Timeline of the telephone - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Below is a timeline of the telephone that covers many important dates in the history of the telephone.

1844 to 1875

1844: Innocenzo Manzetti
Innocenzo Manzetti
Innocenzo Vincenzo Bartolomeo Luigi Carlo Manzetti was an Italian inventor born in Aosta. Following his primary school studies he went to the Jesuit-run Saint Bénin Boarding School and then on to Turin where he was awarded a diploma in land surveying before returning to Aosta.- Automaton :In 1849...

first mooted the idea of a “speaking telegraph” (telephone
Telephone
The telephone , colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that transmits and receives sounds, usually the human voice. Telephones are a point-to-point communication system whose most basic function is to allow two people separated by large distances to talk to each other...

).
1849: Antonio Meucci
Antonio Meucci
Antonio Santi Giuseppe Meucci was an Italian inventor, a compatriot of revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi. He was best known for developing a voice communication apparatus which several sources credit as the first telephone....

demonstrates a communicating device to individuals in Havana
Havana
Havana is the capital city, province, major port, and leading commercial centre of Cuba. The city proper has a population of 2.1 million inhabitants, and it spans a total of — making it the largest city in the Caribbean region, and the most populous...

. It is disputed if this is an electromagnetic telephone, but is said to involve direct transmission of electricity into the user's body.
1854: Charles Bourseul
Charles Bourseul
Charles Bourseul was a pioneer in development of the "make and break" telephone about 20 years before Bell made a practical telephone....

publishes a description of a make-break telephone transmitter and receiver in L'Illustration
L'Illustration
L'Illustration was a weekly French newspaper published in Paris. It was founded by Edouard Charton; the first issue was published on March 4, 1843....

, (Paris) but does not construct a working instrument
1854: Antonio Meucci
Antonio Meucci
Antonio Santi Giuseppe Meucci was an Italian inventor, a compatriot of revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi. He was best known for developing a voice communication apparatus which several sources credit as the first telephone....

demonstrates an electric voice operated device in New York, but it is not clear what kind of device he demonstrated.
1860: Johann Philipp Reis
Johann Philipp Reis
Johann Philipp Reis was a self-taught German scientist and inventor. In 1861, he constructed the first make-and-break telephone, today called the Reis telephone.- Early life and education :...

of Germany demonstrates a make-break transmitter after the design of Bourseul and a knitting needle receiver. Witnesses said they heard human voices being transmitted.
1861: Johann Philipp Reis manages to transfer voice electrically over a distance of 340 feet, see Reis' telephone. Reis used his Telephone (the word also invented by Reis) to transmit his phrase "The horse does not eat cucumber salad". This phrase in German is hard to understand acoustically so Reis used it to prove if speech can be recognized on another side successfully.
1864: in an attempt to give his musical automaton a voice, Innocenzo Manzetti
Innocenzo Manzetti
Innocenzo Vincenzo Bartolomeo Luigi Carlo Manzetti was an Italian inventor born in Aosta. Following his primary school studies he went to the Jesuit-run Saint Bénin Boarding School and then on to Turin where he was awarded a diploma in land surveying before returning to Aosta.- Automaton :In 1849...

invents the 'Speaking telegraph'. He shows no interest in patenting his device, but it is reported in newspapers.
1865: Meucci reads of Manzetti's invention and writes to the editors of two newspapers claiming priority and quoting his first experiment in 1849. He writes "I do not wish to deny Mr. Manzetti his invention, I only wish to observe that two thoughts could be found to contain the same discovery, and that by uniting the two ideas one can more easily reach the certainty about a thing this important." If he reads Meucci's offer of collaboration, Manzetti does not respond.
1871: Antonio Meucci files a patent caveat
Patent caveat
A patent caveat was a legal document filed with the United States Patent Office. Caveats were instituted by the US Patent Act of 1836, but were discontinued in 1909. A caveat was like a patent application with a description of an invention and drawings, but without claims. It was an official...

(a statement of intention to patent) for a Sound Telegraph, but it does not describe an electromagnetic telephone.
1872: Elisha Gray
Elisha Gray
Elisha Gray was an American electrical engineer who co-founded the Western Electric Manufacturing Company...

founded Western Electric
Western Electric
Western Electric Company was an American electrical engineering company, the manufacturing arm of AT&T from 1881 to 1995. It was the scene of a number of technological innovations and also some seminal developments in industrial management...

