Slow start, then rapid growth
The telephone did not conquer the world overnight. In the early years it was a business tool, rented at high prices to firms that could use it. Ordinary households mostly did without. Adoption then followed a typical pattern: slow growth while the service was expensive and limited, then faster growth as prices fell, networks spread and neighbors began to have one.
The numbers varied widely from country to country. In the United States, where adoption was relatively early, a rough picture is that about a third of households had a telephone around 1920, and the share rose to a majority by the middle of the century and to a large majority by the 1960s and 1970s. Elsewhere, some countries saw high adoption early, while many others did not reach widespread household coverage until much later in the twentieth century or even the twenty-first, when mobile phones filled the gap.
Business first
Early users were doctors, merchants, brokers, newspapers and manufacturers, who valued speed and could afford the rates. Telephones connected offices to warehouses, shops to suppliers, and doctors to patients. Doctors, in particular, found the telephone useful for being summoned, and druggists took orders by telephone.
The telephone also changed the shape of offices. Businesses could keep managers and clerks in different buildings and still coordinate. It supported the growth of large organizations and the separation of city centers from factories and warehouses.
Competition and falling prices
For the first years after 1876, Bell’s patents gave the Bell companies control in the United States. When the main patents expired in 1893 and 1894, many independent telephone companies sprang up, especially in small towns and rural areas that the Bell companies had not served. Competition lowered prices, encouraged expansion and, in some places, led to two incompatible systems in the same town. Over time, the larger companies consolidated, and governments regulated telephone service as a public utility in many countries.
In other places, the pattern was different. In many European countries, the state ran the telephone service, often through the post office, and growth depended on public investment and policy. In Britain the post office took over the main private company in 1912.
The countryside
Rural adoption raised difficult problems. Farms are far apart, so a line to each one was expensive, and private companies saw little profit in serving them. Farmers sometimes built their own systems. Groups of neighbors strung lines along fences and shared the cost, forming small cooperative or mutual companies. Some of these used cheap equipment and connected to a town exchange. Stories are told of lines run along barbed wire fences, and while the quality of such makeshift systems was low, they brought communication to places where there was none.
Party lines were the usual way to share costs. Several households used the same circuit, each with its own ring pattern, such as two longs and a short. Everyone could hear when a neighbor’s ring sounded, and it was possible to listen in. A party line saved money but limited privacy and availability, since one family’s long conversation blocked the line.
In the United States, a law in 1949 enabled low-interest loans to expand rural telephone service, building on a program that had previously electrified the countryside. Rural coverage improved markedly in the following decades, as electric lighting and radio broadcasting had earlier reached farms in the same way.
Manners and habits
A new technology needs new manners. People had to learn how to answer, how to end a call, and at what times it was acceptable to ring. Etiquette writers advised against calling at meal times or late at night. The greeting “hello” was adopted widely, helped by promotion from Thomas Edison and others, replacing options such as “ahoy.”
The telephone created tensions as well. Parents worried about teenagers tying up the line, employers about private calls, and some critics about the loss of face-to-face visiting. Others praised the telephone for reducing isolation, especially for people living in remote places, older people, and those with limited mobility. Surveys and histories suggest that the telephone often complemented rather than replaced visits, since people used it to arrange meetings and keep in touch with those far away.
Emergencies and daily life
The telephone changed how emergencies were handled. A call could summon a doctor, a fire brigade or the police in minutes. Dedicated emergency numbers were introduced in the twentieth century in many countries, and became a basic part of public safety.
In daily life, it changed shopping, social arrangements and work. People could order groceries, check on relatives and arrange appointments. Telephone numbers became part of personal identity, printed on cards and stationery.
Uneven access
Throughout this period, access was uneven. Cost, location, race, income and regulation all affected who had a telephone. Households without one often relied on a neighbor’s or a public pay telephone. Efforts to widen access, such as subsidies for low-income households and rules about universal service, were later developed in several countries.
A foundation for what followed
By the late twentieth century, the telephone network in wealthy countries reached almost every home. That infrastructure became the base for new services, from fax to dial-up internet. In many developing countries, mobile phones on cellular networks later brought telephone service to millions who had never had a landline, an example of technology jumping a stage rather than repeating it.