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Explore Telephone Solar, Tone Telephone, and more! Dr. Shirley Jackson invented solar cell, fiber optic cables making caller id and call waiting possible, portable fax, and touch tone phone!
The AE Strowger Dial Candlestick. 11-digit dial telephone, circa 1905. A Kansas City (Kansas) inventor named Almon Strowger invented the first automatic dial telephone system in 1889. This system used rotary relay switches that followed pulses in the central office when a subscriber moved a dial on the telephone. This type of system was called step-by-step or simply step. (See How Phones Work in the Science wing for more about Strowger.) By 1892, the first Strowger Automatic Telephone Exchange was in service in La Porte, Indiana.