Telephone "voice", together meaning "distant voice". Credit for the invention of the electric telephone is frequently disputed. As with other influential inventions such as radio, television, the light bulb, and the computer, several inventors pioneered experimental work on "voice transmission over a wire" and improved on each other's ideas. New controversies over the issue still arise from time to time. Charles Bourseul, Antonio Meucci, Johann Philipp Reis, Alexander Graham Bell, and Elisha Gray, amongst others, have all been credited with the invention of the telephone. Alexander Graham Bell was the first to be awarded a patent for the electric telephone by
Invention of the telephone to the pressure. Thus, the grains could vary their resistance as the plates moved in response to sound waves, and reproduce sound with good fidelity, without the weak signals associated with electromagnetic transmitters. The carbon microphone was further improved by Emile Berliner, Francis Blake, David E. Hughes, Henry Hunnings, and Anthony White. The carbon microphone remained standard in telephony until the 1980s, and is still being produced. Additional inventions such as the call bell, central telephone exchange, common battery, ring tone, amplification, trunk lines, and wireless phones – at first cordless and then fully mobile – made the telephone the