From
the Magneto to the Cellphone
March 26, 2009,
3:10 pm
By Iris Hernandez Rodriguez
neysi@enet.cu
Translation: Ernesto Gutierrez Pino
Las Tunas.
- Alexander Graham Bell made history when he patented the telephone in
1877. He discovered that the vibrations of the human voice could be
imitated modifying the continuous electric current. A transmitter and a
receiver linked by a conductive cable allowed the miracle.
The first
apparatus enters in Cuba in the same year. Few time later the telephone
began to substite the telegraph. But here the public telephony
officially dates from 1881.
The first
national service was inaugurated in 1910 and the first international
phone net debuted in 1916 by measn of a submarine cable.
In 1959
the triumph of the Revolution receives a poor phone development inside
the country with few apparatus.
The impulse was slow in the first decade to achieve later the highest
annual growth in the phone density between 1972 and 1982 (3.54 percent),
when there was a quick installation of lines throughout the country.
From 1982 to 1992, the growth was 2.26 percent. In this whole stage the
international communications were carried out by means of microwaves,
later on by coaxial cable.
RING,
RING, RING IN LAS TUNAS
The phone
lines were approved in Las Tunas city in 1912 and the following year 18
people received the service. The First one was given to Eduardo Vidal
Fontaine, the mayor of the city and the second one to Francisco
Calderon, owner of the electric plant.
In this
city the first place occupied by the followers of Bell was at the
building of today's Tunas Theater. Then they moved the building of the
Company of Telecommunications of Cuba INC (ETECSA), which at present
offers cervices of cellphone.
