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A Timeline of the history of the telephone.

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.
• May 1874 Gray invents electromagnet device for transmitting musical tones. Some of his receivers use a metallic diaphragm.
• December 1874 Gray demonstrates his musical tones device at the Presbyterian Church in Highland Park, Illinois and lectures on the possibility of transmitting speech.
• 2 June 1875 Alexander Graham Bell 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 experiments with acoustic telegraphy and in November builds an electro-dynamic receiver but does not exploit it.

1876-1878

• 11 February 1876 Elisha Gray invents liquid transmitter for use with a telephone, but does not build one.
• 14 February 1876 (about 9:30 am) Gray or his lawyer brings to the Patent Office Gray's caveat for the telephone. (A caveat was like a patent application without claims and was an official notice of intention to file a patent application at a later date.)
• 14 February 1876 (about 11:30am) Bell's lawyer brings to the Patent Office Bell's patent application for the telephone. Bell's lawyer requested that it be registered immediately in the cash receipts blotter.
  • 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 involvement with acoustic telegraphy. The result was that the patent was awarded to Bell.
• 7 March 1876 Bell's US patent 174,465 for the telephone is granted.
• 10 March 1876 Bell transmits speech "Mr. Watson, come here, I want you." using a liquid transmitter described in Gray's caveat and an electromagnetic receiver described in Gray's July 1875 US patent 166,095.
• 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's US patent 186,787 is granted for an electro-magnetic telephone with transmitter and receiver using steel diaphragms and a call bell.
• 4 March 1877 Emile Berliner 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.
• 27 April 1877 Thomas Edison files telephone patent application. The US patents (474,230, 474,231 and 474,231) were awarded to Edison in 1892 over the competing claims of Alexander Graham Bell, Emile Berliner, Elisha Gray, A E Dolbear, J W McDonagh, G B Richmond, W L W Voeker, J H Irwin and Francis Blake Jr.
• 4 June 1877 Emile Berliner files telephone patent application that includes a carbon microphone transmitter.
• December 1 1877 Western Union enters the telephone business using Thomas Edison's superior carbon microphone transmitter.
• 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.
• 14 June 1878 The Telephone Company Ltd (Bell's Patents) registered, London. Opened in London 21 August 1879 - Europe's first telephone exchange.
• September 12 1878 The Bell Telephone Co. sues Western Union for infringing Bell's patents.

1879-1919

• Early months of 1879 The Bell Telephone Co. is near bankruptcy and desperate to get a transmitter to equal Edison's carbon transmitter.
• 1879 Bell merges with the New England Telephone Company to form the National Bell Telephone Company.
• 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.).
• 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 May 1892 Thomas Edison awarded patents for the carbon microphone against applications lodged in 1877.
• 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 when the last of the first bell phones were no longer made.

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
• 1955 The laying of trans-Atlantic cables began
• 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
• 1972 US patent 3,663,762 granted to Amos Joel of Bell Labs, inventor of the "cellular mobile communication system"
• 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 in USA
• 2002 Antonio Meucci was recognized 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 recognizing Canadian immigrant Alexander Graham Bell as the only inventor of the telephone.
• 2005 Mink, Louisiana gets phone service (Last in the USA)

References

1. Hounshell, David A. 1975. Elisha Gray and the Telephone: On the Disadvantages of Being an Expert. Technology and Culture 16 (2):133-161.
2. Edison, Thomas A. 1880. The Speaking Telephone Interferences, Evidence for Thomas A. Edison. Vol. 1 , . Available from http://edison.rutgers.edu/singldoc.htm.

See also

Invention of the telephone

• Technology timelines
• Telephony