-
Inspiration for the telephone
The First communication device like the telephone was a tool called a 'tin can' which was simply two tin cans attached by string. The second device was the telegraph which was created first by Francis Ronalds in 1816 then the more popular version, Samuel Morse's telegraph in 1837 -
The Telegraph
Credit for the invention of the electric telephone is frequently disputed, and new controversies over the issue have arisen from time to time. Charles Bourseul, Innocenzo Manzetti, Antonio Meucci, Johann Philipp Reis, Alexander Graham Bell, and Elisha Gray, amongst others, have all been credited with the telephone's invention. -
Uses of the Telephone
The main users of the electrical telegraph were post offices, railway stations, the more important governmental centers (ministries), stock exchanges, very few nationally distributed newspapers, the largest internationally important corporations, and wealthy individuals. Telegraph exchanges worked mainly on a store and forward basis. -
Changes to the Telephone
1877: First long-distance telephone line
1877:Emile Berliner invented the telephone transmitter.
28 January 1878: The first commercial US telephone exchange opened in New Haven, Connecticut.
1887: Tivadar Puskás introduced the multiplex switchboard.
1915: First U.S. coast-to-coast long-distance telephone call, ceremonially inaugurated by A.G. Bell in New York City and his former assistant Thomas Augustus Watson in San Francisco, California. -
The 20th Century Telephone
By 1904 over three million phones in the U.S. were connected by manual switchboard exchanges. By 1914, the U.S. was the world leader in telephone density and had more than twice the teledensity of Sweden, New Zealand, Switzerland, and Norway. The relatively good performance of the U.S. occurred despite competing telephone networks not interconnecting. -
The Telephone as we know it...
Internet Protocol (IP) telephony, also known as Internet telephony or Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), is a disruptive technology that is rapidly gaining ground against traditional telephone network technologies. In Japan and South Korea up to 10% of subscribers switched to this type of telephone service as of January 2005.