800 number
A toll-free telephone number or freephone number is a telephone number that is billed for all arriving calls. For the calling party, a call to a toll-free number from a landline is free of charge. A toll-free number is identified by a dialing prefi ...
Answering machine
An answering machine, answerphone or message machine, also known as telephone messaging machine (or TAM) in the United Kingdom, UK and some Commonwealth countries, ansaphone or ansafone (from a trade name), or telephone answering device (TAD), ...
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Antonio Meucci
Antonio Santi Giuseppe Meucci ( , ; 13 April 1808 – 18 October 1889) was an Italian inventor and an associate of Giuseppe Garibaldi, a major political figure in the history of Italy.
Bell labs
Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984),
then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996)
and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007),
is an American industrial Research and development, research and scientific developm ...
Carterfone
The Carterfone is a device invented by Thomas Carter. It manually connects a two-way radio system to the telephone system, allowing someone on the radio to talk to someone on the phone. This makes it a direct predecessor to today's autopatch. ...
Cordless telephone
A cordless telephone or portable telephone has a portable telephone handset that connects by radio to a base station connected to the public telephone network. The operational range is limited, usually to the same building or within some short ...
Dial tone
A dial tone is a telephony Signaling (telecommunication), signal sent by a telephone exchange or private branch exchange (PBX) to a terminating device, such as a telephone, when an off-hook condition is detected. It indicates that the exchange is ...
Elisha Gray and Alexander Bell telephone controversy
The Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell controversy concerns the question of whether Gray and Bell invented the telephone independently. This issue is narrower than the question of who deserves credit for inventing the telephone, for which ther ...
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Emergency phone
An emergency telephone is a phone specifically provided for making calls to emergency services and is most often found in a place of special danger or where it is likely that there will be a need to make emergency calls. It is also sometimes kn ...
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Emile Berliner
Emile Berliner (May 20, 1851 – August 3, 1929) originally Emil Berliner, was a German-American inventor. He is best known for inventing the lateral-cut flat disc record (called a "gramophone record" in British and American English) used with a ...
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Fax
Fax (short for facsimile), sometimes called telecopying or telefax (the latter short for telefacsimile), is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material (both text and images), normally to a telephone number connected to a printer o ...
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Federal telephone excise tax
The federal telephone excise tax is a statutory federal excise tax imposed under the Internal Revenue Code in the United States under on amounts paid for certain "communications services". The tax was to be imposed on the person paying for the ...
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Francis Blake (telephone)
Francis Blake Jr. (December 25, 1850 – January 20, 1913) was an American inventor.
Biography
Francis Blake was born in Needham, Massachusetts on December 25, 1850, the son of Caroline Burling (Trumbull) and Francis Blake, Sr.
In 1879, he in ...
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Geographic number {{Unreferenced, date=June 2019, bot=noref (GreenC bot)
A geographic number is a telephone number, from a range of numbers in the United Kingdom National Telephone Numbering Plan, where part of its digit structure contains geographic significance us ...
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Harmonised service of social value
A harmonised service of social value is a type of freephone service available in the European Union and in some non-EU countries (including the countries in the European Economic Area and United Kingdom), which answers a specific social need, in ...
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History of mobile phones
The history of mobile phones covers mobile communication devices that connect wirelessly to the public switched telephone network.
While the transmission of speech by signal has a long history, the first devices that were wireless, mobile, and ...
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History of the telephone
This history of the telephone chronicles the development of the electrical telephone, and includes a brief overview of its predecessors. The first telephone patent was granted to Alexander Graham Bell in 1876.
Mechanical and acoustic devi ...
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Hybrid routing
Routing in the PSTN is the process of forwarding telephone calls between the constituent telephone networks that comprise the public switched telephone network (PSTN).
Telephone calls are routed across a network of potentially many switching s ...
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Innocenzo Manzetti
Innocenzo Vincenzo Bartolomeo Luigi Carlo Manzetti (; 17 March 1826 – 15 March 1877) was an Italians, Italian inventor born in Aosta. Following his primary school studies he went to the Jesuit-run Saint Bénin Boarding School and then on to ...
