Alexander Graham Bell had one of the greatest impacts on communication in history with his invention, the telephone. In 1879, at the age of 29, he created the telephone with the assistance of Thomas Watson. Bell had a background with deaf parents, which led him to pursue the goal of invention. Bell held 18 patents in his name alone and 12 that he shared with his collaborators. (Alexander Graham Bell Bio) Alexander's most popular and well-known invention was the telephone. This was an upgrade from the form of communication at the time, the telegraph, which was a clickable machine that had different patterns for each scale of the alphabet. “The telephone was capable of sending telegraph transmissions that could be sent over the same wire if they were transmitted on different harmonic frequencies.” (Alexander Graham Bell Bio) The telephone had one end where you spoke and the other end played the noises coming from the other telephone. “He was the first to realize that electric currents could exactly duplicate sound waves by transmitting multiple sounds by vibrating the air in a series of frequencies” (Alexander Graham Bell). Bell believed that his photophone invention was even greater than the telephone. The photophone was a device that allowed sound to be transmitted over a beam of light. He developed it using a sensitive selenium crystal and a mirror that vibrated in response to sound. He was able to successfully send a photophonic message over 200 meters from one building to another. For this invention he used the help of his assistant Charles Sumner Tainter. (Biography of Alexander Graham Bell) Alexander has always had an intellectual curiosity that led him to regularly seek, strive and always desire to learn and create... in the middle of paper... to transmit several telegraphic messages simultaneously over a single wire and also with various devices to help graphically record sound waves. (Alexander Graham Bell) Alexander Graham Bell had a great impact on the lives of his time and today. Since his death in 1922, the telecommunications industry has undergone an astonishing revolution. Today, deaf people can communicate using a special display phone. Fiber optics are improving the quality and speed of data transmission. (Alexander Graham Bell) "Alexander Graham Bell's invention reveals the principle on which today's laser and fiber optic communications systems are based, although it would require the development of several modern technologies to fully realize it." (Alexander Graham Bell Biography) Alexander Graham Bell's contribution to the modern world and its technologies was enormous.