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5110 BCE
Nokia Candybar
One of many classic Nokia candybar-style phones, the Nokia 5110 was rugged and had a long battery life. More importantly, you could play Snake on its 47 × 84 pixel screen. The 5110 was also customizable, with replaceable face plates. -
100
Caller ID
There was a time when you had to remember people’s telephone numbers. And then came Caller ID. You could now decide whether that phone call was worth answering or whether you could just send them to voicemail. Now standard, Caller ID changed the way we used telephones. -
The Origin Of The Telephone
On March 10, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell spoke into his device and said to his assistant, “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.” In doing so, Bell launched the telephone era with the first bi-directional electronic transmission of the spoken word. At least that is how the story typically goes. While Bell received the first patent for a telephone -
Rotary
The rotary phone became popular. To dial, you would rotate the dial to the number you wanted, and then release. Based on my limited interaction with rotary dial phones, this must have been incredibly tedious. As push-button phones gained popularity in the 1960s and ’70s, the rotary dial phone thankfully began its slow death. -
Answering machine
The answering machine transformed phone behavior, allowing callers to leave a message if no one was on the other end. Not popular until the 1960s, these phone accessories originally used cassette tapes to record messages. In the past 15 years, digital answering machines replaced the miniature cassette tapes, and in the past 10 years, we all just use our cell phones voicemail -
Push Button
In 1963, AT&T introduced Touch-Tone, which allowed phones to use a keypad to dial numbers and make phone calls. Each key would transmit a certain frequency, signaling to the telephone operator which number you wanted to call. While much better than the rotary dial, these dial tones were subject to spoofing by what were called “blue boxes.” Using a blue box, you could make free long-distance phone calls -
Candlestick
Popular from the 1890s to the 1930s, the candlestick phone was separated into two pieces. The mouth piece formed the candlestick part, and the receiver was placed by your ear during the phone call. This style died out in the ’30s when phone manufacturers started combining the mouth piece and receiver into a single unit. Thankfully -
Portable Phones
Portable, or cordless, phones were the phone equivalent of the TV remote. You were no longer physically attached to your phone’s base station. Beginning in the 1980s, portable phones were like a small-scale cell phone. You could talk on your phone anywhere in your house. Now that you can talk on your phone anywhere in the world, portable phones seem quaint. But at the time, a well-placed portable phone could save you a trip across the house. -
Motorola DynaTAC
Released in 1984, the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X was the first commercially available mobile phone. In 1973, Martin Cooper made the first cell phone call ever with a predecessor of this beast. At 1.75 pounds, this phone had 30 minutes of talk time and cost a not-so-modest $3,995 -
Motorola StarTac
The Motorola StarTAC was the first successful flip phone, and in many ways, the first successful consumer cell phone. Introduced in 1996, Motorola eventually sold 60 million StarTACs. Weighing in at just 3.1 ounces, and combined with its innovative clamshell design, the StarTAC was a milestone in the trend toward smaller and smaller cell phones.