Telephone answering machines were almost a fad. They were hindered for years by not being allowed to connect to the phone lines. Then a mix of cell phones and the phone company offering voicemail made ...

Do you have a question about history? Send us your question at history@time . com and you might find your answer in a future edition of Now You Know. These days, the history of the phone booth seems ...

Though Joseph Henry earned his fame as the first director of the Smithsonian Institute, he was in many ways the telephone's first and best advocate. Alexander Graham Bell himself said as much when he ...

In a grainy film shot at Bell Laboratories in 1952, mathematician and Bell Labs researcher Claude Shannon, SM ’40, PhD ’40, stands beside a machine of his own construction. First built in 1950, it was ...