Phones and the ability to communicate over long distances are a pretty recent part of human history. In the last 150 years, the evolution of phones has impacted society in good ways and bad. In the last 25 years alone, there have been massive shifts in phone technology that have completely changed how we live life.
What started out as a device whose sole purpose was to transmit the human voice has evolved into a mini computer that fits into the palm of our hands.
The question is: Can our solutions to digital-age problems catch up with the tech that caused them?
The History of Phones
1800s
An Italian inventor named Antonio Meucci developed the idea of a telephone as early as 1849. Alexander Graham Bell, a Scottish inventor, obtained the first patent for a telephone in 1876. However, an American inventor named Elisha Gray submitted a patent for a very similar invention on the same day as Bell, but after a battle in court, Bell was granted the patent.
1900s
Telephones became more popular, more affordable, and more widely available.
Telephone wiring needed to be improved so more people could be connected via telephones and with better quality.
In the early days, to make a phone call you couldn’t just dial another person directly. You had to call a telephone operator, who would connect you to another caller through a switchboard. In the 1930s, it became possible to call other lines directly, and the need for human switchboard operators completely ended by the late 1970s.
Payphones were once plentiful in public spaces, as they were the only way to make a call when out and about before the invention of cellphones. Today, it is very rare to see a payphone. In 2022, New York City removed its last public payphone.
The first car phone was invented in 1946. It weighed about 80 pounds! Very few people had car phones, and sometimes it took as long as 30 minutes to make a call!
This style of phone was very popular in the 1950s and ’60s.
In the 1960s, the first touch-tone phone was released to the public.
In 1984, Motorola released the DynaTAC 8000X, the world’s first handheld cellphone. The phone cost $3,995, took 10 hours to charge, and its battery only lasted 35 minutes.
In 1994, IBM created what is considered to be the first smartphone, called Simon. It had a touch screen and even some applications.
The first flip phone came out in 1996.
The 2000s
2002
The first Blackberry is released.
2007
Apple introduces the iPhone.
“What we’re going to do is get rid of all these buttons and just make a giant screen.” – Steve Jobs
The iPhone completely revolutionized cellphones, our relationships to our phones, to social media.
2010
The Instagram app is launched.
2017
TikTok is released internationally.
Smartphones and the social media apps on them have changed how we live life, communicate, and how we get our information.
