On this day in 1876, a 29-year-old teacher named Alexander Graham Bell registered  a patent for what became known as "the telephone" 

The idea caught on and soon enough became quite successful. The president of Western Union turned down buying Bell's patent, thinking the telephone was merely a toy, so Bell started the Bell Telephone Company himself.

Bell even filed a patent for a "photophone" in 1880, a wireless device in which the speakers could see each other as they talked. 

Bell  himself found his own invention annoying and refused to have a telephone installed in his home.