In the infancy of the telephone, discerning businessmen had not the time to deal with getting tangled in its cord, and innovators hadn't yet come up with the coiled cord solution. They came close, though, with this cord reel that keeps the cord wound up and out of the way without dragging the telephone off the desk.

Not because it could hurt the baby, of course. But your little bundle of joy could short-circuit the telephone cord and interrupt Mrs. Henderson from next door while she's in the middle of delivering the hot gossip. In the early 20th century, PopSci reports that phone operators got several calls from distraught mothers confused as to why their connection was so spotty after Junior's teething session.

An invention we know best from being twirled around the fingers of chatty 80s teens, the elastic telephone cord actually dates from the 30s. The elastic is at the core, while the actual wires are coiled around the outside so the cord can stretch without the wires getting damaged. Then, when it's not in use, it curls up unobtrusively next to the phone, tangle-free.

By 1958, one out of five long-distance phone calls being made was done without help from an operator, allowing for faster connection times and the birth of area codes.But even as area codes were being created to accommodate rotary phone users, push button telephones were being developed that would make it a non-issue. User tests showed that dialing a number on a touch pad took just half as long as on a rotary dial.

A "sound spectrograph," invented in the 60s was capable of taking pictures, in a sense, of a voice. These spectrograms are as unique as a fingerprint, and can't be fooled by you disguising your voice, making it much easier to track down crooks who threaten others over the phone. Other applications for the technology include studying animal communication, or analyzing heartbeats to better identify heart murmurs.

In 1965, the Picturephone (then described as "The TV Phone of the Future," which now seems more like a vintagey Skype) was rolled out in select cities. VIPs in Chicago, New York and Washington could watch their counterparts on a tiny screen while they spoke on the phone. In this image, you can see a dapper PopSci editor testing it out with an editor-at-large in Chicago.

In 1985, PopSci compared 36 different cellular phones, models that cost between US$800 and $1000 (half the suggested retail price, mind you). We referred to typewriter-sized car phones as "go-anywhere," but they were already getting smaller.  Ever looking to the future, the piece ends with a quote from a telecommunications analyst who says "When they invented the transistor, no one ever expected we'd end up with Pac Man. Similarly, cellular could very well end up differently than anyone could have forseen."

Thanks to the doubling of available channels for cordless phones by the FCC, channels at a higher frequency that decreased background noise during calls, manufacturers were able to create cordless phones with improved voice quality and battery life that were more than just a novelty. These new phones also prevented phone pirates from using your line to make long distance calls. Soon, grilling dads across the country could have their phone calls interrupted by their sons on the deck, like in this photo by our current photographer John B. Carnett.

As cell phones (or car phones as they were still sometimes called) became more popular, reaching three million users, channels got crowded, and there wasn't always one available when you wanted to make a call. The solution: switch to digital. Digital channels could sustain three callers at once, while each analog channel could only take one. As more powerful digital signal processors were developed, more and more voice signals could be compressed onto one channel, to accommodate the growing number of cell phone users.

Way before Siri, a decade before Apple's cell phone that we know and love existed in even its first incarnation, there was an iPhone. Just not the iPhone. Cidco's iPhone had some interesting similarities though, with a touchscreen for browsing the Web, and a full keyboard attached at the bottom.