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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.
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.
These made telephones an available and comfortable communication tool for many purposes, and it gave the impetus for the creation of a new industrial sector. The telephone exchange was an idea of the Hungarian engineer Tivadar Puskás (1844–1893) in 1876, while he was working for Thomas Edison on a telegraph exchange.
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]
1 July 1881: The world's first international telephone call is made between St. Stephen, New Brunswick, Canada, and Calais, Maine, United States. [22] 11 October 1881: The Sydney telephone exchange opened with 12 subscribers. 1882: A telephone company—an American Bell Telephone Company affiliate—is set up in Mexico City.
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.
Network Nations: A Transnational History of American and British Broadcasting (2011) John, Richard. Network Nation: Inventing American Telecommunications (Harvard U.P. 2010), emphasis on telephone; Noll, Michael. The Evolution of Media, 2007, Rowman & Littlefield; Poe, Marshall T.
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.