Inventor of the telephone: Alexander Graham Bell

Major events in the development of the telephone

How the telephone works

Inside of a telephone (Western Electric model)

Various phone inventions

Bibliography + Other links

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Major Events in the Development of the Telephone 

1876 Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone
1877 Western Union has first telephone line in operation between Somerville,MA and Boston
1878 First telephone directory, New Haven, CT and had 21 listings
1880 American Bell founded. 30,000 phones in use
1881 Female phone operators preferred over male operators 
1884 First long distance call from Boston to New York
1885 Theodore Vail becomes president of AT & T
1892 Amon Strowger develops the dial telephone system to get the operator out of the system
1925 Bell Telephone Laboratories founded. 1.5 million dial telephones in service out of 12 million phones in service
1934 Federal Communications Commission founded. Introduced "value of service" pricing which required the subsidization of residential subscribers to speed up the availability of nation wide telephone service
1935 First telephone call around the world
1937 Bell introduces the Model 300 handset
1938 Bell introduces crossbar central office switches
1943 Philadelphia is the last city to have telephone services supplied
1947 Bell Telephone Laboratories has a 96-channel PCM experimental system working between Murray Hill, NJ and NYC and quickly discovers the need for repeaters for long distance service
1949 AT &T introduces the famous black rotary Model 500 telephone
1950 75% of lines are party-lines
1956 Walter Gifford , president of AT&T, obtained permission to connect wire line fax equipment to the network for use by newspapers. 
1960 There are now 3299 telephone companies
1961 Bell Telephone Labs released design information for the touch-tone dial to Western Electric
1962 Telephone cables now start to use plastic insulation
1965 Introduction of stored program controlled switching reduces the number of telephone companies to 2421
1966 Tom Carter sues AT&T to permit connection of his phone patch
1970 Introduction of ESS#2 electronic switch. There is now 1841 telephone companies 
1973 Bell Telephone Labs release design information to Western Electric for production of the Com-Key 416, the fist KTU-less key system which was less susceptible to damage caused by lightning storms.
1975 Bell Telephone Laboratories released information to Western Electric for electronic key systems
1978 Commission rejects telephone companies requests for the Primary Instrument Concept in which all subscribers would be required to have at least one phone provided by the telephone company
1981 Bell Telephone Laboratories design of a network embedded database of Personal Identification Numbers(PINs) for calling card customers to be accessed by public telephone over Signaling Systems 7
1991 Caller ID was established and went in effect in 1995. The Telephone Consumers Protection Act required the use of "fax branding" to identify the source of incoming faxes