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Invention of the telephone
The invention of the telephone was the culmination of work done by more than one individual, and led to an array of lawsuits relating to the patent claims of several individuals and numerous companies.
Early development
The concept of th ...
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Jipp curve Jipp curve is a term for a graph plotting the number (density) of telephones against wealth as measured by the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita. The Jipp curve shows across countries that teledensity increases with an increase in wealth or ec ...
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Local loop
In telephony, the local loop (also referred to as the local tail, subscriber line, or in the aggregate as the last mile) is the physical link or circuit that connects from the demarcation point of the customer premises to the edge of the commo ...
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Mobile phone
A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whi ...
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Philipp Reis
Johann Philipp Reis (; 7 January 1834 – 14 January 1874) was a self-taught German scientist and inventor. In 1861, he constructed the first ''make-and-break'' telephone, today called the Reis telephone.
Early life and education
Reis ...
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Phreaking
Phreaking is a slang term coined to describe the activity of a culture of people who study, experiment with, or explore telecommunication systems, such as equipment and systems connected to public telephone networks. The term ''phreak'' is a ...
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Plain old telephone service
Plain old telephone service (POTS), or plain ordinary telephone system, is a retronym for voice-grade telephone service employing analog signal transmission over copper loops. POTS was the standard service offering from telephone companies from 1 ...
Regional Bell Operating Company
The Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOC) are the result of '' United States v. AT&T'', the U.S. Department of Justice antitrust suit against the former American Telephone & Telegraph Company (later known as AT&T Corp.). On January 8, 1 ...
Sidetone
Sidetone is audible feedback to someone speaking or otherwise producing sound as an indication of active transmission. Sidetone is introduced by some communications circuits and anti-sidetone circuitry is used to control its level.
Sidetone is exp ...
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Telecommunications
Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that fe ...
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Telephone
A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into e ...
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Telephone call
A telephone call is a connection over a telephone network between the called party and the calling party.
First telephone call
The first telephone call was made on March 10, 1876, by Alexander Graham Bell. Bell demonstrated his ability to "ta ...
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Telephone directory
A telephone directory, commonly called a telephone book, telephone address book, phonebook, or the white and yellow pages, is a listing of telephone subscribers in a geographical area or subscribers to services provided by the organization that ...
Telephone line
A telephone line or telephone circuit (or just line or circuit industrywide) is a single-user circuit on a telephone communication system. It is designed to reproduce speech of a quality that is understandable. It is the physical wire or ot ...
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Telephone newspaper Telephone Newspapers, introduced in the 1890s, transmitted news and entertainment to subscribers over telephone lines. They were the first example of electronic broadcasting, although only a few were established, most commonly in European cities. T ...
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Telephone number
A telephone number is a sequence of digits assigned to a landline telephone subscriber station connected to a telephone line or to a wireless electronic telephony device, such as a radio telephone or a mobile telephone, or to other devices f ...
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Telephone switchboard
A telephone switchboard was a device used to connect circuits of telephones to establish telephone calls between users or other switchboards, throughout the 20th century. The switchboard was an essential component of a manual telephone exchange, ...
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Telephone tapping
Telephone tapping (also wire tapping or wiretapping in American English) is the monitoring of telephone and Internet-based conversations by a third party, often by covert means. The wire tap received its name because, historically, the monitorin ...
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Telephony
Telephony ( ) is the field of technology involving the development, application, and deployment of telecommunication services for the purpose of electronic transmission of voice, fax, or data, between distant parties. The history of telephony is i ...
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Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventi ...
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Timeline of the telephone
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 ...
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Tip and ring
Tip and ring are the two conductors or sides of a telephone line. Their names are derived from the telephone plugs used for connecting telephone calls in manual switchboards. One side of the line is connected to the metal ''tip'' of the plug, and ...
(Wiring terminology)
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Toll-free telephone number
A toll-free telephone number or freephone number is a telephone number that is billed for all arriving calls. For the calling party, a call to a toll-free number from a landline is free of charge. A toll-free number is identified by a dialing pre ...