Telecommunications History Timeline

Gallows phone, a type of which was one of Bell's first attempts at creating a telephone (THG file photo).

The telephone had as big an impact on the 20th century as the Industrial Revolution had on the 19th century, and its associated industries have produced some of the most incredible technological advances in history. The rise of the telephone changed the way we live, work, and play, and contributed to the invention of television, computers, pagers, fax machines, e-mail, the Internet, online stock trading, and more. Explore our timeline below highlighting just a few of these extraordinary leaps of innovation and invention.

You can also visit (or return to) our Science of Phones exhibit for an in-depth look at some of these events.

Before Electricity

1200 BC: Fire signals used at the siege of Troy
776 BC: First documented use of pigeons, announcing the Olympian winner to the people of Athens
200 BC: Egypt and China use messengers on foot and on horseback, using relay stations
150 BC: Greek historian Polybus converts the Greek alphabet to numeric, enabling coded texts to be signaled
37 AD: Heliographs – Roman Emperor Tiberius uses mirrors to communicate with his empire
1608: Telescope invented, enabling ships at sea to use signal flags
1793: Mechanical semaphores on hilltop towers used by Claude Chappe in France

1800–1900

1835: Joseph Henry invents first electric telegraph
1844: Using his new code, Samuel Morse sends the first telegraph message, “What hath God wrought?” between D.C. and Baltimore
1858: Construction of the first transatlantic telegraph cable completed
1876:Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone
1881: First Yellow Pages published
1887: First coin-operated telephone installed in the Hartford Bank by the pay phone’s inventor, William Gray
1889: Almon Strowger invents the first direct dial, bypassing the need for manual switching
1895: Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi develops the first successful long-distance wireless telegraph, using radio waves

1900–1950

1915: The first “official” coast-to-coast call is made between A.G. Bell in New York to Thomas Watson in San Francisco
1927 Transatlantic telephone service inaugurated for commercial service (US to Britain), using radio telephony
1929: Herbert Hoover becomes the first president of the United States with a phone on his desk. Until this time, the president talked on a phone from a booth outside his executive office
1946: 250,000 women employed as switchboard operators for public service and businesses

1950–1970

1955: The laying of the first trans-Atlantic telephone cable
1957: Field tests for the first pagers begin in Allentown and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
1958: Princess Phones are introduced, the first phone with a lighted dial, which became a part of American pop culture
1960: The first touch-tone telephones are test-marketed, which had 10 buttons, rather than the 12 buttons of today
1963: Hotline established between White House and Kremlin following the Cuban missile crisis
1968: 911 chosen as the nationwide emergency number. The nation’s telephone companies agree to make this three-digit sequence unavailable as an exchange number

1970–2000

1971: Ray Tomlinson sends the first email to himself via ARPANET
1973: First non-car mobile phone, the DynaTAC is unveiled to the public
1989: The first flip phone is released, targeting wealthy consumers at a price of $3,000 USD
1989: The World Wide Web is born, marking the beginning of the Internet as we know it today. Most Americans get Internet connections through their phone lines
1991: Caller ID introduced. Controversial at the time, Caller ID has become America’s most popular add-on feature

2000 and beyond

2000: The “Web Phone” combines a traditional telephone with an LCD touch-screen and a retractable keyboard to let customers surf the Internet, check e-mail, make phone calls, and check voice mail from a single device
2000: The “Thin Phone” integrates wireless Internet access with local wireless phone service, allowing Internet customers to stay connected with everything from Web pages to voice and e-mail, all while on the move
2001: Third generation cellular technology (3G) is made commercially available in Japan by NTT DoCoMo on the WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) standard.
2004: Mark Zuckerberg releases Facebook, a social media network that began among Harvard students.
2005: Former PayPal employees introduce YouTube, a video-sharing platform that has since reached over 14 billion videos.
2006: Twitter, a social networking platform created by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams, allows users to share short messages or images in the form of “tweets,” and to “retweet” other’s messages.
2007: The first iPhone model becomes available with a $499 price tag for 4GB and $599 for 8GB. It was the first phone to fully embrace the touch interface and fulfill three uses in a single device.
2009: First commercial fourth generation cellular technology (4G) is deployed in Stockholm and Oslo by Swedish-Finnish network operator TeliaSonera and its Norwegian brand name NetCom.
2009: WhatsApp, an instant messaging and voice-over-IP service, is founded by former Yahoo! employees Brian Acton and Jan Koum. The name was inspired by the phrase “what’s up!”
2010: Photo and video sharing social media service Instagram is founded, with a heavy focus on hashtags and location tagging. Created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, initially for iOS only.
2011: Snapchat, an instant messaging app, is developed by Reggie Brown, Bobby Murphy, and Evan Spiegel, former Stanford students. Key features include pictures and messages vanishing after opening and interaction with augmented reality features.
2011: Apple introduces Siri, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) assistant, with the iPhone 4S. An AI assistant is a software agent that performs tasks or services for an individual based on commands or questions. These assistants can use voice recognition, natural language processing (NLP), machine learning (ML), and sometimes even emotional intelligence to interact with users in an intuitive, conversational way.
2012: After launching a beta version, Zoom signs Stanford University as its first customer.
2015: Discord, a Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP)- based calling, instant messaging, and social platform, launches.
2016: The number of mobile connections surpasses the world population. Despite this, the percentage of internet users worldwide reaches only 43%.
2019: T-Mobile is the first company to launch a commercially available 5G network.
2020: Video conferencing apps like Zoom become essential tools for work and education as people isolate during the COVID-19 pandemic.
2022: Tools like DALL-E and ChatGPT spark debates on creativity and ethics in artificial intelligence (AI).
2024: AI becomes ubiquitous, impacting everything from search to communications. Tools like ChatGPT and Gemini are now mainstream, although accuracy remains a problem.
2025 and Beyond: Artificial intelligence (AI), low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites, fiber to the home (FTTH) networks, and cloud-native systems will continue to advance the telecommunications environment.

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