Alexander Graham Bell, a teacher of the deaf was on a quest to help people who could not hear find a new way. Bell, had sought a way to transmit speech electronically. He invented the telephone in March 1876.
The earliest design of a telephone was rather simple compared to anything we have today. The earliest telephones had only one wire for transmitting and receiving of audio and used a ground with a return path. The earliest dynamic telephones also had only one opening (Cavity) for sound, and the user listened and spoke into the same hole.
Over the years Bell refined his telephone and helped build a network. At first, it was a luxury of the elite and wealthy. Thus the telecom tax to pay for World War I was placed on the early phone network and still continues to this day.
In 1925, Bell realized he needed to grow his organization and build a team. Thus in Alexander Graham Bell founded Bell Labs a joint effort of the Western Electric Research Laboratory and part of AT&T's engineering team. So as you can see the foundation for the phone networks we have today and the big players that still exist.
After years of conducting research and development under Western Electric, the Engineering Department was reformed into Bell Telephone Laboratories and under the shared ownership of American Telephone & Telegraph Company and Western Electric. They invented many great things including the Business Telephone System that our offices rely on to operate today.
In the early days, phone systems required a human operator to bridge calls from multiple lines to handsets. Then came along the1A2 Key Telephone System which was a modular system that provided flexible solutions for a variety of telephone service requirements. It provides multiple users with control over multiple telephone lines.
The successor technologies to the 1A2 Systems include the AT&T Merlin, AT&T Spirit, and AT&T Partner Telephone Systems. The AT&T Partner later became the Lucent Partner Phone System. The Merlin and Lucent Partner Phone Systems were so well made that many still exist today in actual use! You can find repair companies who fix the Lucent Telephone System. AT&T Merlin is a corporate telephone system that had the abilities of more features and more extensions. Today we would call these Enterprise Phone Systems but were known to be used as a Major Law Firm Telephone System, and Medical Practices Telephone System.
After the breakup of AT&T in 1984, it was rebranded and later also supplied by Lucent, and Avaya. So often you find these brands now named The Avaya Merlin and Avaya Partner.
History Of Telephone Systems
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