Discussion on:

The evolution of telephones

Typical revisionist history. In 300 years the ipad will be the first tablet and steve jobs will have invented the internet.

Care to point out which ones are wrong?

the "1950's rotary phone" looks more like a 1980's version. The 1950s version had a metal dial attached to the mechanism with a nut, and the round designation logo snapped over it with a couple of hooks. The plastic dial with a small hole to remove it came much later.

The 1980s "Typical" phone looks more like a hotel phone than a home phone. Very few (if any) residential subscribers had the red "Message Waiting" light.

The "GSM phone" looks more like the in-car vehicle mount versions of the analog cell phones of the day.

And it's interesting that most residential cordless phones, and niche market phones like the Mickey Mouse phone or the Football Phone are completely ignored.

While you're correct about the 50's phone having a metal dial, the phone pictured is circa 1965. Sleeker phones with plastic dials were introduced in the early-mid 60s. The dial is removed by gently pressing on the center and twisting counter-clockwise.

The GSM phone pictured was a portable phone designed to be carried in a briefcase or special pack. It could be used in the car with the optional car-mount and lighter plug-in. It was a "go anywhere (within radio range) phone. You could also plug the primary base into an AC wall outlet.

Missing some key phones. The Northern Telecom Contempra Phone in the 1960's revolutionized phone design and took them from utilitarian to design statements, and prompted new designs and concepts to flourish.

Weak finish. Windows OS Smartphones, while not always a functional OS, with the exception of Mango, is conspicuously absent. Additionally, the first videocall devices are mentioned, but there is no follow up with current video call technology on iPhone and other devices. Or even Videoconferencing technology which has completely exploded. All in all, I was a bit disappointed, though it was still fun.

From the first phone to the very latest, one phrase remains unchanged:

"Can you hear me?"

what happened to the 'TRIM PHONE' the 60's UK phone that trilled like a bird?

Wouldn't it be great if we actually had free markets in telecom and could choose our equipment and service providers totally a la carte?

I'd take a smart phone... if it didn't track my location down to the millimeter, and didn't track my log-ins, and didn't track my file transfers, and let me put the files where I wanted in a hierarchy I control anywhere in storage as on a cross between NOS/VE and *nix circa 1990.

I want nearly all quiet switches, not these ear-blasting tones of the new ones, nor the ear-breaking clacking of the old mechanical switching networks before the Bell break-up. Separate continuous volume controls on the speaker and the microphone (not these kludgey 4-setting monsters). And, of course, better speakers and microphones all around, nice big ear- and mouth-sized ones rather than a tiny pin-prick hole in the case such that you have to place the phone just so to hear or be heard... noise-cancelling. What the heck, make the head-set big "mickey-mouse" hearing protector style so you can just wear your phone at the firing range.

More buttons/keys. Real buttons/switches that you can feel move a little. Stop skimping/abusing one button or combination of buttons for multiple purposes. Among these switches should be big honking "GPS off" and "cell location off, I'm stationary, already" buttons, ringer off... These should have a good, solid feel to them and make a pleasant clunk sound when the setting is changed, somewhat like a high-quality circuit-breaker in the service panel of your home or at a stadium (so you can hear that deep, satisfyiing clunk from 100 yards, not the ragged, high-pitched clack-pffsht of the old mechanical phone switches).

Bigger bigger bigger battery packs. Make 'em fat and happy, not these stupid useless "ultra-thin" jobbers that slip between your pinkies, can't get a signal 200 feet from the antenna tower and have to be recharged 4 times a day, and then recycled wearing a hazmat suit.

Oh, and 10GB/s data rates.

And why have you broken the "discussions" in the last 30 hours or so (and your feed-back page)!?!?!?!?!?!?

that phone's marketshare would be... you...

You iPhoners really are ignorant. The Nokia and Ericsson Symbian line of smart phones predated the iPhone. Like the Ericsson P990i, it was full color, could surf the web, play video and much more. For me as an IT guy, the VPN, SSH, RDP and VNC clients were the real standout. I could my company's server farm from an Airport lounge when my CIO's BlackBerry could not. Yeah, it needed a stick pointer like the Palm Treo, but it had finer control than the lame BlackBerry touch pad. The BB UI is another discussion in itself. Why RIM is dying...

Invented by Johann Philipp Reis of Friedrichsdorf, Germany.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Philipp_Reis

Have a good one,
Peon

great and interesting pictures of how the phone has change over time...a good addition to the pictures would what it cost to buy these phones...both in past and current dollars.

I am hard-of-hearing. I was elated when the CaptionCall phone came out! It connects to the Internet. When you get a call, captions of what the person is saying shows up on your phone! It's INCREDIBLE!

The handset, containing both earpiece and mouthpiece, might be as important in the evolution of the telephone as the cellphone, after all it's the precursor of the "all in one unit" wireless and cell phones of today.

The handset has been invented by a Quebec City jeweler named Cyrille Duquet.

