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For a few years in the late 1800s, acoustic telephones were marketed commercially as a competitor to the electrical telephone. When the Bell telephone patents expired and many new telephone manufacturers began competing, acoustic telephone makers quickly went out of business. Their maximum range was very limited. [2]
11 February 1876: Elisha Gray invents a liquid transmitter for use with a telephone, but he did not make one. 14 February 1876 about 9:30 am: Gray or his lawyer brings Gray's patent caveat for the telephone to the Washington, D.C. Patent Office (a caveat was a notice of intention to file a patent application.
AT&T took quick advantage and by 1930, 80% of the nation's telephones were owned by AT&T, and 98% of the remainder connected to its network. [13] [14] During most of the 20th century, due to federal agreements, AT&T maintained a monopoly on telephone service in the United States. It was usually the largest company in the U.S. in terms of assets ...
As is sometimes common in scientific discoveries, simultaneous developments occurred, as evidenced by a number of inventors who were at work on the telephone. [114] Over 18 years, the Bell Telephone Company faced 587 court challenges to its patents, including five that went to the U.S. Supreme Court, [115] but none was successful in ...
This is an accepted version of this page This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 22 January 2025. Technical and legal issues surrounding the development of the modern telephone For broader coverage of this topic, see History of the telephone. Replica of Antonio Meucci's telettrofono Reis's telephone The invention of the telephone was the culmination of work done by more than one ...
The electric telephone was invented in the 1870s, based on earlier work with harmonic (multi-signal) telegraphs. The first commercial telephone services were set up in 1878 and 1879 on both sides of the Atlantic in the cities of New Haven, Connecticut in the US and London, England in the UK.
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.
The very earliest mechanical telephones were based on transmission through pipes or other physical media, and among the very earliest experiments were those conducted by the British physicist and polymath Robert Hooke from 1664 to 1685. [1] [2] From 1664 to 1665 Hooke experimented with sound transmission through a taut extended wire. [3]