History of the telephone

Photo of Alexander Graham Bell speaking into his telephone in 1876.
Source: Early Office Museum

There is probably no single inventor of the telephone, although Alexander Graham Bell has certainly been widely credited with its invention. Like many other inventions such as the television, its creation was a culmination of other technologies. One key technology was the telegraph.

The telephone (tele = distance, phone = sound/voice)

It has been argued that the telephone was originally invented by an Italian inventor named Antonio Meucci. He demonstrated the principles of telephony in 1849 by sending electrical impulses through a wire to communicate sounds.

In 1860 Meucci demonstrated his telephone publicly in New York. However, partially due to his poor English and lack of business experience, he was not successful in commercialising his invention.

Similar devices were also invented and demonstrated by Johann Philipp Reis from Germany in 1860, and Innocenzo Manzetti in Italy in 1864. Others between 1840 and 1875 also wrote papers and took out patents on various telephone-like devices.

However, it wasn’t until Alexander Graham Bell invented and demonstrated his telephone in 1875 that the invention took off. In fact for many years, Bell was acknowledged as the inventor of the telephone and legal cases by Meucci and others were unsuccessful in gaining recognition for their achievements. This changed in 2002 when the US Congress formally recognised Meucci as the inventor of the telephone, 106 years after his death.

Bell’s first telephone was one-way. Using two receivers, a wire and a battery, he was able to convey voice between rooms in June 1875. His first two-directional phone call was made in March 1876, and the first ‘long-distance’ call was made in August of the same year when Bell called from his family homestead in Ohio to his assistant, Mr Watson, in a town 16 kilometres away.

Bell patented his telephone invention in February 1876, and only just in time. His competitor, Elisha Gray, missed out on owning the patent on the telephone by two hours!

While Bell found support for his telephone, the largest telecommunications company in the world did not see a future in the telephone.

"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us." – Western Union, internal memo, 1876.

An 1896 Swedish telephone.
By the start of the new century,
the first voice transmission was
made across the Atlantic Ocean
via radio, opening the possibility
of making telephone calls to
places around the world.
Source: 1906 Kungliga Telegrafverkets apparater
apparater (Royal Telegraph
Administration apparatus)
at Project Runeberg

The first phones did not support the use of phone numbers to call people, so as more were sold it became necessary to establish manual switchboards where a human operator could connect people. The first was opened in 1878 and could handle two simultaneous conversations.

By the start of the new century, the first voice transmission was made across the Atlantic Ocean via radio, opening the possibility of making telephone calls to places around the world. By 1935, that too became a reality.

The telephone and related technologies continued improving in quality and distance. Touch-tone dialling, using keypads like those we see on phones today, was introduced in 1941. A national numbering plan with area codes was introduced in America in 1946 and Caller ID, which allows the person receiving the call to see who made it, was patented in1982.

Telephony today has gone beyond the handset and touch-tone keypad. We now have wireless phone systems that have given rise to the semi-cordless and the cordless telephone, the satellite phone and the .

In the twenty-first century, we have managed to combine the Internet with the telephone; Voice over IP, or internet telephony, looks set to replace traditional telephone networks with its low cost and ease of use. Like the telegraph, the telephone may one day drop off the world’s technology scale but its history has been instrumental in the development of modern communications.

Alexander Graham Bell’s first attempt at a speaking telephone, known as a Gallows Receiver because if you turned it on its side, it eerily resembles a hangman’s scaffold (June 1875)	Source: Antique telephone history website
The Butterstamp telephone combined the receiver and transmitter into one handheld unit. To use it, you had to use a crank to signal the operator, and then talk into one end, turn the instrument around and listen to the other end. Needless to say, it confused a lot of people! (1878)	Source: Privateline.com
A Strowger dial telephone, built by Auto Electric Company. They manufactured the first commercial dial telephone; a devise that would route calls directly to individuals using an automated switchboard without needing to speak to a human operator. (1891)	Source: Just the Arti-facts
Videophones were first used in France and Germany in the 1930s. They were not popular as the phones were cumbersome and expensive. However, videophones picked up in popularity in the 1990s, giving rise to videoconferencing as a business practice.	Source: Daily Kos
AT & T Touch-Tone Telephone. Early Touch-Tone sets had only 10 buttons. AT & T added the * and # keys in 1968 for use in advanced services. (1963)	Source: AT & T
Cordless handsets were first developed by Teri Pall in 1965. The base unit of the phone can be connected to the land-line system while the handset functions remotely through low power radio.	Source: Photo by Dante Alighieri
DynaTAC 8000X, the world’s first mobile phone which was created by Motorola in 1983.	Source: Motorola
VocalTec Internet Phone, the first Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) application to be released. (February 1995)	Source: RAD data communications