A speaking tube or voicepipe is a device based on two cones connected by an air pipe through which speech can be transmitted over an extended distance.
A speaking tube in use on a United States Navy Landing Craft Utility (2005)
Le Petit Journal, 21 August 1910. French air-force ready to deter hostile advances along the eastern frontier, and equipped with intercom - two speaking tubes for full duplex send and receive.
British warship officer with mounted binoculars and two speaking tubes
An office in 1903, showing speaking tubes hanging on the end of a desk
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.
