Think about how many variations of the telephone devices we have been used in our lifetimes.
Rotary phones were the most common device. Until 2006, 750,000 people still had one. Then came the button phone (Touch-Tone), introduced in 1963, and by 1968 the button pad came with those curious extra digits of * and #. It took until the 1980s for the button phone to become really popular. By the 1990s nearly everyone had a button phone, even though there was an extra charge for buttons.
The Trimline phone, introduced in 1965, was very space age, having the dial (and later buttons) in the handset itself. The dial or button lit up. Interestingly, this is the same concept in today's cellphones.
There was a time when the telephone man had to come out to wire a phone and in those days we heard of the rich few who had a phone in the bathroom, a true luxury because people went to the phones, the phones didn't come to them!
For a long time, most people only had square desk phone — very durable and easy to use — or a wall phone (with a really long cord so you could do the dishes while one the phone.) But phones did evolve. You might remember (or even still use) the Princess phone. Advertised as little, lovely and light, the princess phone was invented in 1959 and in production until 1994 and Wal-Mart still advertises a version of one today.
Unlike today, for most of our lives, we didn't actually own the phone. We technically rented the phone from the phone company. You could move to a new house or apartment and the phone stayed where it was. The phone might not have been yours but it also didn't cost much, unlike today when a new fancy cellphone can cost more than $1,000. In 1976, the FCC made it possible to own a phone — and an explosion of fancy and weird phones made it onto the market. In 1983, AT&T began selling its phones instead of leasing them.
