Title: History of the telephone - Wikipedia
Headings: History of the telephone
History of the telephone
Contents
Telephone prehistory
Mechanical and acoustic devices
Electrical devices
Main article: Electrical telegraph
Invention of the telephone
Telephone exchange
Early telephone developments
Early commercial instruments
20th-century developments
Digital telephone technology
Main article: Digital telephony
Further information: Push-button telephone and Speech coding
Women's usage in the 20th century
21st-century developments
See also
References
Further reading
External links

Content: Antonio Meucci, Alexander Graham Bell, and Elisha Gray amongst others, have all been credited with the telephone's invention. The early history of the telephone became and still remains a confusing morass of claims and counterclaims, which were not clarified by the huge mass of lawsuits to resolve the patent claims of many individuals and commercial competitors. The Bell and Edison patents, however, were commercially decisive, because they dominated telephone technology and were upheld by court decisions in the United States. Antonio Meucci, 1854, constructed telephone-like devices. Alexander Graham Bell was awarded the first U.S. patent for the invention of the telephone in 1876. Elisha Gray, 1876, designed a telephone using a water microphone in Highland Park, Illinois. Tivadar Puskás proposed the telephone switchboard exchange in 1876. Thomas Edison invented the carbon microphone which produced a strong telephone signal. The master telephone patent granted to Bell, 174465, March 10, 1876
The modern telephone is the result of work of many people. Alexander Graham Bell was, however, the first to patent the telephone, as an "apparatus for transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically".