The Telephone on This Day in History

The History of the Telephone

This Day in History: Alexander Graham Bell was granted a patent for an invention of the telephone on this day in 1876. However, Antonio Meucci had also invented a telephone device 20 years prior to this, and Elisha Gray invented one about the same time. Bell used to answer the phone by saying "Ahoy." Edison changed it to "Hello." Mark Twain was one of the first people to have a phone in his home. In the late 1940s, there were more than 350,000 switchboard operators working for AT&T, almost all of whom were women. Smartphones are now at the heart of the mobile economy which has added trillions of dollars of wealth around the world.