History of the telephone patents, however, were commercially decisive, because they dominated telephone technology and were upheld by court decisions in the United States. The modern telephone is the result of work of many people. Alexander Graham Bell was, however, the first to patent the telephone, as an "apparatus for transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically". Bell has most often been credited as the inventor of the first practical telephone. However, in Germany Johann Philipp Reis is seen as a leading telephone pioneer who stopped only just short of a successful device, and as well the Italian-American inventor and businessman Antonio Meucci has been
History of the telephone however, when the first telephone directory was published by the company, fifty subscribers were listed. Most of these were businesses and listings such as physicians, the police, and the post office; only eleven residences were listed, four of which were for persons associated with the company. The New Haven District Telephone Company grew quickly and was reorganized several times in its first years. By 1880, the company had the right from the Bell Telephone Company to service all of Connecticut and western Massachusetts. As it expanded, the company was first renamed Connecticut Telephone, and then Southern New England Telephone in