A push-button telephone is a telephone that has buttons or keys for dialing a telephone number, in contrast to a rotary dial used in earlier telephones.
The Western Electric No. 2500, a typical American 12-button phone of the 1970s and early 80s
Gigaset A165 push-button cordless telephone using DECT with a base station
Iskra ETA85 pushbutton telephone with pulse-dialing keypad (Yugoslavia, 1988).
Heemaf 1955 type wall telephone by Philips with DC signaling pushbutton dial (Netherlands, Dec.1962).
A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into electronic signals that are transmitted via cables and other communication channels to another telephone which reproduces the sound to the receiving user. The term is derived from Greek: τῆλε and φωνή, together meaning distant voice. A common short form of the term is phone, which came into use early in the telephone's history.
An old rotary dial telephone
AT&T push button telephone made by Western Electric, model 2500 DMG black, 1980
Alexander Graham Bell's Telephone Patent Drawing
Replica of the telettrofono, invented by Antonio Meucci and credited by several sources as the first telephone.
