# The First Beep? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 24, 2019, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-beep/834439 "2019-05-24T03:05:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ccd318/32.png) [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_in_Qatar)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-beep/834439/1 "2019-05-24T03:05:25Z")
I am thinking about my birthday in 1958. I was born on the same day as Michael Jackson. In any case, I doodling some words about what life was like then. It occurs to me that nothing beeped. Phones and doorbells rang, cars did not make any special sound. I wonder when the first gadget beeped. Any thoughts? ---
**Author:** ![mikecurtis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mikecurtis/32/3284_2.png) [@mikecurtis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mikecurtis)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-beep/834439/2 "2019-05-24T03:20:09Z")
[The Beeper?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pager) (too obvious?) > [@](#): > > The first telephone pager system was patented in 1949 by Alfred J. Gross.[8] > > One of the first practical paging services was launched in 1950 for physicians in the New York City area. Physicians paid $12 per month for the service and carried a 200-gram (7 oz) pager that would receive phone messages within 40 kilometres (25 mi) of a single transmitter tower. The system was manufactured by the Reevesound Company and operated by Telanswerphone.[9] In 1960, John Francis Mitchell combined elements of Motorola’s walkie-talkie and automobile radio technologies to create the first transistorized pager,[10][11][12] and from that time, paging technology continued to advance, and pager adoption among emergency personnel is still popular, as of July 2016.[13] > > In 1962 the Bell System—the U.S. telephone monopoly colloquially known as “Ma Bell”—presented its Bellboy radio paging system at the Seattle World’s Fair. Bellboy was the first commercial system for personal paging. It also marked one of the first consumer applications of the transistor (invented by Bell Labs in 1947), for which three Bell Labs inventors received a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956. Solid-state circuitry enabled the Bellboy pager, about the size of a small TV remote device, to fit into a customer’s pocket or purse, quite a feat at that time. The Bellboy was a terminal that notified the user when someone was trying to call them. When the person received an audible signal (a buzz) on the pager, he found a telephone and called the service centre, which informed him of the caller’s message. Bell System Bellboy radio pagers each used three reed receiver relays, each relay tuned to one of 33 different frequencies, selectively ringing a particular customer when all three relays were activated at the same time—a precursor of DTMF.[14] The ReFLEX protocol was developed in the mid-1990s. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-beep/834439/3 "2019-05-24T03:22:03Z")
Don’t know about gadgets, but the Greenwich time signal has been broadcast in the UK in the form of beeps (or “pips”) since 1924. This format for a broadcast time signal was subsequently copied in many other countries. In time it gave rise to a cinematic trope, which was certainly around by the 1950s, in which futuristic high-tech machinery would emit beeps, so that the audience would know that it was futuristic and hight-tech. ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-beep/834439/4 "2019-05-24T03:36:22Z")
I don’t know when the first was, but before the 1950s, if you wanted something to give you some sort of alert, something electro-mechanical or purely mechanical was usually your best solution. Transistors started making their way into common electronics in the 1950s. Once you have cheap transistors, then a simple transistor-based oscillator circuit can be used to make an electronic beep. I’m guessing that beeps started making their way into things in the later 1950s or early 1960s. Since transistors were still fairly new and expensive even at the end of the 1950s, transistor-based things would have similarly been fairly expensive. I’m guessing that things that regular people could afford and would commonly buy started beeping some time in the 1960s. By this point, transistors were becoming cheaper. Transistor-based electronics were also new and exciting to folks. Having a transistor radio was a way of one-upping your neighbor with his old tube radio. ---
**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-beep/834439/5 "2019-05-24T03:40:10Z")
The sound may have existed earlier, but the earliest citation in the OED for the word _beep_ is from 1929. The quotation explicitly refers to a certain type of automobile horn. Not a gadget, but The Road Runner was already saying “beep-beep”–or was it “meep-meep”?–in his first starring role in _Fast and Furry-ous_ (1949). ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-beep/834439/6 "2019-05-24T03:58:50Z")
