Replicas of Alexander Graham Bell's 1879 'Patent Office' telephone, 1959
1959
Replicas of Alexander Graham Bell's 1879 'Patent Office' telephones, 1959
This image is released under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Licence
License this image for commercial use at Science and Society Picture Library
License
Science Museum Group Collection
© The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum
Replicas of Bell's 'Patent-office' telephones of 1876, made by Science Museum Workshops, South Kensington, 1959.
These telephones are based on drawings submitted with Alexander Graham Bell's (1847-1922) telegraph patent on 14 February 1876. At the time, the US Patent Office still required patent applications to be accompanied by a model as well as a drawing, but in Bell's case the model requirement was waived, despite it being completely new technology. Only a drawing was submitted with Bell's patent application, upon which these model telephones are based.
