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Alexander Graham Bell / Original Phone
Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Watson successfully made a voice transmitting device or as we call it a telephone. -
Rotary phones
Almon B. Strowger made the basic design for an automatic telephone switching system in 1891. The dial was developed a few years later during enhancements to the automatic system. -
Candlestick Phones
The mouth piece formed the candle part. The receiver goes on your ear when you are on the phone with someone. -
answering machine
The answering machine transformed phone behavior, allowing callers to leave a message if no one was on the other end. Not popular until the 1960s, these phone accessories originally used cassette tapes to record messages. -
Push Button phones
AT&T introduced Touch-Tone, which allowed phones to use a keypad to dial numbers and make phone calls. Each key would transmit a certain frequency, signaling to the telephone operator which number you wanted to call. -
Portable Phones
Portable, or cordless, phones were the phone equivalent of the TV remote. You were no longer physically attached to your phone’s base station. Beginning in the 1980s, portable phones were like a small-scale cell phone. You could talk on your phone anywhere in your house.
