Dring, dring, who’s calling?
Most hotels still have landline phones in their rooms for clients to use. However, with guests increasingly owning a cell phone, will this remain true?
History of the Telephone
The word telephone comes from the Greek roots tēle, “far,” and phonē, “sound”. It was applied as early as the late 17th century to the string telephone familiar to children and was later used to refer to the megaphone and the speaking tube. In modern usage, it refers solely to electrical devices derived from the inventions of Alexander Graham Bell and others.
While Italian innovator Antonio Meucci invented the first basic phone in 1849, and Frenchman Charles Bourseul devised a phone in 1854, Alexander Graham Bell won the first U.S. patent for the device in 1876.