Manufacturing Company.
1872: Professor Vanderwyde demonstrated Reis's telephone in New York.
July 1873: Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...

notes variable resistance in carbon grains due to pressure, builds a rheostat based on the principle but abandons it because of its sensitivity to vibration.
May 1874: Gray invents electromagnet device for transmitting musical tones. Some of his receivers use a metallic diaphragm.
29 December 1874: Gray demonstrates his musical tones device and transmitted "familiar melodies through telegraph wire" at the Presbyterian Church in Highland Park, Illinois.
2 June 1875: Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell was an eminent scientist, inventor, engineer and innovator who is credited with inventing the first practical telephone....

transmits the sound of a plucked steel reed using electromagnet instruments.
1 July 1875: Bell uses a bi-directional "gallows" telephone that was able to transmit "indistinct but voicelike sounds" but not clear speech. Both the transmitter and the receiver were identical membrane electromagnet instruments.
1875: Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...

experiments with acoustic telegraphy
Acoustic telegraphy
Acoustic telegraphy was also known as harmonic telegraphy. During the late 19th century, inventors developed methods of multiplexing telegraph messages simultaneously over a single telegraph wire by using different audio frequencies or channels, for each message. A telegrapher used a conventional...

and in November builds an electro-dynamic receiver but does not exploit it.

1876 to 1878

11 February 1876: Elisha Gray invents liquid transmitter
Water microphone
A water microphone or water transmitter is based on Ohm's law that current in a wire varies inversely with the resistance of the circuit. The sound waves from a human voice cause a diaphragm to vibrate which causes a needle or rod to vibrate up and down in water that has been made conductive by a...

for use with a telephone, but does not build one.
14 February 1876: (about 9:30am) Gray or his lawyer brings to the Washington, D.C. patent office Gray's caveat
Patent caveat
A patent caveat was a legal document filed with the United States Patent Office. Caveats were instituted by the US Patent Act of 1836, but were discontinued in 1909. A caveat was like a patent application with a description of an invention and drawings, but without claims. It was an official...

for the telephone. (A caveat was like a patent application without request for examination to notify the patent office of an invention in process.)
14 February 1876: (about 11:30am) Bell's lawyer brings to the same patent office Bell's patent application for the telephone. Bell's lawyer requested that it be registered immediately in the cash receipts blotter.
14 February 1876: (about 1:30pm) Approximately two hours later Elisha Gray's caveat was registered in the cash blotter. Although his caveat was not a full application, Gray could have converted it into a patent application, but did not do so because of advice from his lawyer and his involvement with acoustic telegraphy
Acoustic telegraphy
Acoustic telegraphy was also known as harmonic telegraphy. During the late 19th century, inventors developed methods of multiplexing telegraph messages simultaneously over a single telegraph wire by using different audio frequencies or channels, for each message. A telegrapher used a conventional...

. The result was that the patent was awarded to Bell.
7 March 1876: Bell's US patent No. 174,465 for the telephone is granted.
10 March 1876: Bell transmits speech "Mr. Watson, come here! I want to see you!" using a liquid transmitter as described in Gray's caveat, and an electromagnetic receiver.
16 May 1876: Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...

files first patent application for acoustic telegraphy
Acoustic telegraphy
Acoustic telegraphy was also known as harmonic telegraphy. During the late 19th century, inventors developed methods of multiplexing telegraph messages simultaneously over a single telegraph wire by using different audio frequencies or channels, for each message. A telegrapher used a conventional...

for which US patent 182,996 was granted October 10, 1876.
10 August 1876: Alexander Graham Bell makes the world's first long distance telephone call, about 6 miles between Brantford and Paris, Ontario, Canada.
1876: Hungarian Tivadar Puskas
Tivadar Puskás
Tivadar Puskás was a Hungarian inventor, telephone pioneer, and inventor of the telephone exchange He was also the founder of Telefon Hírmondó.-Biography:...

invented the telephone switchboard exchange
Telephone exchange
In the field of telecommunications, a telephone exchange or telephone switch is a system of electronic components that connects telephone calls...

(later working with Edison).
9 October 1876: Bell makes the first two-way long distance telephone call between Cambridge and Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
October 1876: Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...

tests his first carbon microphone
Microphone
A microphone is an acoustic-to-electric transducer or sensor that converts sound into an electrical signal. In 1877, Emile Berliner invented the first microphone used as a telephone voice transmitter...

.
20 January 1877: Edison "first succeeded in transmitting over wires many articulated sentences" using carbon granules as a pressure sensitive variable resistance under the pressure of a diaphragm (Josephson, p143).
30 January 1877: Bell's US patent No. 186,787 is granted for an electro-magnetic telephone using permanent magnets, iron diaphragms, and a call bell.
4 March 1877: Emile Berliner
Emile Berliner
Emile Berliner or Emil Berliner was a German-born American inventor. He is best known for developing the disc record gramophone...

invents a microphone based on "loose contact" between two metal electrodes, an improvement on the Reis' Telephone, and in April 1877 files a caveat of an invention in process.
April 1877: A telephone line connects the workshop of Charles Williams, Jr., located in Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...

