The Photophone

My An Arkie's Faith column from the July 19, 2023, issue of The Polk County Pulse.

The phone call came from Porter Memorial Hospital in Denver, Colorado. My wife and I were racing along Interstate 70 in Kansas, headed to Denver. My father-in-law was in the hospital, and the prognosis wasn’t good. On our way across Oklahoma, Kansas, and Colorado, we made and received four phone calls to get updates on Dad’s condition. I still remember opening the cell phone bill the next month and being shocked at the additional charges of over one hundred dollars for those four calls.

I recounted this story to my teenage granddaughters while we discussed the advances in technology. They had never heard of a bag phone. I told them how we upgraded from the bag phone to a handheld Nokia phone that was almost as big as a brick and seemed heavy. When we upgraded from the Nokia to a Motorola Razor flip phone, we thought we had achieved the pinnacle of phone technology.

But the part of my cell phone history story that shocked my teenage granddaughters was when I told them they had both been born before I saw my first iPhone. They had never considered that they had been born before there were iPhones. Smartphones have become such an integral part of our lives that they couldn’t imagine life before them.

A few days after my conversation with my granddaughters, I watched a documentary about the inventor Alexander Graham Bell. Although Bell is best known for inventing the telephone, he pursued hundreds of projects throughout his life. He created early versions of the metal detector, built hydrofoil boats, and giant tetrahedral kites. He served as president of the National Geographic Society and made the first aircraft to fly in the British Empire. But Bell considered his most important invention the first wireless voice transmission technology that he dubbed, Photophone. 

In 1878, two years after patenting the telephone, Bell read an article by scientist Robert Sabine on how the electrical resistance of the element selenium changes with exposure to light. He realized that this effect could transmit the human voice via light beams. Bell soon began work on a device he called the photophone. 

The transmitter of Bell’s new device consisted of a parabolic mirror like a satellite dish and gathered and focused the sunlight beam from the transmitter onto a piece of selenium which was connected to a battery and telephone headset. The light falling on the selenium changed its resistance, creating a modulated current that the headset converted into sound. In 1880, after a couple of successful messages were relayed indoors, Bell and his assistant transmitted a message from a rooftop to the window of the laboratory, 700 feet away. It was the first demonstration of wireless communication, predating the development of radio by over 20 years.

After the demonstration, Bell told his father, “Well, I have heard a ray of the sun laugh and cough and sing. I have been able to hear a shadow, and I have even perceived by ear the passage of a cloud across the sun's disc. You are the grandfather of the photophone, and I want to share my delight of my success.” 

Wireless communication and fiber optics are so crucial to our modern ultra-connected way of life that Alexander Graham Bell was not exaggerating when he declared that the “Photophone is the greatest invention I have ever made; greater than the telephone.” The invention that he considered his most important was so advanced that it would take nearly 100 years for the technology to catch up with the concept of the photophone.

In her article, “Alexander Graham Bell’s Photophone Was an Invention Ahead of Its Time,” Mary Bellis wrote, “Although the photophone was an extremely important invention, the significance of Bell's work was not fully recognized in its time. This was largely due to practical limitations in the technology of the time.

That changed nearly a century later when the invention of fiber optics in the 1970s allowed for the secure transport of light. Indeed, Bell's photophone is recognized as the progenitor of the modern fiber optic telecommunications system that is widely used to transmit telephone, cable, and internet signals across large distances.”

Long before Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone and the photophone, there was wireless technology that worked flawlessly. The 19th-century Canadian minister A.B. Simpson said, “Prayer is the link that connects us with God.” And the apostle Peter wrote, “The Lord watches the righteous, and he pays attention to their prayers.” 1 Peter 3:12 (ISV) Christians always have a wireless connection available. We can talk to God anytime and don’t need a tower, receiver, or transmitter. We simply need to talk to Him anytime and anywhere.

Through prayer, we voice our requests and concerns to God, giving Him thanks for His many blessings and praising Him for His incredible love. Through prayer, we get to know God better. God promises that if we pray, He will answer. King David wrote of his experience in Psalms 66:19 (NKJV); “Certainly God has heard me; He has attended to the voice of my prayer.”

Gentle Reader, God will certainly hear you. There is nothing too trivial to talk to him about. Corrie Ten Boom, who survived a Nazi concentration camp, said, “Any concern too small to be turned into a prayer is too small to be made into a burden.” Jesus told his disciples, “Whatever things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.” Matthew 21:22 (NKJV) The best thing about prayer is that we don’t need to use Alexander Graham Bell’s photophone because God is always listening.