The telephone is probably the most common piece of technological equipment in the world today. Over 6 billion out of the world’s 7 billion people (85%) use one form of telephone or another.
The invention of the telephone is often attributed to Alexander Graham Bell, who in 1876 was the first to obtain a patent on a sound transmitting “apparatus.” But truth be told, many other inventors had been working on similar technologies ever since the 1830’s.
The same year that Bell got his patent on the telephone, a Hungarian engineer named Tivadar Puskás created the telephone switchboard, an essential component for the creation of a telephone network.
The earliest telephones from the 1870’s until the mid-1890’s were sold in pairs that would be connected together over a distance to facilitate communication between, say, a residence and a workshop.
In 1894, the first American manually operated telephone switchboard was created in Lexington, Massachusetts. For an entire half century, such manual switchboards were the way that long-distance phone calls were transmitted, almost exclusively operated by women.
The ability to place direct long-distance phone calls was introduced only in 1951, when eleven cities across the U.S. were assigned “area codes.” Those cities were: Boston (617), Chicago (312), Cleveland (216), Detroit (313), Milwaukee (414), Oakland (415), Philadelphia (215), Pittsburgh (412), Providence (401), Sacramento (916), and San Francisco (318).
For decades to follow, things then remained pretty much unchanged until the popularization of Mobile Phones and VoIP telephony.
VoIP
The most recently invented major telephone technology is called VoIP, which stands for “Voice over Internet Protocol.” VoIP was invented in 1994 by Alon Cohen and Lior Haramaty. However, the technology could not be put to practical use in until the first software was released by VocalTec in 1995.
Today, there are dozens of companies such as Skype or Vonage offering VoIP telephone services at rates that are usually much less than traditional landlines or mobile phone rates.
While extraordinarily price competitive, three disadvantages commonly mentioned with VoIP phone services are, 1) You cannot make emergency calls (911) through your VoIP service, 2) Your number will be unlisted, which may make you more difficult to find, 3) Your phone will not function when there’s a power outage.
Mobile Phones
Although becoming prevalent only in the 1990’s, mobile phones actually go back much further than most people realize. The first mobile phone call from a car took place in St Louis, Missouri, in 1946.
Ten years later, the first automatic car phone was introduced in Sweden. That contraption, constructed with vacuum tubes and relays, weighed close to 90 lbs.
The real mobile phone revolution in the U.S. began in the 1990’s. Prior to 1990, only one in seventy Americans had a mobile phone. A decade later, one in three Americans carried a cell phone. As of 2011, on average, every American uses a cell phone. In fact, there are more mobile phones in use in the U.S. then there are people.
Worldwide today, there are 5.9 billion mobile phone subscribers out of a world population of 7 billion. Compare that to a mere one and a quarter billion landline telephones. The mobile phone revolution is complete.