What made the first beeping noise?
The sound isn’t found in nature, therefore couldn’t have existed before modern technology, so where did it come from?
It’s silly, yes, but I’m curious. Thank you!
If I may speculate based on this article by James Gleick, the Phone Company started it all.
Probably a relay buzzer.
FWIW, a relay is a switch that is activated by an attached electromagnet. Current running through the magnet pulls on the switch and either opens or closes it, depending on how it is wired. If you wire a relay so that the wires to the electromagnet part run through the relay’s nomally closed contacts, the relay will buzz as the magnet opens the switch, which opens the contacts and cutting power to the magnet.
Relays are pretty easy to make and probably have been used since the early days of the telegraph.
I’m guessing when something stepped/fell on/ate a small rodent of sorts.
laugh riot
Depends what you call a beep but it is pretty much the simplest type of sound you can find: a short burst of one single constant fundamental frequency. You could come quite close with a musical instrument or with a whistle. Take a whistle of the same frequency and generate very short bursts… sonic whistles tend to have lower frequencies whereas electronic beeps tend to have them higher, but the difference is not so much the sound ans that electronic beeps are very short in duration which is not so easy to do mechanically.