More info here (but not much):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyril_Duquet

More info about the guy's inventions here (in french):

http://www.vitrine-technologique.gouv.qc.ca/vitrine%20technologique.nsf/Exposition?OpenForm

A picture of his phone from 1878 is available here:

http://www.vitrine-technologique.gouv.qc.ca/vt/Duquet/duquet.htm#5

Pretty neat picture gallery. I think they went from phones to cell phones. There are still a lot of lan phones. I was expecting a lot of lan phones. It would have been cool to see the lan phones go to the older voip phones to the newer ones...

If I'm not mistaken, the big push button phone in image # 26 was from the mid 70's onwards. I had one, and they're great slamming phones. Instead of the pressing a button to hang up, if you were real angry, you could slam the phone in the cradle as hard as you want and never gave a hint of breaking! Very solid phone!

The particular Model 500 phone depicted in picture 17 is not from the 50's. Although Model 500 phone were introduced in 1949, the clear platic finger ring did not appear until 1964. Before that they had a black metal finger ring.

I had a couple of Sony Ericsson phones TEN YEARS ago that had great voice dialing and many other feathers that the IPhone brags about now!

Those flip-phones were small, easy to handle, easy to carry, and I could seen anything on the internet I wanted to see! I wouldn't have an I-Phone if you gave it to me; I just bought the Galaxy SII (paying only $100 at Radio Shack) and it has 16 MB internal memory and I added 32 MB more for only $25! I have a 2nd battery & wall charger that costs $9! NONE of these cheap options are possible with the I-Flop!

I personally remember desk phones in the 50's having metal dials, this one is clear plastic which I recall as being part of the 60s and even 70s.

This timeline is missing the ultimate portable phone - satellite phones that work anywhere on earth just about, where there is no cell service.

The fact that I cannot just use my netbook out of the box to make cell calls or any other available device speaks volumes about the factors that have inhibited real growth in this industry considering that the technology to do so has been available since the commercialization of the DSP chip ... US and other regs not withstanding, it is just plain silly that I can not have multiple 'phones' available to at least answer a call ... I am truly surprised that cloning has not grown in popularity similar to the millions of folks in the US and Can that programmed their own smart cards to avoid the ridiculous positions that the Sat TV industry took and still take to avoid contractual disputes, max ad revenues and make any serious investment in useful (to the consumer) integration technology ... I won't even bother to comment on the morons in the digital entertainment sector or SOPA which essentially DOA as it should be.

The first thing I learned as a business person is that POing your customer base is not a wise move ... suing them and threatening to put them in the pokey is just plain stupid unless you believe that you can create a market by modernizing the communication facilities at Club Fed.

Fortunately my grandchildren will be pretty savvy about all this and the technically challenged goofballs who manage todays infrastrucures will have either passed on or will be passed on by them ...

Hey, I clicked on a link that said 'Tech Gadgets we once loved but since abandoned' -- then I get 'The Evolution of Telephones' . . . ? WTF?

While the full potential has and may never be realized, satellite phones deserve at least a mention! They play a crucial role in a number of situations and locations...

ward.miller, I have several friends who do conflict journalism in places like Afghanistan, Burundi, Ossetia etc and they would not be able to function without satellite phones. Very very expensive, but.

Princess phones? In the '70's-'80's?!? I had one in the late 1950's and early '60's!

Maxwell Smart's shoe phone and Dick Tracey's two way wrist TV were the inspiration that led to what we have now. They were as important as any real phone in the history of phone design.

The so called 'Dutch phone' is definitely a Swedish one (Ericsson, of course) as it carries the Televerket (in those days the only Swedish telephone company) logo. The model was called Diavox, and manufactured from 78 to 86, not even invented in 1975, and was mostly found in offices - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Televerket_%28Sweden%29

What about the tin can telephone? I first built it in 1974, though I think my dad invented it. At least it was him who taught me

look at the web pagfe here http://www.porticus.org/bell/bell.htm

In the UK, the phone labelled as 1950s didn't come into use until the 1960s. There was a phone a little more modern than the 1940s one shown here but very similar in style which was widely used in the 1950s. I used one to learn to use the telephone when I was 4 years old. I still remember the 4 digit phone number and I remember a trip round the new telephone exchange in the early 1960s which was entirely electromechanical using vast banks of uniselectors and consequently very noisy. When I took my degree in electronics my final year project was the design and construction of the control electronics for a reed relay based telephone exchange; reed relays were more reliable than relays open to the air as the contacts were in a sealed glass tube filled with an inert gas. Can anyone guess my age from the above?

I kind of hope designers do a little more than develop random variations and wait for the market to decide. After all that's the way "evolution" works.

Western Electric made the dial phones and later the TouchTone models. Those things could be tossed across the room, against the wall and still work. Upon the Ma Bell breakup, the smaller branches got licences to made their own phones to work on the system. Then the system became deregulated and anyone could make equipment to run on the 48 volt DC, ground sieze, two wire systems.