Technology
Blake transmitter
Description
This transmitter consists of a rectangular wooden box with a concave bowl-shaped mouthpiece centered on the front panel that is mounted on a framed wood board. The mouthpiece ends in a circular opening through which the instruments diaphragm is visible. There is a metal keyhole to the right of the mouthpiece. Two copper wires are attached to the inside of the instrument, and they connect it to other instruments on this board. Serial number 422498.
This type of transmitter was developed by the American inventor Francis Blake, Jr., who developed a carbon microphone that could convert sound into electrical signals that could ten be transmitted over a long distance. Blake sold his invention to the Bell Telephone Company, and also took on a job at Bell Telephone to continue work on his transmitter. Along with Emile Berliner, the two perfected a transmitter that allowed Bell to manufacture a commercially viable telephone system. This type of transmitter was used on virtually every Bell telephone throughout the 1880s.
When MIT moved from Boston to Cambridge in 1916, physics professor William Drisko (SB 1895) acquired some discarded telephone equipment from the Walker building. His son John (SB 1917) eventually donated them to the MIT Museum in 1975, and they were mounted together to form a working telephone system. That same year, the musem was planning an exhibition to celebrate the centennial of Alexander Graham Bell’s patent. To their surprise, the components still worked! They rigged up a working two-unit telephone system to model how telephones were used in the 1890s. This transmitter was mounted on one of the telephone boards.
Related people
