TELEPHONY

Alexander Graham Bell is usually accredited with the invention on the telephone, but several other people where experimenting with voice transmission at that time. Names that should be mentioned include Thomas Edison, Henry Hunnings, Emile Berliner, Werner von Siemens, and Lars Magnus Ericsson. 

Early telephone exchanges were manual, but already in 1891 Almon Strowger received a patent for an automatic exchange. His step-by-step system became the standard in many countries, but companies such as LMEricsson also invented competitive alternatives in the early 1900s.