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Telephone numbers listed in 1920 in New York City having three-letter exchange prefixes. In the United States, the most-populous cities, such as New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago, initially implemented dial service with telephone numbers consisting of three letters and four digits (3L-4N) according to a system developed by W. G. Blauvelt of AT&T in 1917. [1]
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.
Most automatic dial switching systems were designed since the early 1920s to provide service for as many as ten-thousand subscriber lines. Each of these switching systems constituted a local telephone exchange, formally known as a central office. Therefore, each telephone connected to a central office had a unique four-digit line or station number.
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.
After 1945 the telegraphy industry began to experience a decline, with total telegraph messages almost halving from 1945 to 1960. In 1931, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) introduced the Teletypewriter Exchange Service (TWX) which operated over telephone circuits between devices located directly in private businesses. This ...
Antonio Meucci, Alexander Graham Bell, and Elisha Gray amongst others, have all been credited with the telephone's invention. The early history of the telephone became and still remains a confusing morass of claims and counterclaims, which were not clarified by the huge number of lawsuits filed in order to resolve the patent claims of the many ...
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.