, to his house in Somerville, Massachusetts
Somerville, Massachusetts
Somerville is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, located just north of Boston. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 75,754 and was the most densely populated municipality in New England. It is also the 17th most densely populated incorporated place in...

at 109 Court Street in Boston, where Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell was an eminent scientist, inventor, engineer and innovator who is credited with inventing the first practical telephone....

and Thomas Watson
Thomas A. Watson
Thomas Augustus Watson was an assistant to Alexander Graham Bell, notably in the invention of the telephone in 1876. He is best known because his name was one of the first words spoken over the telephone. "Mr. Watson - Come here - I want to see you." were the first words Bell said using the new...

had previously experimented with their telephone. The telephones became No. 1 and 2 in the Bell Telephone Company
Bell Telephone Company
The Bell Telephone Company, a common law joint stock company, was organized in Boston, Massachusetts on July 9, 1877 by Alexander Graham Bell's father-in-law Gardiner Greene Hubbard, who also helped organize a sister company — the New England Telephone and Telegraph Company...

.
27 April 1877: Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...

files telephone patent application. The US patents (Nos. 474,230, 474,231 and 474,232) were awarded to Edison in 1892 over the competing claims of Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell was an eminent scientist, inventor, engineer and innovator who is credited with inventing the first practical telephone....

, Emile Berliner
Emile Berliner
Emile Berliner or Emil Berliner was a German-born American inventor. He is best known for developing the disc record gramophone...

, Elisha Gray
Elisha Gray
Elisha Gray was an American electrical engineer who co-founded the Western Electric Manufacturing Company...

, A E Dolbear
Amos Dolbear
Amos Emerson Dolbear was an American physicist and inventor. His patents interfered with Guglielmo Marconi's planned activities in the U.S. Dolbear researched electrical spark conversion into sound waves and electrical impulses. He was a professor at University of Kentucky in Lexington from 1868...

, J W McDonagh, G B Richmond, W L W Voeker, J H Irwin and Francis Blake Jr
Francis Blake (telephone)
Francis Blake, Jr. was born in Needham, Massachusetts, the son of Caroline Burling and Francis Blake, Sr. and died in Weston, Massachusetts....

. Edison's carbon granules transmitter and Bell's electromagnetic receiver were used, with improvements, by the Bell system
Bell System
The Bell System was the American Bell Telephone Company and then, subsequently, AT&T led system which provided telephone services to much of the United States and Canada from 1877 to 1984, at various times as a monopoly. In 1984, the company was broken up into separate companies, by a U.S...

for many decades thereafter (Josephson, p 146).
4 June 1877: Emile Berliner
Emile Berliner
Emile Berliner or Emil Berliner was a German-born American inventor. He is best known for developing the disc record gramophone...

files telephone patent application that includes a carbon microphone transmitter.
9 July 1877: Bell Telephone Company
Bell Telephone Company
The Bell Telephone Company, a common law joint stock company, was organized in Boston, Massachusetts on July 9, 1877 by Alexander Graham Bell's father-in-law Gardiner Greene Hubbard, who also helped organize a sister company — the New England Telephone and Telegraph Company...

, a common law joint stock company, organized by Alexander Graham Bell's future father-in-law Gardiner Greene Hubbard
Gardiner Greene Hubbard
Gardiner Greene Hubbard was a U.S. lawyer, financier, and philanthropist. He was one of the founders of the Bell Telephone Company and the first president of the National Geographic Society.- Biography :...

.
1 December 1877: Western Union
Western Union
The Western Union Company is a financial services and communications company based in the United States. Its North American headquarters is in Englewood, Colorado. Up until 2006, Western Union was the best-known U.S...

enters the telephone business using Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...

's superior carbon microphone transmitter.
January 1878: First North American telephone exchange is opened in New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven is the second-largest city in Connecticut and the sixth-largest in New England. According to the 2010 Census, New Haven's population increased by 5.0% between 2000 and 2010, a rate higher than that of the State of Connecticut, and higher than that of the state's five largest cities, and...

.
4 February 1878: Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...

demonstrates the telephone between Menlo Park, New Jersey and Philadelphia, a distance of 210 km.
14 June 1878: The Telephone Company Ltd (Bell's Patents) registered, London. Opened in London 21 August 1879 - Europe's first telephone exchange, followed a couple of weeks later by one in Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...

.
12 September 1878: the Bell Telephone Company
Bell Telephone Company
The Bell Telephone Company, a common law joint stock company, was organized in Boston, Massachusetts on July 9, 1877 by Alexander Graham Bell's father-in-law Gardiner Greene Hubbard, who also helped organize a sister company — the New England Telephone and Telegraph Company...

sues Western Union for infringing Bell's patents.

1879 to 1919

early months of 1879: The Bell Telephone Company
Bell Telephone Company
The Bell Telephone Company, a common law joint stock company, was organized in Boston, Massachusetts on July 9, 1877 by Alexander Graham Bell's father-in-law Gardiner Greene Hubbard, who also helped organize a sister company — the New England Telephone and Telegraph Company...

is near bankruptcy and desperate to get a transmitter to equal Edison's carbon transmitter.
17 February 1879: Bell Telephone merges with the New England Telephone Company to form the National Bell Telephone Company. Theodore Vail takes over operations.
1879: Francis Blake invents a carbon transmitter similar to Edison's that saves the Bell company from extinction.
2 August 1879: The Edison Telephone Company of London Ltd, registered. Opened in London 6 September 1879.
10 September 1879: Connolly and McTighe patent a "dial" telephone exchange (limited in the number of lines to the number of positions on the dial.).
1879: The International Bell Telephone Company
International Bell Telephone Company
The International Bell Telephone Company of Brussels, Belgium, was created in 1879 by the National Bell Telephone Company of Boston, Massachusetts, United States, initially to sell imported telephones and switchboards in Continental Europe....

