Effect of the Telephone on Society

The telephone is presently one of the most popular methods of

contacting people, although its purpose has been replaced with the cell
phone, many households still have telephones connected to landlines.
Since its release, the phone has allowed for better and faster social
connectivity and information exchange. It has sped up the commercial
world and adds the security of being able to contact friends or family,
even when they are mobile.


The telephone was first presented by Alexander Graham Bell in Philadelphia at an inventors
convention; it was an immediate success. Within a year of patenting in 1876, Bell had a full
working company with 3,000 working telephones across North America. The first telephone
operators ever hired were males, but soon were replaced by females since men
were known to swear at callers and brawl amongst themselves while working.
Then in 1877, California U.S, the first long distance telephone call was
received, the line used covered a hundred kilometre distance. The Bell phone
company made a giant leap in 1879, when they won a lawsuit against a much
larger phone company, Western Union, and claimed 56,000 of their phones.
The phone company met over 600 lawsuits over the twenty years after it
started in 1876, and won the majority of them. By 1894 all of the patents the
Bell company owned had expired, hundreds of new independent phone
companies had appeared by the turn of the next century since all technology
regarding telephones was now up for grabs. The demand for the telephone
was exponential until WWI, by then most of the demand was among military
personnel, but its demand among the general population grew once the
economy stabilized after the Great Depression.



Since the release of the telephone, it has made businesses more efficient by saving
people from physically traveling from one destination to another, or having to hire
messengers or paying telegraph operators, which took out many jobs in the process.
It also allowed for people to do business with others over the phone, over long
distances. With the development of the ability of long distance, and overseas calls, it
has made keeping long distance relationships with friends and family much easier,
especially with its further development into cell phones.


Cherry, Colin. "MTA." MTA. N.p., 3 May 1997. Web. 16 Sept. 2014. <http://
wap.phil-inst.hu/ktar/pool/cherry.htm>.