1844 - The words "What hath God Wroght?" was telegraphed by Samuel F.B. Morse.

1851 - Hiram Sibley founded a company that would be named Western Union Telegraph & Co. that built the telegraph line in the midwest.

1866 - The very first trans-Atlantic cable was laid between the U.S. and France.

1875 - Emile Baudot developed a code for machine encoding and decoding. The coding scheme was 5-bits in length and was called BAUDOT.

1876 - The words, "Mr. Watson, come here, I want you!" were the first words spoken by Dr. Alexander Graham Bell on the telephone.

          - Alexander Graham Bell filed for a patent for his invention, the telephone.

1878 - The first telephone exchange was operational. The telephone exchange was in New Haven, CT.

1880 - The first pay phones are opened in New York (Attended pay phones, not co-ops)

1888 - The first co-op telephone was introduced by William Gray.

1891 - The Stowger switch was patented by its inventor, Almon B. Stowger.

1892 - The first step-by-step switch began operation in La Porte, Indiana.