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Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Watson successfully made a voice transmitting device or as we call it a telephone.
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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.
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The mouth piece formed the candle part. The receiver goes on your ear when you are on the phone with someone.
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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.
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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.
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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.
