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Belle in a Bell booth: In 1960, when this picture of a newly crowned homecoming
queen calling home ran in the Hub yearbook, telephones in the United States
numbered close to 81 million. The rotary dial was being challenged by
TouchTone calling, which saw its first test-marketing. By 1969, the 90
millionth telephone had been installed, the Call-A-Matic telephone had
been patented by Bell Laboratories, and the Bell System had adopted 911
as a nationwide emergency telephone number. A recent study reports that
about 186 million new cell phone subscribers will sign up every year between
now and 2007, bringing the global total to 2 billion. New and existing
users will include a high number of BU students, who will follow the lead
of Alexander Graham Bell, a BU professor of the mechanism of speech in
the School of Oratory, and transmit their voices through time and space
to connect with friends and family throughout the academic year.
28
August 2003
Boston University
Office of University Relations