Description

The telephone was introduced by Alexander Graham Bell in 1877. Wood wall-mounted, called as well “coffin” telephones, were the first phones put into wide circulation. Typically tall and bulky, they needed several compartments to hold the batteries and magneto. By the end of the 1880s, handsome hardwoods such as walnut and cherry were used to manufacture the housings for wood phones, but in the 1890s, phones were being mass-produced of oak.