This timeline of the telephone covers landline, radio, and cellular telephony technologies and provides many important dates in the history of the telephone.
1667 to 1875 1667: Robert Hooke creates an acoustic string telephone that conveys sounds over a taut extended wire by mechanical vibrations.McVeigh, Daniel P. An Early History of the Telephone: 1664–1866: Robert Hooke's Acoustic Experiments and Acoustic Inventions (archived from the original on 18 June 2013), Columbia University website. Retrieved 15 January 2013.Giles, Arthur (editor). County Directory of Scotland (for 1901–1904): Twelfth Issue: Telephone (Scottish Post Office Directories), Edinburgh: R. Grant & Son, 1902, p. 28. 1844: Innocenzo Manzetti first suggests the idea of an electric "speaking telegraph", or telephone. 1849: Antonio Meucci developed a voice-communication apparatus that several sources credit as the first telephone. 1854: Charles Bourseul publishes a description of a make-and-break telephone transmitter and receiver in L'Illustration, (Paris) but does not construct a working instrument. 1854: Meucci demonstrates an electric voice-operated device in New York, but it is not clear what kind of device he demonstrated. 1860: Johann Philipp Reis of Germany demonstrates a make-and-break transmitter after the design of Bourseul and a knitting-needle receiver. Witnesses said they heard human voices being transmitted. 1861: Johann Philipp Reis transfers voice electrically over a distance of 340 feet with his Reis telephone. To prove that speech can be recognized successfully at the receiving end, he uses the phrase "The horse does not eat cucumber salad" as an example because this phrase is hard to understand acoustically in German. 1864: In an attempt to give his musical automaton a voice, Innocenzo Manzetti invents the 'speaking telegraph'. He shows no interest in patenting his device, but it is reported in newspapers. 1865: Meucci reads of Manzetti's invention and writes to the editors of two newspapers claiming priority and quoting his first experiment in 1849. He writes "I do not wish to deny Mr. Manzetti his invention, I only wish to observe that two thoughts could be found to contain the same discovery, and that by uniting the two ideas one can more easily reach the certainty about a thing this important." 1871: Meucci files a patent caveat (a statement of intention to file a patent application) Text of Meucci's Caveat, pages 16–18. for a Sound Telegraph, but it does not describe an electromagnetic telephone. 1872: Elisha Gray founds the Western Electric Manufacturing Company. 1872: Professor Vanderwyde demonstrates Reis's telephone in New York. July 1873: Thomas Edison notes varying resistance in carbon grains due to pressure, and builds a rheostat based on the principle but abandons it because of its sensitivity to vibration. May 1874: Gray invents an electromagnet device for transmitting musical tones. Some of his receivers use a metallic diaphragm. July 1874: Alexander Graham Bell conceives the theoretical concept for the telephone while vacationing at his parents' farm near Brantford, Ontario, Canada. Alexander Melville Bell records notes of his son's conversation in his personal journal. 29 December 1874: Gray demonstrates his musical tones device and transmits "familiar melodies through telegraph wire" at the Presbyterian Church in Highland Park, Illinois. 4 May 1875: Bell conceives of using varying resistance in a wire conducting electric current to create a varying current amplitude.Bruce (1990), pages 144–145. 2 June 1875: Bell transmits the sound of a plucked steel reed using electromagnet instruments. 1 July 1875: Bell uses a bi-directional "gallows" telephone that was able to transmit "indistinct but voice-like sounds" rather than clear speech. Both the transmitter and the receiver were identical membrane electromagnet instruments. 1875: Thomas Edison experiments with acoustic telegraphy and, in November, builds an electro-dynamic receiver but does not exploit it.
1876 to 1878
11 February 1876: Elisha Gray invents a liquid transmitter for use with a telephone, but he did not make one. 14 February 1876 about 9:30am: 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. It was like a patent application, but without a request for examination, for the purpose of notifying the patent office of a possible invention in process). about 11:30am: Bell's lawyer brings to the same patent office Bell's patent application for the telephone. Bell's lawyer requests that it be registered immediately in the cash receipts blotter. about 1:30pm: Approximately two hours later Elisha Gray's patent caveat is registered in the cash blotter. Although his caveat was not a full application, Gray could have converted it into a patent application and contested Bell's priority, but did not do so because of advice from his lawyer and his involvement with acoustic telegraphy. The result was that the patent was awarded to Bell.Hounshell, David A. 1975. "Elisha Gray and the Telephone: On the Disadvantages of Being an Expert", Technology and Culture, 1975, Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 133–161. 7 March 1876: Bell's U.S. Patent, No. 174,465 for the telephone is granted. 10 March 1876: Bell first successfully transmits speech, saying "Mr. Watson, come here! I want to see you!" using a liquid transmitter as described in Gray's caveat, and Bell's own electromagnetic receiver. 16 May 1876: Thomas Edison files first patent application for acoustic telegraphy for which U.S. patent 182,996 was granted 10 October 1876. 