Scots-born Canadian American Alexander Graham Bell's first practical telephone emerged in 1876 after a race to the patent office. Now the landline, as we know it, will very soon be no more in the land of his birth along with the rest of the UK.

Bell's invention was not without controversy. To this day he is accused of "stealing" it from a prototype by US electrical engineer Elisha Gray. But Bell's patent was upheld in court with his integrity remaining unblemished.

Alexander Graham Bell

Classic Telephone models

Today's mobile equivalent

Landline phones will be switched off across Britain next January 31 with "no extensions." Openreach, infrastructure of BT Group, has circulated the warning to communications providers that use its network to deliver services.

Those still on legacy public switched telephone network (PSTN) connections will be at risk of disruption if they do not heed the switch off directive.

Elderly & Vulnerable Warning

Beyond the landline PSTN systems include business point-of-sale terminals, fire and security alarms and personal care alarms for elderly and vulnerable folks.

It is part of a wider government scheme to get the UK onto all-digital high-speed networks running on fibreoptic infrastructure with legacy copper cabling a thing of the past.

The Register reports public awareness seems pretty well non-existent to the change and Age UK warns that with only three months to go the digital landline switchover has entered a critical final phase.

"Responsibility cannot rest with customers alone and providers must not give up on people who have not responded, recognising some may be unwell, living with dementia, worried about scams or without anyone nearby to help."

Teacher of the Deaf

Edinburgh-born and university educated Alexander Bell died aged 75 in Nova Scotia. He was much more than an inventor being also an engineer, professor and teacher of the deaf. It was whilst concentrating on the latter that he accidentally came upon the telephone!

He subsequently co-founded AT&T the American and Telegraph Company in 1885.

Both his mother and wife were deaf and this profoundly influences Vell's lifework with research on hearing and speech leading him to experiment with devices that eventually led to the first US patent for the telephone on March 7, 1876.

In reality Bell viewed the phone as an intrusion on his real work as a scientist and, apparently, refused to have one in his study as he devised other groundbreaking work including optical telecoms, hydrofoils and aeronautics.

Bell system devised in 1877

Melville House, Bell's first home now
a National Historic Site of Canada

Wikipedia notes that in 1872 Bell became professor of Vocal Physiology and Elocution at Boston University School of Oratory where he was "swept up" by the excitement engendered by the many scientists and inventors living in the city.

He continued his research in sound endeavouring to discover a way to transmit musical notes and articulate speech and was known to lie awake at night, running experiment after experiment in his head.

The Phonautograph

By 1874 his initial work on the harmonic telegraph had entered a formative stage and he experimented with a "phonautograph" pen shaped machine drawing shapes of sound waves on smoked glass by tracing vibrations.

Telegraph messaging traffic was rapidly expanding becoming "the nervous system of commerce," according to Western Union.

The following year Bell developed an acoustic telegraph drawing up a patent application with an Ontario associate requested to do the same in Britain.

Telephone Patent Diagram

Bell makes that first call

In January 1915 Bell made the first ceremonial transcontinental telephone call from the AT&T head office at 15 Dey Street City in New York City. Its value was acknowledged throughout the world with patent applications made in most major countries.

Bell remained a British subject throughout his early life in Scotland and later in Canada until 1882 when he became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

On learning of his death in 1922, Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King cabled Mrs Bell, when he said of her husband and the telephone: "...It will ever be a source of pride to our country that the great invention, with which his name is immortally associated, is a part of its history."