[Telephone] While Alexander Graham Bell was experimenting with telegraph instruments in the early 1870s, he realized it might be possible to transmit the human voice over a wire by using electricity. By March 1876 he made a transmission, but the sound was very faint.

He improved his results over the next few months, including a critical test with this instrument on November 26, when he transmitted sound clearly between Cambridge and Salem, Massachusetts. It functioned as both a transmitter and a receiver.

Courtesy of the National Museum of American History, gift of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, 1923.

"Box" Telephone, 1876, invented by Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922)

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