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The telephone played a major communications role in American history from the 1876 publication of its first patent by Alexander Graham Bell onward. In the 20th century the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) dominated the telecommunication market as the at times largest company in the world, until it was broken up in 1982 and replaced by a system of competitors.
The early history of the telephone became and still ... address work through the 1920s. 1896 telephone ... a connection to the outside telephone network.
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 communications) from the Franklin School in Washington, D.C. to the window of Bell's laboratory, 213 meters away. [20] [21]
As phone lines became more popular—between 1942 and 1962, the number of phones in the U.S. grew 230% to 76 million—telephone companies realized they would run out of phone numbers.
In the early, small telephone networks, it was customary to initiate a connection to another subscriber by requesting the name of the desired party from the operator. While this method persisted into the 1920s in very small communities, [2] growth of the business soon made this impractical, and subscriber stations were assigned telephone numbers.
By 1900, the telegraph had become an integral part of American life, linking people and businesses across the country and around the world. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. After 1920 it replaced the telegraph as the primary means of communication between cities.
A telephone network is a telecommunications network that connects telephones, which allows telephone calls between two or more parties, as well as newer features such as fax and internet. The idea was revolutionized in the 1920s, as more and more people purchased telephones and used them to communicate news, ideas, and personal information. [1]
The Bell System was a system of telecommunication companies, led by the Bell Telephone Company and later by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), that dominated the telephone services industry in North America for over 100 years from its creation in 1877 until its antitrust breakup in 1983.