Here is a chronological listing of improvements in telephones over the years.
1. The first telephone was a wooden box on the wall with a microphone coming out of the middle of the box and a speaker attached to a wire that you had to hold up to your ear. To make a call you had to stand and speak directly into the microphone attached to the box.
On some of these there was a crank on the other side you had to turn to "ring the operator" so she would answer and find out who you wanted to call. There were no dials or telephone numbers. The operator just knew what switchboard plug went to which phone.
2. The second telephone was a single pedestal with a heavy weighted base and the dial on the side of the base. The pedestal went up to a microphone, and attached to the base was a wired earpiece that you had to hold up to your ear to make a phone call. To use this phone you either held the phone up to your mouth so you could speak into the microphone, or you left the phone on a desk and you bent over to speak into the microphone. Either way, you had to hold the earpiece up to your ear.
3. The third telephone was a wider base with a dial on front, with a wired phone receiver, with both the microphone and headpiece in one handset, thus enabling you to make phone calls just by holding the handset up to your face, speaking into the microphone on one end and listening through the earpiece on the other end. This was a major innovation in telecommunications. The receiver may have been connected to the phone base by a wire or a coiled cord. The length of the coiled cord was kept short, however, because it had the tendency to pull the phone off the desk if you walked around while on a call.
4. The wall phone was primarily suitable for kitchens, since it required no counter space. The kitchen phone introduced the long coiled cord, which enabled the person making the call to cradle the handset receiver on their shoulder and still carry on conversations while walking around the kitchen. The cords got longer and longer, and as time went on started getting tangled up and knocking things off of tables. Many hours were spent trying to untangle the long coiled cords.
5. The princess phone, with its lighted dial, was suitable for young princesses. It was so light that when you tried to dial a number, the phone jumped around with each turn of the dial.
6. Cordless phones. Battery powered handsets that carried conversations from the base station to the portable receiver/transmitter. This ended the fight with long coiled cords. There was also a "Find Handset" button the base in case you forgot where you put the phone. That button would make the handset buzz.
7. Car phones: only the rich and powerful had the first car phones. Early car phones were like two-way radios and you had to connect calls through an operator. Eventually direct dial car phones were available.
8. Answering machines: machines that answered your phone for you, beeped and tape recorded a message. This effectively ended phone answering services.
9. Portable phones: high powered 5 watt battery operated phones that carried conversations from where you were to faraway phone towers, if you were lucky. Some people called them "bag" phones.
10. Cell phones: low powered battery operated phones that carried conversations from where you were to at least three nearby cell towers so the conversation could be "handed off" from one tower to the next as you traveled along.
11. Voice Mail comes along, effectively ending the need for answering machines.
12. Bluetooth earpieces: low-powered transmitter/receivers that you insert into your ear that carry conversations from your cellphone to and from your ear, with the microphone picking up your return voice replies anyway it can.
13: VoIP phones: desk phones that connect to WiFi to carry phone conversations over the internet using Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP).