(IBTC) of Brussels, Belgium
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...

was founded by Bell Telephone Company
Bell Telephone Company
The Bell Telephone Company, a common law joint stock company, was organized in Boston, Massachusetts on July 9, 1877 by Alexander Graham Bell's father-in-law Gardiner Greene Hubbard, who also helped organize a sister company — the New England Telephone and Telegraph Company...

president Gardiner Greene Hubbard
Gardiner Greene Hubbard
Gardiner Greene Hubbard was a U.S. lawyer, financier, and philanthropist. He was one of the founders of the Bell Telephone Company and the first president of the National Geographic Society.- Biography :...

, initially to sell imported telephone
Telephone
The telephone , colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that transmits and receives sounds, usually the human voice. Telephones are a point-to-point communication system whose most basic function is to allow two people separated by large distances to talk to each other...

s and switchboards
Telephone switchboard
A switchboard was a device used to connect a group of telephones manually to one another or to an outside connection, within and between telephone exchanges or private branch exchanges . The user was typically known as an operator...

in Continental Europe
Continental Europe
Continental Europe, also referred to as mainland Europe or simply the Continent, is the continent of Europe, explicitly excluding European islands....

. International Bell rapidly evolved into an important European telephone service provider
Telephone company
A telephone company is a service provider of telecommunications services such as telephony and data communications access. Many were at one time nationalized or state-regulated monopolies...

and manufacturer, with major operations in several countries.
19 February 1880: The photophone
Photophone
The photophone, also known as a radiophone, was invented jointly by Alexander Graham Bell and his then-assistant Charles Sumner Tainter on February 19, 1880, at Bell's 1325 'L' Street laboratory in Washington, D.C...

, also known as a radiophone, is invented jointly by Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell was an eminent scientist, inventor, engineer and innovator who is credited with inventing the first practical telephone....

and Charles Sumner Tainter
Charles Sumner Tainter
Charles Sumner Tainter was an American scientific instrument maker, engineer and inventor, best known for his collaborations with Alexander Graham Bell, Chichester Bell, Alexander's father-in-law Gardiner Hubbard, and for his significant improvements to Thomas Edison's phonograph, resulting in the...

at Bell's Volta Laboratory. The device allowed for the transmission
Transmission (telecommunications)
Transmission, in telecommunications, is the process of sending, propagating and receiving an analogue or digital information signal over a physical point-to-point or point-to-multipoint transmission medium, either wired, optical fiber or wireless...

of sound
Sound
Sound is a mechanical wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations.-Propagation of...

on a beam of light
Light
Light or visible light is electromagnetic radiation that is visible to the human eye, and is responsible for the sense of sight. Visible light has wavelength in a range from about 380 nanometres to about 740 nm, with a frequency range of about 405 THz to 790 THz...

.
20 March 1880: National Bell Telephone merges with others to form the American Bell Telephone Company.
1 April 1880: world's first wireless telephone call on Bell and Tainter's photophone (distant precursor to fiber-optic communication
Fiber-optic communication
Fiber-optic communication is a method of transmitting information from one place to another by sending pulses of light through an optical fiber. The light forms an electromagnetic carrier wave that is modulated to carry information...

s) from the Franklin School in Washington, D.C. to the window of Bell's laboratory, 213 meters away.
1882: A telephone company—an American Bell affiliate—is set up in Mexico City.
1885: The American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T)
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...

is formed.
1886: Gilliland's Automatic circuit changer is put into service between Worcester
Worcester
The City of Worcester, commonly known as Worcester, , is a city and county town of Worcestershire in the West Midlands of England. Worcester is situated some southwest of Birmingham and north of Gloucester, and has an approximate population of 94,000 people. The River Severn runs through the...

and Leicester
Leicester
Leicester is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands of England, and the county town of Leicestershire. The city lies on the River Soar and at the edge of the National Forest...

featuring the first operator dialing allowing one operator to run two exchanges.
13 January 1887: the Government of the United States moves to annul the master patent issued to Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell was an eminent scientist, inventor, engineer and innovator who is credited with inventing the first practical telephone....

on the grounds of fraud and misrepresentation. The case, known as the 'Government Case', is later dropped after it was revealed that the U.S. Attorney General, Augustus Hill Garland‎ had been given millions of dollars of stock in the company trying to unseat Bell's telephone patent.
1888: Telephone patent court cases are confirmed by the Supreme Court, see The Telephone Cases
The Telephone Cases
The Telephone Cases were a series of U.S. court cases in the 1870s and 1880s related to the invention of the telephone, which culminated in the 1888 decision of the United States Supreme Court upholding the priority of the patents belonging to Alexander Graham Bell...
1889: AT&T becomes the overall holding company for all the Bell companies.
2 November 1889: A. G. Smith patents a telegraph switch which provides for trunks between groups of selectors allowing for the first time, fewer trunks than there are lines, and automatic selection of an idle trunk.
10 March 1891: Almon Strowger patents the Strowger switch
Strowger switch
The Strowger switch, also known as Step-by-Step or SXS, is an early electromechanical telephone switching system invented by Almon Brown Strowger...

