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The original phone
Telephones have changed dramatically since Alexander Graham Bell spoke the first words into a telephone on March 10, 1876. -
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history of telephones
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Candlestick
popular from the 1890s to the 1930s, the candlestick phone was separated into two pieces. The mouth piece formed the candlestick part, and the receiver was placed by your ear during the phone call. This style died out in the ’30s -
rotary
The rotary phone became popular. To dial, you would rotate the dial to the number you wanted, and then release. Based on my limited interaction with rotary dial phones, this must have been incredibly tedious. -
Push-button
In 1963, 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. -
.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. -
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. -
Motorola DynaTAC
Released in 1984, the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X was the first commercially available mobile phone. In 1973, Martin Cooper made the first cell phone call ever with a predecessor of this beast. At 1.75 pounds. -
Nokia 5110
One of many classic Nokia candybar-style phones, the Nokia 5110 was rugged and had a long battery life. More importantly, you could play Snake on its 47 × 84 pixel screen. -
Caller ID
There was a time when you had to remember people’s telephone numbers. And then came Caller ID. You could now decide whether that phone call was worth answering or whether you could just send them to voicemail. -
Motorola StarTAC
The Motorola StarTAC was the first successful flip phone, and in many ways, the first successful consumer cell phone. Introduced in 1996, Motorola eventually sold 60 million StarTACs.
