The Telephone DVD

• Additional Details
• Format: Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
• Rating: Not Rated
• Number of Discs: 1
• Run Time: 50 Minutes
• Region: Region 1
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Language: English
• Studio: History Channel
• DVD Release Date: November 13, 2006

Essential to modern life, used daily by almost everyone in the developed world, this technological wonder has an amazing history and an even more incredible future.

• The founder of Ericcson, the mobile phone giant, invented the modern, one-piece telephone handset in 1885.
• A competing application for a patent on the telephone was submitted by Elisha Gray on the same day as Alexander Graham Bell's.
• The official name for the pound symbol is "octothorpe."

This DVD offers a fresh look at a device that's been right under your nose, or pressed to your ear, for your entire life. The telephone, and the network it links to, is a modern convenience of immeasurable ubiquity and, to all but a very few experts, incomprehensible complexity.

Everyone has one, no-one knows how it works. Early phones, with big speakers, microphones, magnets and bells, were easy to understand, but modern phones - and the unimaginably intricate system that connects them - are mystifying to the point of magical.

In this absorbing DVD, then, trace the history and technology of the telephone, from Alexander Graham Bell's crude creation to today's high-speed wireless networks. Visit the AT&T archives to trace the development of telephone tech and visit labs where the future of communication - the very stuff of science fiction - is taking shape today.

You won't want to be distracted from this compelling look at our amazing everyday technology. Better take the phone off the hook.