the first Automatic telephone exchange.
30 October 1891: The independent Strowger Automatic Telephone Exchange company is formed.
3 May 1892: Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...

awarded patents for the carbon microphone based on applications lodged in 1877.
3 November 1892: The first Strowger switch
Strowger switch
The Strowger switch, also known as Step-by-Step or SXS, is an early electromechanical telephone switching system invented by Almon Brown Strowger...

goes into operation in LaPorte, Indiana
LaPorte, Indiana
La Porte is a city in La Porte County, Indiana, United States, of which it is the county seat. Its population was 22,053 at the 2010 census. It is one of the two principal cities of the Michigan City-La Porte, Indiana Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is included in the...

with 75 subscribers and capacity for 99.
30 January 1894: The second fundamental Bell patent for the telephone expire; Independent telephone companies established, and independent manufacturing companies (Stromberg-Carlson
Stromberg-Carlson
Stromberg-Carlson was a telecommunications equipment and electronics manufacturing company formed in 1894 as a partnership of Alfred Stromberg and Androv Carlson. Along with four other companies, it controlled the United States national supply of telephone equipment until after World War...

in 1894 and Kellogg Switchboard & Supply Company
Kellogg Switchboard & Supply Company
Kellogg Switchboard & Supply Company was a major manufacturer of telephone exchange equipment. It was founded in Chicago, Illinois, by Milo G. Kellogg, an electrical engineer...

in 1897).
30 December 1899: American Bell Telephone Company is purchased by its own long-distance subsidiary, American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) to bypass state regulations limiting capitalization. AT&T assumes leadership role of the Bell System
Bell System
The Bell System was the American Bell Telephone Company and then, subsequently, AT&T led system which provided telephone services to much of the United States and Canada from 1877 to 1984, at various times as a monopoly. In 1984, the company was broken up into separate companies, by a U.S...

.
27 February 1901: United States Court of Appeal declares void Emile Berliner
Emile Berliner
Emile Berliner or Emil Berliner was a German-born American inventor. He is best known for developing the disc record gramophone...

's patent for a telephone transmitter used by the Bell telephone system
1915: First U.S. coast-to-coast long-distance telephone call, facilitated by a newly invented vacuum tube amplifier, ceremoniously inaugurated by A.G. Bell in New York City and his former assistant Thomas Augustus Watson in San Francisco, California.
16 January 1915: The first automatic Panel
Panel switch
The panel switching system was an early type of automatic telephone exchange, first put into urban service by the Bell System in the 1920s and removed during the 1970s...

exchange was installed at the Mulberry Central Office in Newark, New Jersey
Newark, New Jersey
Newark is the largest city in the American state of New Jersey, and the seat of Essex County. As of the 2010 United States Census, Newark had a population of 277,140, maintaining its status as the largest municipality in New Jersey. It is the 68th largest city in the U.S...

; but was a semi-automatic system using non-dial telephones.
25 January 1915: The first transcontinental telephone call, with Thomas Augustus Watson at 333 Grant Avenue in San Francisco receiving a call from Alexander Graham Bell at 15 Dey Street in New York City.
1919: The first rotary dial
Rotary dial
The rotary dial is a device mounted on or in a telephone or switchboard that is designed to send electrical pulses, known as pulse dialing, corresponding to the number dialed. The early form of the rotary dial used lugs on a finger plate instead of holes. Almon Brown Strowger filed the first patent...

telephones in the Bell System installed in Norfolk, Virginia
Norfolk, Virginia
Norfolk is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. With a population of 242,803 as of the 2010 Census, it is Virginia's second-largest city behind neighboring Virginia Beach....

. Telephones that lacked dials and touch-tone pads were no longer made by the Bell System after 1978.
1919: AT&T conducts more than 4,000 measurements of people's heads to gauge the best dimensions of standard headsets so that callers' lips would be near the microphone when holding handsets up to their ears.

1920 to 1969

7 March 1926: First transatlantic telephone call, from London to New York.
7 January 1927: Transatlantic telephone service inaugurated.
7 April 1927: world's first videophone
Videophone
A videophone is a telephone with a video screen, and is capable of full duplex video and audio transmissions for communication between people in real-time...

call via an electro-mechanical AT&T unit, from Washington, D.C. to New York City, by then-Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Clark Hoover was the 31st President of the United States . Hoover was originally a professional mining engineer and author. As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted partnerships between government and business...

