Alexander Graham Bell (seated) tests the newly invented telephone. Courtesy of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Although there are others who claim to have done so first, the telephone was invented in 1875 by a Scot, Alexander Graham Bell (1847–1922). His invention enabled people to talk to one another across vast distances. Within twenty years, telephones were widespread in the homes of the wealthy in the United States and in Europe. The laying of the first transatlantic telephone cable in 1956 began to create what is known as the "global village." In the twenty-first century, the principles of telephony invented by Bell are behind innovations such as fax machines and the Internet (see entry under 1990s—The Way We Lived in volume 5). Although telephone messages are now transmitted using satellites and digital signals, the telephone of the twenty-first century remains much as Bell anticipated.

Like many other things...