Megaphone
English inventor and diplomat Sir Samuel Morland invented the speaking trumpet, the earliest functional megaphone, in London in 1670.
[Morland developed the acoustic horn](textmanuscripts.com/tm-assets/tm-descriptions/descriptions-sept20/TM%201092.pdf?) in London after conducting trials in St. James's Park and across the River Thames to determine which geometric shapes best amplified spoken communication. Seeking a reliable way to transmit naval commands and military orders over vast open distances, he designed a conical brass and copper tube featuring a fitted mouthpiece and a wide flaring bell. He published his findings in 1671 in the treatise Tuba Stentoro-Phonica, dedicated to King Charles II, which detailed how his instruments allowed voices to carry up to several miles across land and water.
Around the same era, the German Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher described spiral acoustic horns in Rome. Designed for architectural eavesdropping and gathering congregation members, Kircher’s spiral conduit designs differed from Morland’s straight, portable cone, sparking a seventeenth-century debate over acoustic theory. Morland’s linear model became the standard prototype for maritime loud-hailers and firefighting trumpets across Europe.
In 1878, American inventor Thomas Edison designed a tripod-mounted apparatus featuring three massive cones to assist people with hearing loss, reviving and popularizing the term megaphone. By the mid-twentieth century, engineers combined acoustic horns with built-in microphones, electrical amplifiers, and battery packs to create the modern handheld bullhorn.
Sir Samuel Morland transformed basic acoustic principles into the speaking trumpet, proving that voice projection could span miles without mechanical power.