.
28 May 1927: Rotary dial
Rotary dial
The rotary dial is a device mounted on or in a telephone or switchboard that is designed to send electrical pulses, known as pulse dialing, corresponding to the number dialed. The early form of the rotary dial used lugs on a finger plate instead of holes. Almon Brown Strowger filed the first patent...

service was started from mid night.http://www.archive.org/movies/details-db.php?collection=prelinger&collectionid=20046
1935: first telephone call around the world.
1941: Multi-frequency
Multi-frequency
In telephony, multi-frequency signaling is an outdated, in-band signaling technique. Numbers were represented in a two-out-of-five code for transmission from a multi-frequency sender, to be received by a multi-frequency receiver in a distant telephone exchange...

dialing introduced for operators in Baltimore, Maryland
1946: National Numbering Plan (area codes)
1946: first commercial mobile phone
Mobile phone
A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...

call
1946: Bell Labs
Bell Labs
Bell Laboratories is the research and development subsidiary of the French-owned Alcatel-Lucent and previously of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company , half-owned through its Western Electric manufacturing subsidiary.Bell Laboratories operates its...

develops the germanium
Germanium
Germanium is a chemical element with the symbol Ge and atomic number 32. It is a lustrous, hard, grayish-white metalloid in the carbon group, chemically similar to its group neighbors tin and silicon. The isolated element is a semiconductor, with an appearance most similar to elemental silicon....

point-contact transistor
Point-contact transistor
A point-contact transistor was the first type of solid-state electronic transistor ever constructed. It was made by researchers John Bardeen and Walter Houser Brattain at Bell Laboratories in December 1947. They worked in a group led by physicist William Bradford Shockley...
1947: December, W. Rae Young
W. Rae Young
William Rae Young, Jr. was one of the Bell Labs engineers that invented the cell phone.The history of cellular phone technology began in December 1947 with a Bell Labs internal report in which Rae Young suggested the hexagonal cell concept for a cellular mobile telephone system.-Career:Young...

and Douglas H. Ring
Douglas H. Ring
Douglas H. Ring was one of the Bell Labs engineers that invented the cell phone. The history of cellular phone technology began on December 11, 1947 with an internal memo written by Douglas H...

, Bell Labs
Bell Labs
Bell Laboratories is the research and development subsidiary of the French-owned Alcatel-Lucent and previously of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company , half-owned through its Western Electric manufacturing subsidiary.Bell Laboratories operates its...

engineers, proposed hexagonal cells for mobile phones.
1948: Phil Porter, a Bell Labs engineer, proposed that cell towers be at the corners of the hexagons rather than the centers and have directional antennas pointing in 3 directions.
1951: Direct Distance Dialing
Direct distance dialing
Direct distance dialing or direct dial is a telecommunications term for a network-provided service feature in which a call originator may, without operator assistance, call any other user outside the local calling area. DDD requires more digits in the number dialed than are required for calling...

(DDD) first offered at Englewood, New Jersey
Englewood, New Jersey
Englewood is a city located in Bergen County, New Jersey. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city had a total population of 27,147.Englewood was incorporated as a city by an Act of the New Jersey Legislature on March 17, 1899, from portions of Ridgefield Township and the remaining portions of...

, to 11 selected major cities across the United States; this service grew rapidly across major cities during the 1950s
1955: the laying of trans-Atlantic cable TAT-1
TAT-1
TAT-1 was the first submarine transatlantic telephone cable system. It was laid between Gallanach Bay, near Oban, Scotland and Clarenville, Newfoundland between 1955 and 1956. It was inaugurated on September 25, 1956, initially carrying 36 telephone channels.-History:The first transatlantic...

began - 36 circuits, later increased to 48 by reducing the bandwidth from 4 kHz to 3 kHz
1958: Modem
Modem
A modem is a device that modulates an analog carrier signal to encode digital information, and also demodulates such a carrier signal to decode the transmitted information. The goal is to produce a signal that can be transmitted easily and decoded to reproduce the original digital data...

s used for direct connection via voice phone lines
1960: ESS-1
1960's: Bell Labs
Bell Labs
Bell Laboratories is the research and development subsidiary of the French-owned Alcatel-Lucent and previously of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company , half-owned through its Western Electric manufacturing subsidiary.Bell Laboratories operates its...

developed the electronics for cellular phones
1961: Touch-tone released to public on trial basis
1962: T-1
Digital Signal 1
Digital signal 1 is a T-carrier signaling scheme devised by Bell Labs. DS1 is a widely used standard in telecommunications in North America and Japan to transmit voice and data between devices. E1 is used in place of T1 outside North America, Japan, and South Korea...

service in Skokie, Illinois
Skokie, Illinois
Skokie is a village in Cook County, Illinois, United States. Its name comes from a Native American word for "fire". A Chicago suburb, for many years Skokie promoted itself as "The World's Largest Village". Its population, per the 2000 census, was 63,348...
1963: first publicly available push-button telephone
Push-button telephone
The push-button telephone was first invented in 1941, and is a telephone with push-buttons or keys, and which eventually replaced rotary dial telephones that were first used in 1891. The first push-button telephone was invented in the labs of Bell Telephone; however, these models were only...

was released, by Bell Systems/Western Electric, in the towns of Carnegie
Carnegie, Pennsylvania
Carnegie is a borough in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States and is part of the Pittsburgh Metro Area. The population was 7,972 at the 2010 census.-Geography:Carnegie is located at . It is approximately southwest of Pittsburgh...

and Greensburg, Pennsylvania
Greensburg, Pennsylvania
Greensburg is a city in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, United States, and a part of the Pittsburgh Metro Area. The city is named after Nathanael Greene, a major general of the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War...

