The Tin Can Telephone

The tin can telephone is commonly used in elementary schools to teach sound vibration and the origin of telephone. Tin can telephone is a device or toy made up of two tin cans or paper cups connected by a taut string.

The toy works in such a way that when the string is pulled tightly and someone speaks into one of the cans, its bottom vibrates. The string also vibrates in the process transmitting the sound vibration to the other end. The bottom of the second can vibrates just like the first can, thus copying the sound.

As simple and common as it seems but do you know that the first recorded person who made such device was an English natural philosopher, architect and a person of great and varied learning?

In 1664 to1665, Robert Hooke connected cups with an inflated wire to experiment with the sound transmission. The device was sometimes called the "lovers' telephone". Four centuries later, when telephone became a common household appliance, lover’s telephone became a common tool to teach children about sound vibration in preschools and elementary schools.

The Origin of Telephone

A tin can telephone toy made of two cans connected by a wire.
Image from campfire.andycamper.com

I remember when I was a kid playing “tele-telepono” with my brother and sister. Our toy was made of two empty cans of sardines which we picked up from our mother’s garbage. We made a hole at the bottom of both cans and connected them with a string about 50 meters long. My sister stood on our window while I and my brother hold the other end at our neighbor’s house. Then we talked and laughed and shouted at each other – a fun way of spending time in a remote village, where there was no technology except a battery-powered radio.

This painted a vague scenario of the origin of telephone. According to Wikipedia, “The origins of the telephone date back to the non-electrical string telephone or "lover's telephone" that has been known for centuries, comprising two diaphragms connected by a taut string or wire. Sound waves are carried as mechanical vibrations along the string or wire from one diaphragm to the other. The classic example is the tin can telephone, a children's toy made by connecting the two ends of a string to the bottoms of two metal cans…. The essential idea of this toy was that a diaphragm can collect voice sounds from the air, as in the ear, and a string … can transmit such collected voice sounds for reproduction at a distance.”

Have you played this kind of toy back when you were a kid? We would like to hear your story.

The Importance of Communication

“In the beginning was the Word.” This is how the religious describes the origin of all things. For them, God is a great communicator and made everything to communicate to Him and with each other.

Whether one is religious or not, each of us know that communication is important. In fact, it is life. Try to imagine life without communication. No one likes that. It’s like living in an island cut off from everything. But it’s more than that. Because even though we are alone, we still communicate to ourselves.

You still remember the time when you were day dreaming, imagining your crush, and rehearsing what to say the moment you meet him. Then unconsciously, you began murmuring to yourself. The murmur was coupled with a smile and the smile turned into kilig. And then you began voicing your thoughts and your barkada heard you talking and looked at you with crossed brows and said, “nababaliw ka na ata ah?” It was an embarrassing moment but that was self-communicating.

We communicate because communication is built within us. We exist to communicate. It is as basic as the air we breathe. Without it no one can live. Having it, you’re still alive even if you communicate to the dead.

It was because of the hunger to communicate that telephone was invented. As people multiply and travel around the world, the distance between their “loved ones” increased. This demands a long distance communication which was at first met by letters. But letters is limited through time and space. A better means of communication is needed. Telephone answered the need. The word telephone came from two Greek words: tēle, and phōnē which mean far and voice respectively. It is excellent invention that enables us to hear our lovers’ voice from afar. Through the invention of telephone, friends, family, lovers and even enemies can hear each other’s voice at once.

Nowadays, with the rapid advancement of technology, communication comes at the speed of light with colors and styles. But no matter how advanced our gadgets are; we owe everything to the creator of communication and the inventor of telephone.