> [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](#): > > cars did not make any special sound. Sure they did. They went [Beep Beep](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2skGMkxB6Ng),\* especially if it was a Nash Rambler trying to pass a Caddy. \*The Playmates, 1958 ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-beep/834439/7 "2019-05-24T04:08:39Z")
Stuff beeped in [Colonel Bleep](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_eNVLx-YFg)(1957), the first color TV cartoon, although Bleep himself bleeped. ---
**Author:** ![AnalogSignal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/analogsignal/32/1085_2.png) [@AnalogSignal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AnalogSignal)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-beep/834439/8 "2019-05-24T04:20:57Z")
The Apple II series of computers circa 1980 was big on beeping. Pressing Control+G produced what was called a “bell” but it was a beep. From the Apple IIe manual which is searchable: [https://apple2online.com/web\_documents/apple\_iie\_programmer\_\_s\_manual.pdf](https://apple2online.com/web_documents/apple_iie_programmer__s_manual.pdf) > [@](#): > > You will immediately hear a single **beep** from the console loud speaker, and then you will see the BASIC prompt symbol-a right bracket (])-and the blinking, checkerboard cursor symbol. > … > You will hear a single **beep** from the console loudspeaker and notice the disk drive going to work-the red IN USE lamp goes on and the drive mechanism makes some buzzing and clicking sounds. > … > Test your understanding of CONTROL operations by doing a CONTROL-G-that **beeps** the loudspeaker that is built into the console unit. > … > If things are going well, you will hear two **beeps** from the console loudspeaker. ---
**Author:** ![WildaBeast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wildabeast/32/6_2.png) [@WildaBeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WildaBeast)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-beep/834439/9 "2019-05-24T04:26:09Z")
> [@mikecurtis](#): > > [The Beeper?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pager) (too obvious?) Except that bit you quoted stated that the first ones didn’t actually beep, they buzzed. The Netflix series White Rabbit Project, hosted by Kari, Grant, and Tory from Mythbusters, actually explored the history of things that beep in episode 7, “Tech We Love to Hate.” I’m pretty sure the answer is in there. I don’t remember what it is and I don’t have time to rewatch it right now as I need to get to bed soon, but I’m pretty sure the answer is in that episode. ---
**Author:** ![Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ccd318/32.png) [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_in_Qatar)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-beep/834439/10 "2019-05-24T04:42:34Z")
Thank you all. Perhaps a ham radio operator might have heard a beep for time signals. ---
**Author:** ![mikecurtis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mikecurtis/32/3284_2.png) [@mikecurtis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mikecurtis)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-beep/834439/11 "2019-05-24T05:40:10Z")
> [@WildaBeast](#): > > Except that bit you quoted stated that the first ones didn’t actually beep, they buzzed. > > The Netflix series White Rabbit Project, hosted by Kari, Grant, and Tory from Mythbusters, actually explored the history of things that beep in episode 7, “Tech We Love to Hate.” I’m pretty sure the answer is in there. I don’t remember what it is and I don’t have time to rewatch it right now as I need to get to bed soon, but I’m pretty sure the answer is in that episode. So I watched that _White Rabbit_ ep and they blamed it on the piezolelectric speaker. Knowing very little about this tech I did some research. The [History of Piezoelectricity](https://piezo.com/pages/history-of-piezoelectricity) says: > [@](#): > > The first serious applications work on piezoelectric devices took place during World War I. In 1917, P. Langevin and French co-workers began to perfect an ultrasonic submarine detector. Their transducer was a mosaic of thin quartz crystals glued between two steel plates (the composite having a resonant frequency of about 50 KHz), mounted in a housing suitable for submersion. Working on past the end of the war, they did achieve their goal of emitting a high frequency “chirp” underwater and measuring depth by timing the return echo. The strategic importance of their achievement was not overlooked by any industrial nation, however, and since that time the development of sonar transducers, circuits, systems, and materials has never ceased. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-beep/834439/12 "2019-05-24T05:46:05Z")
> [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](#): > > Thank you all. Perhaps a ham radio operator might have heard a beep for time signals. You didn’t’t need to be a ham radio operator. Time signals in the form of beeps have been a routine feature of many countries ordinary public broadcasting for decades. As already noted, the BBC has been broadcasting them routinely, many times a day, since 1924. ---