.
1965: first geosynchronous communications satellite
Intelsat I
Intelsat I was the first communications satellite to be placed in geosynchronous orbit, on April 6, 1965...

- 240 circuits or one TV signal

1970 to 1999

1970: ESS-2 electronic switch.
1970: modular telephone cords and jacks introduced .
1970: Amos E. Joel, Jr.
Amos E. Joel, Jr.
Amos Edward Joel, Jr. was an American electrical engineer, known for several contributions and over seventy patents related to telecommunications switching systems....

of Bell Labs
Bell Labs
Bell Laboratories is the research and development subsidiary of the French-owned Alcatel-Lucent and previously of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company , half-owned through its Western Electric manufacturing subsidiary.Bell Laboratories operates its...

invented the "call handoff" system for "cellular mobile communication system" (patent granted 1972).
1971: AT&T submitted a proposal for cellular phone service to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the...

(FCC).
3 April 1973: Motorola
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...

employee Martin Cooper placed the first hand-held cell phone call to Joel Engel, head of research at AT&T
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...

's Bell Labs
Bell Labs
Bell Laboratories is the research and development subsidiary of the French-owned Alcatel-Lucent and previously of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company , half-owned through its Western Electric manufacturing subsidiary.Bell Laboratories operates its...

, while talking on the first Motorola DynaTAC
Motorola DynaTAC
DynaTAC is a series of cellular telephones manufactured by Motorola, Inc. from 1983 to 1994. With several different models, plus newer models under the Classic and Ultra Classic names, it was the first line of cell phones commercially produced by Motorola, with the first member of the DynaTAC...

prototype.
1973: packet switched voice connections over ARPANET
ARPANET
The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network , was the world's first operational packet switching network and the core network of a set that came to compose the global Internet...

with Network Voice Protocol
Network Voice Protocol
The Network Voice Protocol was a pioneering computer network protocol for transporting human speech over packetized communications networks...

(NVP).
1978: Bell Labs launched a trial of the first commercial cellular network in Chicago using Advanced Mobile Phone System
Advanced Mobile Phone System
Advanced Mobile Phone System was an analog mobile phone system standard developed by Bell Labs, and officially introduced in the Americas in 1983, Israel in 1986, and Australia in 1987. It was the primary analog mobile phone system in North America through the 1980s and into the 2000s...

(AMPS).
1978: World's first NMT
Nordic Mobile Telephone
NMT is the first fully automatic cellular phone system...

phone call in Tampere
Tampere
Tampere is a city in southern Finland. It is the most populous inland city in any of the Nordic countries. The city has a population of , growing to approximately 300,000 people in the conurbation and over 340,000 in the metropolitan area. Tampere is the third most-populous municipality in...

, Finland.
1979: VoIP - NVP running on top of early versions of IP
Internet Protocol
The Internet Protocol is the principal communications protocol used for relaying datagrams across an internetwork using the Internet Protocol Suite...
1981: The world's first fully automatic mobile phone system NMT
Nordic Mobile Telephone
NMT is the first fully automatic cellular phone system...

is started in Sweden and Norway.
1981: BT introduces the British Telephone Sockets
British telephone sockets
British telephone sockets were introduced in their current plug and socket form on 19 November 1981 by British Telecom to allow subscribers to connect their own telephones...

system.
1982: FCC approved AT&T proposal for AMPS) and allocated frequencies in the 824-894 MHz band.
1982: Caller ID
Caller ID
Caller ID , also called calling line identification or calling number identification or Calling Line Identification Presentation , is a telephone service, available in analog and digital phone systems and most Voice over Internet Protocol applications, that transmits a caller's number to...

patented by Carolyn Doughty, Bell Labs
Bell Labs
Bell Laboratories is the research and development subsidiary of the French-owned Alcatel-Lucent and previously of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company , half-owned through its Western Electric manufacturing subsidiary.Bell Laboratories operates its...
1983: last manual telephone switchboard in Maine
Maine
Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...

is retired
1984: AT&T
American Telephone & Telegraph
AT&T Corp., originally American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is an American telecommunications company that provides voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications and professional services to businesses, consumers, and government agencies. AT&T is the oldest telecommunications company...

completes the divestiture of its local operating companies. This forms a new AT&T (long distance service and equipment sales) and the Baby Bells.
1987: ADSL
Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line
Asymmetric digital subscriber line is a type of digital subscriber line technology, a data communications technology that enables faster data transmission over copper telephone lines than a conventional voiceband modem can provide. It does this by utilizing frequencies that are not used by a voice...

introduced
1988: First transatlantic fiber optic cable TAT-8
TAT-8
TAT-8 was the 8th transatlantic telecommunications cable,initially carrying 40,000 telephone circuits between USA, England and France. It was constructed in 1988 by a consortium of companies led by AT&T, France Telecom, and British Telecom...

