The Telephone

Before the invention of the telephone, communication over long distances was severely limited to the letters and newpapers. However, in 1876, Alexander Graham Bell would develop a machine which would change the landscape of and technology and human interaction in general - a telecommunications device which could transmit sound.

The components essential to the telephone are: the transmitter (to replay the message) and receiver (to receive the message) which are usually belt into a handset, a ringer (to notify the user if they had an incoming call), and a dial or keypad (to determine who to call). The rotary dial was used until the 1970's, when it was phased out by the push-button dial which was introduced in 1963, which would then be replaced by cordless telephones which were introduced in the 1990's.
 
The first handheld mobile phone was developed in 1973, which weighed an impractical 2kg, but it wasn't until 1983 when the first commercial mobile phone was released. Since then, mobile phones have evolved from literally brick-sized phones, to the Nokia "brick phone", to flip-phones, early smart phones and finally to the modern smart phone which has unimaginable computing power compared to the early generations.

In fact, the number of worldwide mobile phone subscriptions had surpassed seven billion (roughly the world's population then) in 2014 - an astronomical figure which alludes to the technological impact of both the mobile phone and the telephone on modern society.