1870s

Today, almost everyone carries a mobile phone. If you can imagine life completely without phones, then you can also guess the possibilities this invention once offered.

The first telephone was likely invented around the mid-1800s by the Italian Antonio Meucci.

In 1876, the Scot Alexander Graham Bell patented his improved version. Just two years later, in 1878, several Swedish companies were already manufacturing their own phones.

That same year, the railway's first telephone connection was installed on the Bergslagen Line between Filipstad and Daglösen. And the triumph continued. By the mid-1880s, Stockholm was the world's most telephone-dense city!

SJ opened its first telephone lines in 1886 and then continued the expansion rapidly well into the 20th century. The telephone gradually replaced the telegraph, but it wasn't until the 1920s that it could be used in safety services. Even today, the railway has its own nationwide telephone network.

Caption: Bell's first telephone device is not very similar to today's equivalent.