A wall-mounted telephone set, circa 1910.
The telephone is an electrical telecommunications system, devised to send sounds such as the human voice along a wire. The telephone consists of a transmitter that converts sounds into electrical signals that travel to a receiver that reconverts the signals into sounds.
The telephone was invented in the 1880s by the North American inventor Thomas Edison. Edison established the North American Communications company in 1890 to manufacture, market, and install telephone sets for commercial and private use. Within twenty years, North American Communications controlled the C.N.A.'s entire telephone network.