, carrying 40,000 circuits
1990: analog AMPS was superseded by Digital AMPS
Digital AMPS
IS-54 and IS-136 are second-generation mobile phone systems, known as Digital AMPS . It was once prevalent throughout the Americas, particularly in the United States and Canada. D-AMPS is considered end-of-life, and existing networks have mostly been replaced by GSM/GPRS or CDMA2000...

.
1991: the GSM mobile phone network is started in Finland, with the first phone call in Tampere.
1993: Telecom Relay Service available for the disabled
1995: Caller ID
Caller ID
Caller ID , also called calling line identification or calling number identification or Calling Line Identification Presentation , is a telephone service, available in analog and digital phone systems and most Voice over Internet Protocol applications, that transmits a caller's number to...

implemented nationally in USA
1999: creation of the Asterisk
Asterisk (PBX)
Asterisk is a software implementation of a telephone private branch exchange ; it was created in 1999 by Mark Spencer of Digium. Like any PBX, it allows attached telephones to make calls to one another, and to connect to other telephone services including the public switched telephone network and...

Private branch exchange

2000 to 2010

11 June 2002: Antonio Meucci
Antonio Meucci
Antonio Santi Giuseppe Meucci was an Italian inventor, a compatriot of revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi. He was best known for developing a voice communication apparatus which several sources credit as the first telephone....

recognized for "his work in the invention of the telephone" by the United States House of Representatives
United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...

, in House Resolution 269. The Parliament of Canada
Parliament of Canada
The Parliament of Canada is the federal legislative branch of Canada, seated at Parliament Hill in the national capital, Ottawa. Formally, the body consists of the Canadian monarch—represented by her governor general—the Senate, and the House of Commons, each element having its own officers and...

responds by passing a motion unanimously 10 days later
Canadian Parliamentary Motion on Alexander Graham Bell
The Canadian Parliamentary Motion on Alexander Graham Bell, in the first session of Canada's 37th Parliament was unanimously passed by all four parties of its federal government on June 21, 2002, to affirm that Alexander Graham Bell, who had lived in both Brantford, Ontario and Baddeck, Nova Scotia...

recognizing Alexander Graham Bell as the inventor of the telephone.
2005: Mink, Louisiana
Mink, Louisiana
Mink is an unincorporated community in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, United States. It is in Kisatchie National Forest.Mink is one of the last towns in the United States to get phone service. It got the service in 2005.-References:...

gets phone service (one of the last in the USA).
29 June 2007: The iPhone
IPhone (original)
The iPhone—retroactively labeled the original iPhone, iPhone 2G, or iPhone EDGE—was the first generation of iPhone designed and marketed by Apple Inc. and was succeeded by the iPhone 3G. It was announced on January 9, 2007 after months of rumors and speculation. It was introduced in the United...

started shipping
July 2007: The Openmoko
Openmoko
Openmoko is a project to create a family of open source mobile phones, including the hardware specification and the operating system. The project was sponsored by Openmoko Inc....

Neo 1973
Neo 1973
The Neo 1973 is a smartphone developed by the Openmoko project to run the Openmoko Linux software platform. Furthermore other platforms have been ported to the Neo 1973, including Qt Extended, Debian and Android....

started shipping
24 June 2008: The Neo 1973
Neo 1973
The Neo 1973 is a smartphone developed by the Openmoko project to run the Openmoko Linux software platform. Furthermore other platforms have been ported to the Neo 1973, including Qt Extended, Debian and Android....

successor, the Neo FreeRunner
Neo FreeRunner
The Neo FreeRunner is an open source smartphone that is developed by the Openmoko project and manufactured by FIC...

, started shipping
24 June 2008 : The Symbian Foundation was founded
22 October 2008: The first Android phone, the HTC Dream
HTC Dream
The HTC Dream is an Internet-enabled smartphone with an operating system designed by Google and hardware designed by HTC...

started shipping
November 2009: The Nokia N900
Nokia N900
The Nokia N900 is a smartphone made by Nokia. It supersedes the Nokia N810. Its default operating system, Maemo 5, is a Linux-based OS originally developed for the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. It is the first Nokia device based upon the Texas Instruments OMAP3 microprocessor with the ARM Cortex-A8...

started shipping
2010: Iowa Hill, California
Iowa Hill, California
Iowa Hill is an unincorporated community in Placer County, California. Iowa Hill is located north-northwest of Foresthill. It lies at an elevation of 2861 feet .It is northeast of Sacramento...

gets phone service (another one of the last in the USA).
15 February 2010: Symbian^3, the first fully open source version of Symbian is released

External links

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