Telephone
The telephone, or phone, is a telecommunications device that transmits and receives sounds, usually the human voice. Telephones are a point-to-point communication system whose most basic function is to allow two people separated by large distances to talk to each other. Developed in the mid-1870s by Alexander Graham Bell and others, the telephone has long been considered indispensable to businesses, households and governments, is now one of the most common appliances in the developed world. The word "telephone" has been adapted to many languages and is now recognized around the world.
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Famous quotes containing the word telephone:
“It is possible that the telephone has been responsible for more business inefficiency than any other agency except laudanum.... In the old days when you wanted to get in touch with a man you wrote a note, sprinkled it with sand, and gave it to a man on horseback. It probably was delivered within half an hour, depending on how big a lunch the horse had had. But in these busy days of rush-rush-rush, it is sometimes a week before you can catch your man on the telephone.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“It’s a hard feeling when everyone’s in a hurry to talk to somebody else, but not to talk to you. Sometimes you get a feeling of need to talk to somebody. Somebody who wants to listen to you other than “Why didn’t you get me the right number?””
—Heather Lamb, U.S. telephone operator. As quoted in Working, book 2, by Studs Terkel (1973)
“Women who marry early are often overly enamored of the kind of man who looks great in wedding pictures and passes the maid of honor his telephone number.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)