English 2
Communication is a basic need for virtually everyone. The ability to speak with others daily is what keep society going and gives life a little color. Yet how can people talk to someone they want to when they are miles away? The answer, of course, is the telephone. We define a telephone as an instrument that converts voice and other sound signals into a form that can be transmitted to remote locations and receives and reconverts waves into sound signals. This might be the definition in scientific terms but it hardly represents the definition that the several million users of the telephone would give. A typical home user could define the telephone as a way for keeping in touch with friends and relatives, ordering dinner, or simply as a cure for loneliness. The businessperson will define the phone as a necessity to his livelihood. Regardless of its definition, the telephone is one key element in communication today. The American society has such needs for telephones that they can't go anywhere without finding a telephone. There are phones at home, pay phones on the streets, and even phones in cars. Telephones are virtually everywhere.
The telephone has changed from a novelty item to a required element in the American household since its origin. Where once households shared party lines, they now have multiple lines within the same home. Call-waiting now allows that important call to come through whether the phone is in use or not. Answering machines and caller id make it possible to keep in touch with the calls that were missed while away providing they didn't call your cellular phone or your pager. Three way calling allows a person to talk to two people while also allowing those people to speak to each other as well. All these improvements and additions allow a person to be reached easily no matter their whereabouts. The only thing that someone needs to get a hold of a person is their telephone number. These numbers are more common than Social Security numbers and are also remembered more. Everyone knows their telephone number but not everyone knows their Social Security number.
As in everything, technology has taken over the phone making business. The telephone market is so vast that there are hundreds, maybe even thousands of styles from which to choose. Most styles today are more ergonomic than their predecessors. We design phones to allow maximum comfort for maximum usage. Technology even found a way of doing away with the confining cord.
The popularity of the cordless phones were enormous. No longer did people have to stay within a few feet of the phone. They could now roam free about their home. The cordless phone was a wonderful revolution but as more consumers jumped on the bandwagon little flaws in the technology surfaced. The cordless phone of yesterday had only one channel and several phones using one channel can cause a problem. Although it might have been interesting listening to your neighbors chat, don't forget that they could probably hear you as well. We have overcome this problem, for the time being, with phones that use multiple channels. Cordless phones now have an average of ten channels for the user to scan through and find the clearest one.
About the same time that cordless phones came out another type of convenience item was introduced. This breakthrough was the speaker phone. It allowed people to use the phone without having to hold anything in their hands. The popularity of the speaker phone was short lived mainly due to the lack of clarity it caused. The person using the speaker phone always sounded like they were talking in a barrel because of the echoes inside their home. Then technology really outdid itself and produced the cellular phone.
Although expensive compared to the ordinary phone the ease and convenience of the cellular make it beneficial to own. Never again do people have to hunt for a quarter or drive around aimlessly searching for a pay phone. All they have to do is pull their flip phone from their pocket and call the number they want. The problem with cellular phones, besides their cost of use, is that they do not work in all areas. Unlike the conventional phone the cellular phone doesn't use phone lines, instead it uses air waves. These air waves are than transmitted by towers and then sent to the correct party via a network of waves and towers which form a cloud in which the coverage operates. Researchers say that by the year 2000 all of the country will be under a cellular cloud and therefore bringing an end to this problem.
Society is always looking for an easier way to do things and the telephone is no exception. In search of a less tedious dialing system technology added a feature to make the telephone more user friendly. The switch from the rotary dial to the push button was a major advance in the phone industry. Now instead of having to stick your finger in the designated hole and spin the wheel all the way around one now just has to push the proper buttons. However, pushing these same buttons repeatedly proved too tedious for John Q. Public so along came the memory buttons. This feature allowed the user to program a set number of stored entries ranging from eight to fifty and in some cases even more. After keying the phone number in the designated storage area the user has to only hit one or two buttons and their telephone does the rest.
The wide spread usage of telephones has created one of the most competitive markets in the country. This market being the long distance market. Although consumers don't usually have a choice in their local service, they are free to shop around for the long distance service that they feel is most beneficial to them. The major competitors in this market are AT&T, MCI and Sprint. These companies are constantly offering the lowest rates around with their promotions. These companies are so hungry for your business that they even call your home and try to get a person to switch from their current company to theirs. This brings up another inconvenience to telephone users, the telemarketer. Nobody that owns a phone can say that they haven't received a call, usually around supper time, asking them to donate money to some worthy cause or to are given some sales pitch on some unbelievable new product. This is one of the biggest downfalls of the telephone and has caused a great increase in the number of unlisted phone numbers. Another reason for the unlisted number is the prank call. Children usually do the prank call in an attempt to have fun at the receiver's expense.
Teenagers are the primary users of the phone within a household. They literally spend hours on the phone talking to friends about what happened that day and what they think will happen tomorrow. Women also seem to spend multiple hours on the phone. How often have you called your parent's and received a busy signal just assuming that your mother would have the phone tied up for a while? Men, as a majority, do not like to spend much time on the phone. This probably stems from the fact that they are lowest on the social scale when compared to women and children. It could also be from the fact that when the women and children are through with the phone there is no time left to call anyone.
The telephone plays an important role in today's society. Most people use a phone every day for business or pleasure. The phone gives the ability to talk to someone when the distance between is too great to travel. It also allows childhood friends to keep in touch when careers separate them. A phone call is more personal than a letter and benefits us by being able to hear the person's voice. The telephone is a very valuable asset in our society. Just look at what developments the telephone has lead to. Without the telephone there would be no faxes and more importantly no modems which would drastically change the events of society today. The phone is one of the primary elements of communication just as the phonograph was the first step in the recorded music industry. Although we may never outdate the telephone, it will definitely become more advanced in time. No matter what advances take place the objective will always be the same, people talking with people.