25 June 1876: Bell exhibits his telephone at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, where it draws enthusiastic reactions from Emperor Dom Pedro II of Brazil and Lord Kelvin, attracting the attention of the press and resulting in the first announcements of the invention to the general public. Lord Kelvin describes the telephone as "the greatest by far of all the marvels of the electric telegraph". 10 August 1876: Alexander Graham Bell makes the world's first long-distance telephone call, one-way, not reciprocal, over a distance of about 6 miles, between Brantford and Paris, Ontario, Canada. 1876: Hungarian Tivadar Puskás invents the telephone switchboard exchange (later working with Edison). 9 October 1876: Bell makes the first two-way long-distance telephone call between Cambridge and Boston, Massachusetts. October 1876: Edison tests his first carbon microphone. 1877: The first experimental telephone exchange in Boston. 20 January 1877: Edison "first [succeeds] in transmitting over wires many articulated sentences" using carbon granules as a pressure-sensitive varying resistance under the pressure of a diaphragm.Josephson, p. 143. 30 January 1877: Bell's U.S. Patent No. 186,787 is granted for an electromagnetic telephone using permanent magnets, iron diaphragms, and a call bell. 4 March 1877: Emile Berliner invents a microphone based on "loose contact" between two metal electrodes, an improvement on Reis' Telephone, and in April 1877 files a caveat of an invention in process. April 1877: A telephone line connects the workshop of Charles Williams, Jr., located in Boston, to his house in Somerville, Massachusetts, at 109 Court Street in Boston, where Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Watson had previously experimented with their telephone. The telephones became No. 1 and 2 in the Bell Telephone Company.John Lossing, Woodrow Wilson. Harpers' Encyclopædia Of United States From 458 A. D. To 1905, Harper & Brothers, 1905. Original from Pennsylvania State University, Digitized: 25 June 2009. 27 April 1877: Edison files telephone patent applications. U.S. patents (Nos. 474,230, 474,231 and 474,232) were awarded to Edison in 1892 over the competing claims of Alexander Graham Bell, Emile Berliner, Elisha Gray, Amos Dolbear, J.W. McDonagh, G.B. Richmond, W.L.W. Voeker, J.H. Irwin and Francis Blake Jr.Edison, Thomas A. 1880. The Speaking Telephone Interferences, Evidence for Thomas A. Edison. Vol. 1 (jpg image), [cited 21 April 2006]. Edison's carbon granules transmitter and Bell's electromagnetic receiver are used, with improvements, by the Bell system for many decades thereafter.Josephson, p. 146. 4 June 1877: Emile Berliner files telephone patent application that includes a carbon microphone transmitter. 9 July 1877: The Bell Telephone Company, a common law joint-stock company, is organized by Alexander Graham Bell's future father-in-law Gardiner Greene Hubbard, a lawyer who becomes its first president. 6 October 1877: the Scientific American publishes the invention from Bell – at that time still without a ringer. 25 October 1877: the article in the Scientific American is discussed at the Telegraphenamt in Berlin November 1877: First permanent telephone connection in UK between two business in Manchester using imported Bell instruments. 12 November 1877: The first commercial telephone company enters telephone business in Friedrichsberg close to Berlin using the Siemens pipe as ringer and telephone devices built by Siemens. 1 December 1877: Western Union enters the telephone business using Edison's superior carbon microphone transmitter. 14 January 1878: Bell demonstrates the device to Queen Victoria and gives her an opportunity to try it. Calls are made to Cowes, Southampton and London, the first long-distance calls in the UK.Alexander Graham Bell demonstrates the newly invented telephone The queen asks to buy the equipment that was used, but Bell offers to make a model specifically for her. 28 January 1878: The first commercial North American telephone exchange is opened in New Haven, Connecticut. 4 February 1878: Edison demonstrates the telephone between Menlo Park, New Jersey and Philadelphia. 14 June 1878: The Telephone Company (Bell's Patents) Ltd. is registered in London. Opened in London on 21 August 1879, it is Europe's first telephone exchange, followed a couple of weeks later by one in Manchester.Early Manchester Telephone Exchanges 12 September 1878: the Bell Telephone Company sues Western Union for infringing Bell's patents. 1878: The first Australian telephone trials were made between Semaphore and Kapunda (and later Adelaide and Port Adelaide) in South Australia.
1879 to 1919
Early months of 1879: The Bell Telephone Company is near bankruptcy and desperate to get a transmitter to equal Edison's carbon transmitter. 17 February 1879: Bell Telephone merges with the New England Telephone Company to form the National Bell Telephone Company. Theodore Vail takes over operations. 1879: Francis Blake invents a carbon transmitter similar to Edison's that saves the Bell company from extinction. 2 August 1879: The Edison Telephone Company London Ltd, registered. Opened in London 6 September 1879. 10 September 1879: Connolly and McTighe patent a "dial" telephone exchange (limited in the number of lines to the number of positions on the dial.). 1879: The International Bell Telephone Company (IBTC) of Brussels, Belgium was founded by Bell Telephone Company president Gardiner Greene Hubbard, initially to sell imported telephones and switchboards in Continental Europe.StowgerNet Museum. BTMC And ATEA—Antwerp's Twin Telephone Companies, StowgerNet Telephone Museum website. Retrieved 20 August 2010.Bob's Old Phones. European Bell and Western Electric Phones, Bob's Old Phones website. Retrieved 17 August 2010. International Bell rapidly evolved into an important European telephone service provider and manufacturer, with major operations in several countries.