**Author:** ![Terminus\_Est](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terminus_est/32/3087_2.png) [@Terminus\_Est](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terminus_Est)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 5:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-beep/834439/13 "2019-05-24T05:51:59Z")
> [@AnalogSignal](#): > > The Apple II series of computers circa 1980 was big on beeping. Pressing Control+G produced what was called a “bell” but it was a beep. That’s because it’s an ASCII control character, originally developed for teletype machines, where sending that character would ring a physical bell. ---
**Author:** ![road\_lobo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d78d45/32.png) [@road\_lobo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/road_lobo)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 6:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-beep/834439/14 "2019-05-24T06:28:35Z")
Radiotelegraphy: Morse code over radio. > **[Wireless telegraphy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_telegraphy)** > > Wireless telegraphy or radiotelegraphy is transmission of text messages by radio waves, analogous to electrical telegraphy using cables. Before about 1910, the term wireless telegraphy was also used for other experimental technologies for transmitting telegraph signals without wires. In radiotelegraphy, information is transmitted by pulses of radio waves of two different lengths called "dots" and "dashes", which spell out text messages, usually in Morse code. In a manual system, the Radiotelegr... ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 10:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-beep/834439/15 "2019-05-24T10:05:03Z")
At least as far back as the 60s you used to be able to call a phone number to get the exact time from The Phone Company. Every 10 seconds it would say, “At the sound of the tone, the time will be six oh-four AM and twenty seconds…[beep]”. That’s maybe not a “thing going beep” though. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 10:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-beep/834439/16 "2019-05-24T10:37:10Z")
The USSR’s Sputnik satellite broadcast a beeping sound as it orbited the Earth in 1957. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/r-bQEiklsK8/hqdefault.jpg "Sputnik-1 Telemetry Signal (audio)") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-bQEiklsK8) ---
**Author:** ![Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mean_mr.mustard/32/3865_2.png) [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mean_Mr.Mustard)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 11:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-beep/834439/17 "2019-05-24T11:32:03Z")
My first WAG thought was some sort of medical device. When you’re in a hospital you are surrounded with beeps. In reading the other answers, though, I doubt that is correct. mmm ---
**Author:** ![Jasmine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jasmine/32/2964_2.png) [@Jasmine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jasmine)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-beep/834439/18 "2019-05-24T12:05:49Z")
The car horns of little European cars? ---
**Author:** ![Frankenstein\_Monster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ccd318/32.png) [@Frankenstein\_Monster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frankenstein_Monster)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-beep/834439/19 "2019-05-24T12:38:29Z")
> [@road\_lobo](#): > > Radiotelegraphy: Morse code over radio. > > [Wireless telegraphy - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_telegraphy) Came in to post this, too. According to that link, the technology to make Morse Code radio transmissions sound like beeps was invented in 1901 and became common after 1913. > [@Wiki](#): > > The BFO was rare until the invention in 1913 of the first practical electronic oscillator, the vacuum tube feedback oscillator by Edwin Armstrong. After this time BFOs were a standard part of radiotelegraphy receivers. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2019, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-beep/834439/20 "2019-05-24T12:55:07Z")
So, what’s the difference between a beep and a buzz? A (SPST-NC) relay and a speaker is all that’s needed to make a noise. A relay by itself can also make some not-too-beepy noise. Technology available by the 1830s-1850s. The electronic kits I played with as a kid could be used to do this. But I think the purists would describe the sound more as a buzz. How do you convert a buzz into a beep? A [del]condenser[/del] capacitor plus maybe a resistor could smooth out the sound and make it more like a tone, ergo a “beep”. While capacitors go back to Volta and such, “modern” ones suitable for the application were developed in the 1870s. So that gives ~latish 1800s as to when a “beep” could have been made. Given all the people working on various telephonic devices in the era, certainly someone made something that beeped. When such a component was first incorporated into a product may not be knowable. But it probably predates tubes, let alone transistors. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-beep/834439.md?page=2)