How to read this timeline
Dates in the history of the telephone are mostly well documented, but some “firsts” are contested or depend on definitions. Where that is the case, the entries say so. The outline is grouped by period to show how the telephone moved from a curiosity into a worldwide network.
The 1860s and 1870s: the idea becomes a device
- 1861: Philipp Reis in Germany demonstrates a device he calls the Telephon, which transmits tones. How well it carried speech is disputed.
- 1871: Antonio Meucci files a caveat in New York for a voice-transmission device, which he renews for a few years.
- February 14, 1876: Alexander Graham Bell files a patent application, and Elisha Gray files a caveat on a similar subject the same day.
- March 7, 1876: Bell’s patent is granted.
- March 10, 1876: Bell’s notebook records the first successful transmission of intelligible speech to his assistant, Thomas Watson.
- June 1876: Bell shows the telephone at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia.
- 1877: The Bell Telephone Company is formed. Carbon transmitters, associated with Edison and Berliner, begin to improve volume.
- 1878: The first commercial exchange opens in New Haven, Connecticut, in January. Operators, initially boys, begin to be replaced by women later in the year.
The 1880s and 1890s: networks and competition
- 1879-1880s: Exchanges are set up in major European and American cities. The multiple switchboard allows larger exchanges.
- 1884: A long-distance line links Boston and New York.
- 1891-1892: Almon Strowger patents an automatic switch, and the first Strowger exchange enters service in La Porte, Indiana, in 1892.
- 1892: A New York to Chicago line opens.
- 1893-1894: Bell’s key patents expire, and many independent telephone companies enter the market, especially in rural areas.
- 1896: A dial telephone appears for the Strowger system.
1900 to 1945: scale and distance
- Early 1900s: Telephone service spreads in homes and businesses. Loading coils and amplifiers using vacuum tubes extend the range of lines.
- 1915: A transcontinental line opens between New York and San Francisco, and Bell and Watson reenact the famous first call.
- 1927: A radio-telephone service opens between New York and London.
- 1930s: Handsets with the transmitter and receiver in one unit become standard in many places. Automatic exchanges become common in cities.
- 1946: The first commercial mobile telephone service, using car phones, begins in the United States in St. Louis.
1945 to 1980: automation and satellites
- 1947: Area codes are planned for North America.
- 1951: Direct dialing of long-distance calls by customers begins in Englewood, New Jersey.
- 1956: The first transatlantic telephone cable, TAT-1, opens, carrying a few dozen simultaneous calls.
- 1960s: Pulse-code modulation brings digital transmission between exchanges. Touch-tone dialing is introduced in 1963.
- 1962-1965: Telstar and then Early Bird communications satellites carry transatlantic traffic.
- 1965: The first commercial electronic switching system, No. 1 ESS, enters service in New Jersey.
- 1973: Martin Cooper of Motorola makes a call on a prototype handheld cellular phone.
- 1979: The first commercial cellular network begins service in Tokyo.
1980 to today: digital and mobile
- 1983: Commercial cellular service begins in the United States, in Chicago.
- 1984: The Bell System is broken up in the United States following an antitrust settlement.
- 1988: TAT-8 becomes the first transatlantic cable to use optical fibers.
- 1991: The first GSM digital mobile network opens in Finland.
- 1992-1994: The first text message is sent, and the IBM Simon is shown and then sold as an early device combining phone and computer functions.
- 2007: Apple introduces the iPhone, which accelerates the shift to touchscreen smartphones.
- 2010s onward: Voice calls increasingly travel as data over internet-based networks, and fixed-line subscriptions decline in many countries.
What the timeline shows
Three patterns stand out. First, the idea came quickly but the network took decades: from the 1876 patent to a country with a telephone in most homes took roughly seventy years. Second, the biggest changes were in the network behind the handset, such as exchanges, switching, cables and satellites, while the instrument itself changed more slowly. Third, from 1973 onward the instrument and the network separated, as the telephone became portable and began to merge with the computer.