When imaginative scientists first suggested the possibility that one person could speak directly to another over a long distance, few people took them seriously. Among the few who did was a Scots-born American named Alexander Graham Bell, who was one of the first to develop a telephone in 1876. Now the most common means of voice communication in the world, the telephone of today, is infinitely more sophisticated and effective than the crude instrument developed by Bell, and it is being used in ways he could not possibly have foreseen.
当富有想象力的科学家第一次提出一个人可以通过远距离直接与另一个人交谈的可能性时，很少有人认真对待。其中有一位出生在苏格兰的美国人，名叫亚历山大·格拉汉姆·贝尔，他是1876年最早发明电话的人之一。现在，世界上最常见的语音通信手段——今天的电话比贝尔开发的粗糙仪器复杂得多，效率也高得多，而且它的使用方式是他无法预见的。
Another area rapidly developing is overseas telephone service. In 1927, when overseas telephone service was inaugurated with a radio telephone call between New York and London, the occasion was heralded as “thrilling”. Today, many telephone users regard international calls as routine, and overseas service, thanks largely to undersea cables and communications satellites, has undergone extraordinary improvement. Transmission has been made clearer, charges have been greatly reduced and dependability has been improved. Overseas telephone service has now been extended to nearly 350 countries and areas throughout the world.
另一个迅速发展的领域是海外电话业务。1927年，纽约和伦敦之间的无线电电话开通了海外电话服务，这一时刻被称为“激动人心的”。今天，许多电话用户把国际长途电话看作是例行公事，由于海底电缆和通信卫星的发展，海外服务得到了极大的改善。传动更加清晰，费用大大降低，可靠性提高。海外电话业务现已扩展到全世界近350个国家和地区。
One area that is rapidly expanded is communications service “on the move”. Because America is such a highly mobile society — a society on wheels — telephones in cars and trucks are becoming as essential as those in homes and offices. Industry officials have predicted that mobile communications service will soon be more competitive in many respects than the service provided by telephones that do not move.
一个迅速扩大的领域是“在移动”的通信服务。由于美国是一个高度流动的社会——一个轮子上的社会——汽车和卡车上的电话正变得和家里和办公室里的电话一样重要。业内官员预计，移动通信服务很快将在许多方面比不移动电话提供的服务更具竞争力。
telephone companies to handle the extraordinary growth of telephone use that has occurred since the 1950s. between 1950 and 1973 the number of telephone in the United States tripled, with the addition of 90 million telephones. For the Bell Telephone System alone, long-distance calls in the same period have increased from 1.4 billion to 8.5 billion, and indications have shown that long-distance calls will continue to increase significantly in the years ahead. In 1972, 77 percent of the 8.5 billion long- distance calls were dialed by the customer.
自20世纪50年代以来，电话公司处理电话使用的惊人增长。从1950年到1973年，美国的电话数量增加了两倍，新增了9000万部电话。仅就贝尔电话系统而言，同一时期的长途电话从14亿增加到85亿，有迹象表明，长途电话在未来几年将继续显著增加。在1972年，85亿长途电话中有77%是由用户拨打的。
Another very significant development in telephone use is in the area of data communications. Here is an example of how medical data are being transmitted. In a small town in the western part of the United States about 300 people gathered in the local school to undergo tests for lung diseases. The procedures followed marked a major advance in detecting diseases by providing almost instantaneous computer diagnosis over long-distance lines. First, technicians at the school used touch-tone telephones to send vital statistics on the person being tested to the computer, which was located in a hospital 60 miles away. The individual then exhaled into a spirometer, which measures volume and rate of air exhalation, and these measurements were automatically transmitted to the computer. The computer instantly calculated the results and within two seconds relayed them back to the testing center. Normally, it takes hours or even weeks to evaluate spirometer measurements. By utilizing a computer and data communications, however, the time lag is reduced to seconds. Moreover, people in a remote community are put within arm’s length of the most up-to-date medical facilities available.
电话使用的另一个非常重要的发展是在数据通信领域。这里有一个医疗数据是如何传输的例子。在美国西部的一个小镇，大约300人聚集在当地学校接受肺部疾病的检查。随后的程序标志着在检测疾病方面的一个重大进展，通过远距离线路提供了几乎即时的计算机诊断。首先，学校的技术人员使用按键电话将被测试者的重要统计数据发送到60英里外一家医院的电脑上。个体然后呼气进入肺量计，测量体积和空气呼气速率，这些测量自动传送到计算机。计算机立即计算出结果，并在两秒钟内将结果传送回测试中心。通常，评估肺活量测量值需要数小时甚至数周。然而，通过利用计算机和数据通信，时间延迟减少到秒。此外，居住在偏远社区的人们可以接触到最先进的医疗设施。
The introduction of direct distance dialing in 1951was one of the most significant developments in the effort to improve long-distance service. Direct distance dialing is not only fast and convenient for the caller, it has also enabled
1951年长途电话直拨的引入是改善长途服务最重要的发展之一。长途电话直拨不仅方便快捷，而且还启用了
Possibly the most significant research now being conducted is in the use of the laser beam in telephone communications. This wonderful light, first produced by scientists in 1960, can beam continuously and with extraordinary intensity. Instead of using light to see by, telephone researchers are thinking of way to use light to communicate by. In other words, they are thinking of using light as radio waves to transmit telephone calls, television programs and data messages from one point to another, with the expansion of picturephone service and high-speed data communications between computers, present message-carrying capacities may soon become inadequate. If it turns out to be technically and economically sound, the laser might prove to be a major breakthrough in telephone communications.
目前正在进行的最重要的研究可能是在电话通信中使用激光束。这种奇妙的光，最初是由科学家在1960年产生的，可以不断地以非凡的强度发射。取而代之的是电话研究人员正在想办法利用光线进行交流。换言之，他们正在考虑利用光作为无线电波，将电话、电视节目和数据信息从一个地点传送到另一个地点，随着电视电话服务和计算机之间高速数据通信的扩大，目前的信息传送能力可能很快就会不足。如果这种激光器在技术上和经济上都是可靠的，那么它将被证明是电话通信的一个重大突破。
For many people the most exciting development in recent years is picturephone service. Picturephone services, which will become available commercially at the beginning of this century, is being used by large business corporation; but it will no doubt spread from the office to the home. It is already clear that the next best thing in telephone service is going to be picturephone call.
对许多人来说，近年来最令人兴奋的发展是可视电话业务。电视电话服务将在本世纪初实现商业化，目前正在被大型商业公司使用；但毫无疑问，它将从办公室传播到家庭。现在已经很清楚，电话服务的下一个最佳选择是可视电话。
Current research in telephone communications is so extensive and changes are coming about so rapidly that no one can predict with accuracy what the telephone of tomorrow will look like. But there is at least one prediction that can be made with assurance: there will be more and more telephones in the future, and they will be much better than present ones.
目前在电话通信方面的研究是如此广泛，变化是如此迅速，以至于没有人能够准确地预测未来的电话会是什么样子。但至少有一个预测是可以肯定的：未来会有越来越多的电话，而且它们会比现在的电话好得多。
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