Invention of the telephone useful and widespread apparatus it is now. The telephone exchange was an idea of the Hungarian engineer Tivadar Puskás (1844–1893) in 1876, while he was working for Thomas Edison on a telegraph exchange. Puskás was working on his idea for an electrical telegraph exchange when Alexander Graham Bell received the first patent for the telephone. This caused Puskás to take a fresh look at his own work and he refocused on perfecting a design for a telephone exchange. He then got in touch with the U.S. inventor Thomas Edison who liked the design. According to Edison, "Tivadar Puskas was the
Invention of the telephone three great tests of the telephone". One Bell Homestead reviewer wrote of them, "No one involved in these early calls could possibly have understood the future impact of these communication firsts". A later telephone design was publicly exhibited on May 4, 1877, at a lecture given by Professor Bell in the Boston Music Hall. According to a report quoted by John Munro in "Heroes of the Telegraph": Going to the small telephone box with its slender wire attachments, Mr. Bell coolly asked, as though addressing someone in an adjoining room, "Mr. Watson, are you ready!" Mr. Watson, five miles away