![]() ![]() ![]() Main articles: History of AT&T and Bell SystemĪccording to historian Robert W Garnet, in the six years after Bell's invention of the telephone in 1876, his new company managed to increase its capital from a small amount to $10 million. It could easily send text messages, which tended to displace voice calls. The arrival of the smartphone in the early 21st century provided every user a small mobile computer with microphone and speaker, that was bundled with powerful features, such as cameras and Internet access by operation of apps. By mid-century, mobile radio telephone service became available to free users from fixed locations in some cities. Starting around the turn of the century, the dial telephone allowed users to place calls themselves without operator assistance. ![]() Business-to-business communication was important, and increasingly displaced telegrams. Ordinary Americans contacted businesses, friends, and relatives. Long-distance service was metered and much more expensive than local, flat-rate calling. Ordinary people either subscribed to telephone service themselves, or used a telephone in the neighborhood, including public pay telephones. ![]() Originally targeted at business users and upscale families, by the 1920s the "phone" became widely popular in the general population. In the 20th century, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) dominated the telecommunication market as the at times largest company in the world, until it was broken up and replaced by a system of competitors. The telephone played a major communications role in American history from the 1876 publication of its first patent by Alexander Graham Bell onward. ![]()
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