15 fascinating phone facts from what word means to 1917 'pocket sized' mobile - Daily Star

15 fascinating phone facts from what word means to 1917 'pocket sized' mobile Here's your wake up call with facts you didn't know about the humble from phone from battle to invent it to

Queen Victoria's first callNewsMeg Jorsh10:52, 05 Jun 2025The humble telephone has been with us since 1876(Image: Universal Images Group via Getty Images) It's 150 years since Alexander

Graham Bell accidentally made his first ever sound transmission. He was working on a new kind of telegraph, which sent a twanging noise through wires to a neighbouring room.

The discovery, made at Boston University, US, paved the way for the invention of the telephone as we know it. Now Meg Jorsh gives you a wake-up call with 15 fascinating facts…

‌ 1. The word “telephone” comes from the Greek “tēle” (far) and “phōnē” (voice) and means “distant voice”.

‌ 2. The version we use was patented by Scottish-born inventor Bell on March 7, 1876. An earlier prototype was built by Italian Antonio Meucci in 1843 – but he didn’t have the cash for a

patent application.

3. US electrical engineer Elisha Gray was also in the race to be the father of the phone. He submitted his patent application on the same day as Bell.

4. The earliest telephones could only be used to call one place. They were hardwired to link two devices together – for example, a home and an office.

Article continues below 5. That changed when the first telephone exchanges arrived in 1877. They were staffed by operators who used plugboards to manually connect each call.

6. The first phone book was published in 1878 in New Haven, Connecticut, US. It listed 50 individuals and businesses with telephones on a single side of card.

7. The first automatic telephone exchange was invented in 1889, by undertaker Almon Brown Strowger from Missouri, US. He suspected a rival’s wife, who worked for the switchboard, had been

redirecting his calls.

‌ 8. Queen Victoria made the UK’s first long-distance calls during a visit by Bell on January 14, 1978. She phoned London, Cowes and Southampton from her family home on the Isle of Wight.

9. Finnish inventor Eric Tigerstedt filed a patent for a “pocket-sized” telephone as early as 1917. His folding handset featured a “very thin carbon microphone”.

10. But the first mobile phone call didn’t take place until 56 years later, on April 3 1973. Motorola engineer Martin Cooper used a brick-sized device to ring a rival at Bell Laboratories,

who were trying to develop a car phone.

‌ 11. The first commercially-available mobile launched in 1983. The Motorola DynaTAC 8000x cost £2,500, stored 30 numbers and took 10 hours to charge for 30 minutes’ talk time. It weighed in

at a hefty 1.1kg.

12. Software engineer Neil Papworth sent the first ever text message to Vodafone boss Richard Jarvis, who was at a Christmas party, on December 3, 1992. It said: “Merry Christmas”.

13. French engineer Philippe Kahn built the first camera phone in 1997, which he used to send a snap of his newborn baby Sophie. It was featured in Time magazine’s 2016 list of the 100 most

influential photos of all time.

Article continues below 14. As of 2024, there are 9.1billion active mobile subscriptions around the world – compared to a global population of 8.1billion. There are less than a billion

remaining landlines.

15. Modern smartphones have more computing power than all the technology used in the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landings. Consider that when you’re next catching up with WhatsApp on the loo.