Alexander Graham Bell may have invented the telephone in 1875, but the first phone installation didn’t come about for another three years. And that’s what makes these photos from 1887 so incredible; this tangled mass of telephone wires had already wound itself around New York City’s streets just seven years after that first installation.
In 1899, the inventor of the telephone set out to solve another problem: The airplane. He failed miserably. Really, really miserably. But this summer, a team of architects and engineers have resurrected his 106-year-old design for a flying machine for a very different purpose: As a model for floating, solar-powered structures.
It’s not often you get to hear with the 19th century sounded like, but thanks to 3D scanning and old wax cylinders, it’s possible. And now, for the very first time, we know what Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the all-important telephone, might have sounded like when he made that historic call. More »
National Geographic Has an Amazing New Tumblr of Weird and Wonderful Photographs
Posted in: Today's Chili National Geographic has launched a new Tumblr, called Found, which showcases some of the most weird and wonderful shots from the magazine’s archive—and it has some amazing photographs online already. More »