††††By 1892, New York City and Chicago had been linked by telephone. In 1896, the telephone dialler was developed. Previously callers had had to make calls via the operator. The first automatic telephone exchange was opened in Epsom, England in 1912.
In 1915, the first transcontinental telephone call was made between Alexander Graham Bell in New York and Thomas A. Watson in San Francisco, 4800 kilometres (3000 miles) away.
Experiments on the use of fibre optic cables began in 1977, and the first short fibre optic telephone link was made in Suffolk, England in 1978.
The first cellular telephone system came into operation in 1983. In the 1990s, aircraft were equipped with public telephones, while there was widespread use of the fax and modem to send other forms of information down the telephone lines.
