Timeline of the telephone

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Current revision

A Timeline of the history of the telephone.

Contents 1 1849-1875 2 1876-1878 3 1879-1919 4 1927-2005

1849-1875

• 1849 Antonio Meucci demonstrates a device later called a telephone to individuals in Havana. (It is disputed if this is an electric telephone.)
• 1854 Charles Bourseul publishes a description of a make-break telephone transmitter and receiver but does not construct a working instrument.
• 1854 Antonio Meucci demonstrates an electric telephone in New York.
• 1860 Johann Philipp Reis demonstrates a make-break transmitter after the design of Bourseul.
• 1860 Antonio Meucci demonstrates his telephone on Staten Island.
• 1861 The German Philipp Reis manages transfer voice electrically over a distance of 340 feet, see Reis' telephone.
• 1871 Antonio Meucci files a patent caveat (a statement of intention to patent).
• 1872 Elisha Gray founds Western Electric Manufacturing Company.
• 1872 Prof Vanderwyde demonstrated Reis's telephone in New York.
• July 1873 Thomas Edison notes variable resistance in carbon grains due to pressure, builds a rheostat based on the principle but abaondons it because of its sensitivity to vibration.
• 1874 Gray demonstrates his liquid transmitter telephone at the Highland Park Presbiterian Church.
• 2 June 1875 Bell first transmits voice.
• 1 July 1875 Bell first uses a bi-directional capable telephone (Both the transmitter and the receiver were identical membrane instruments.)
• 1875 Thomas Edison experiments with acoustic telegraphy and in November builds an electro-dynamic receiver but does not exploit it.

1876-1878

• 14 February 1876 Bell files his first patent on the telephone.
  • Two hours later Elisha Gray files his patent application.
• 16 May 1876 Thomas Edison files first patent application for acoustic telegraphy.
• October 1876 Thomas Edison tests his first carbon microphone.
• 30 January 1877 Bell patents the electro-dynamic transmitter, receiver telephone
• 4 March 1877 Emile Berliner invents the microphone.
• 27 April 1877 Thomas Edison files first telephone patent application.
• January 1878 First North American telephone exchange opened in New Haven, Connecticut.
• 4 February 1878 Thomas Edison demonstrates telephone between Menlo Park, New York and Philadelphia, a distance of 210 km.

1879-1919

• 1879 Bell merges with the New England Telephone Company to form the National Bell Telephone Company.
• 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.).
• 1880 National Bell merges with others to form the American Bell Telephone Company.
• 1882 A telephone company --an American Bell affiliate-- is set up in Mexico City.
• 1885 American Telephone and Telegraph Company AT&T is formed.
• 1886 Gilliland's Automatic circuit changer is put into service between Worcester and Leicester allowing for the first Operator dialing allowing one operator to run two exchanges.
• 13 January 1887 the Government of the United States moves to annul the patent issued to Alexander Graham Bell on the grounds of fraud and misrepresentation. Bell remanded for trial.
• 1899 AT&T becomes the overall holding company for all the Bell companies.
• November 2 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 the first Automatic telephone exchange.
• 30 October 1891 The Strowger Automatic Telephone Exchange company is formed.
• 3 November 1892 The first Strowger switch goes into operation in LaPorte, Indiana with 75 subscribers and capacity for 99.
• 27 February 1901 United States Court of Appeal declares void Emile Berliner's patent of the Bell telephone system
• 1915 Vacuum tubes used in coast-to-coast telephone circuits.
• 1915 First trans-atlantic voice transmission
• 1919 AT&T installs the first dial telephones in the Bell System, in Norfolk, Virginia. The last manual telephones in the system were not converted to dial until 1978.

1927-2005

• 1927 First public trans-atlantic phone call (via radio)
• 1935 First telephone call around the world.
• 1941 Touch Tone dialing introduced for operators in Baltimore, Maryland
• 1946 National numbering plan (area codes)
• 1946 First commercial mobile phone call
• 1946 Bell Labs develops the germanium point contact transistor
• 1951 Direct Distance Dialing (DDD) first offered at Englewood, New Jersey, to 11 selected major cities across the United States; this service grew rapidly across major cities during the 1950s, but did not become widespread until the 1960s.
• 1958 Modems used for direct connection via voice phone lines
• 1960 ESS-1
• 1961 Touch-tone released to public
• 1962 T-1 service in Skokie, Illinois
• 1970 ESS-2 electronic switch.
• 1970 Modular telephone cords and jacks introduced
• 1975 Last manual telephone switchboard in Maine is retired
• 1982 Caller ID patented by Carolyn Doughty, Bell Labs
• 1987 ADSL introduced
• 1993 Telecom Relay Service available for the disabled
• 1995 Caller ID implemented nationally
• 2002 Antonio Meucci was recognised as the first inventor of the telephone by the United States House of Representatives, in House Resolution 269, dated 11 June. The Parliament of Canada retaliated by passing a bill recognising Canadian immigrant Alexander Graham Bell as the only inventor of the telephone.
• 2005 Mink, Louisiana gets phone service (Last in the USA)