitter, receiver and a magnet. The transmitter and receiver contain a diaphragm which is a metal disk. The vibrations of the callers voice cause the diaphragm in the transmitter to move."
Nowadays phones contain a microphone, an earpiece and are touch screen
Phones have gone through many design changes over the years and they keep getting smaller and more high tech.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alexander-Graham-Bell
https://www.encyclopedia.com/science-and-technology/computers-and-electrical-engineering/electrical-engineering/telephones
The Internet is an endless hole of information and sometimes you don't get the answers you're looking for. Today I tried to find out what materials the first telephone was made out of. The Internet gave me many different answers. This answer appears in more than one website so I hope this is true.
"Bell created a magnetic telephone which was the precursor to modern phones. This design consists of a transmitter, receiver and a magnet. The transmitter and receiver contain a diaphragm which is a metal disk. The vibrations of the callers voice cause the diaphragm in the transmitter to move."
Nowadays phones contain a microphone, an earpiece and are touch screen
Phones have gone through many design changes over the years and they keep getting smaller and more high tech.
Saturday, November 3, 2018
At first glance can you tell what this object is?
Alexander Graham Bell Telephone
At first glance can you tell what this object is?
Honestly if I saw this invention with no label, I wouldn't have a clue what it is. My first thought would be to look through what looks like an eyepiece. It looks like an object that you would look through and maybe twist the gold section in the middle to change the focus. The top two images show the same object and the third image shows an additional object which is connected to the top object. If I saw these two objects side by side, I might have a better idea of what it is used for. With the second part of the object I would, once again try and look into the section where he is clearly talking into. If sight is not its intention then I would try my other senses. Hearing is next so I would attempt talking into it which is what it's intended for.
As humans I think we are curious creatures and our method of figuring out what something is, is to test our senses on it. The first is sight, then maybe picking up and touching the object. Next we might use our voices to create sound and talk into it. I doubt we would smell it or lick it but you never know. Depends how curious you are.
The first telephone
Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell is the inventor of the first telephone and received his first patent in 1876. There have been hundreds of lawsuits for copyright but none have been successful. While he was a teacher for the hearing impaired, he was asked by a group of investors to perfect the perfect harmonic telegraph.
A telegraph is a system for transmitting messages from a distance along a wire, especially one creating signals by making and breaking electrical connection. Bell was set on creating a voice transmitting device. On March 7, 1876, Bell was awarded a patent on the first device and 3 days later called his assistant and electrician, Thomas Watson. The famous words were: "Mr. Watson, come here. I want you."
https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/alexander-graham-bell
How it was madeBell and Watson were working on a harmonic telegraph. When a reed struck on Watson's transmitter an intermittent current was converted to a continuous current. Bell was able to hear sound on his receiver confirming his belief that sound could be transmitted and reconverted through an electric wire by using a continuous electric current.
The original telephone design that Bell patented was a modified version of a telegraph. The primary difference is that it could transmit sound. Two years later he created a magnetic telephone which is consisted of a transmitter, receiver and a magnet. The transmitter and receiver each contain a diaphragm which is a metal disk. During a phone call, the vibrations of the callers voice cause the diaphragm in the transmitter to move. This motion is transferred along the phone line to the receiver. The receiving diaphragm begins vibrating thus producing sound and completing the call.
Drawbacks
Callers had to shout to overcome noise and voice distortions.
Time-lapse in the transmission.
Solution: The first phones contained a single microphone.
Thomas Edison introduced a model that had a movable listening earpiece and a stationary speaking tube.
Phones nowadays
Telephones still work on the same basic principles. The person picks up the handset and this causes the phone to connect to a routing network. When the numbers are pressed on a touch-tone keypad, signals are sent down the phone line to the routing station. Each digit is recognized as a combination of tone frequencies. The specific number will be sent to another phone and cause it to ring. When the phone is picked up, a connection between the two phones is initiated. The mouthpiece acts a microphone and sound waves from the users voice cause a thin, plastic disk inside the phone to vibrate. This changes the distance between the plastic disk and another metal disk. The intensity of an electric field between the two disks is changed as a result and a varying electric current is sent down the phone line. The receiver on the other phone picks up this current. As it enters the receiver, it passes through a set of electromagnets. These magnets cause a metal diaphragm to vibrate. This vibration reproduces the voice that initiated the current. An amplifier in the receiver makes it easier to hear. When one of the phones is hung up the electric current is broken, causing all of the routing connections to be released.
Materials
Range from glass, ceramics, paper, metals, rubber and plastic.
Primary components on circuit board are made of silicon.
Outer is made of a strong, high-impact resistant polymer.
Speakers require magnetic materials.
http://www.madehow.com/Volume-5/Telephone.html
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