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When the iPhone was introduced in 2007, Apple brought the smartphone to the masses. With its intuitive touchscreen, intelligent sensors, and sleek design, the iPhone has been an incredible success. The iPhone quickly showed just how clunky previous smartphones and flip phones were. While initially lacking some basic features such as copy-and-paste, the iPhone has consistently improved with annual updates to both its hardware and software and runs a mobile-optimized version of OS X, the company’s desktop computing operating system.

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Canadian-based Research in Motion, now BlackBerry, was by far the leading smartphone manufacturer in the 2000s. With their advanced email capabilities, BlackBerry Messenger, and physical keyboards, BlackBerry smartphones were the ultimate business phone. When the iPhone was announced in 2007, many BlackBerry fans scoffed at its lack of a physical keyboard. Now that touchscreen smartphones have proved themselves worthy, BlackBerry has fallen rapidly, with many failed attempts at touchscreen smartphones, and is currently struggling to survive.

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Portable, or cordless, phones were the phone equivalent of the TV remote. You were no longer physically attached to your phone’s base station. Beginning in the 1980s, portable phones were like a small-scale cell phone. You could talk on your phone anywhere in your house. Now that you can talk on your phone anywhere in the world, portable phones seem quaint. But at the time, a well-placed portable phone could save you a trip across the house.

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The answering machine transformed phone behavior, allowing callers to leave a message if no one was on the other end. Not popular until the 1960s, these phone accessories originally used cassette tapes to record messages. In the past 15 years, digital answering machines replaced the miniature cassette tapes, and in the past 10 years, we all just use our cell phones voicemail.

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In 1963, AT&T introduced Touch-Tone, which allowed phones to use a keypad to dial numbers and make phone calls. Each key would transmit a certain frequency, signaling to the telephone operator which number you wanted to call. While much better than the rotary dial, these dial tones were subject to spoofing by what were called “blue boxes.” Using a blue box, you could make free long-distance phone calls.

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The rotary phone became popular. To dial, you would rotate the dial to the number you wanted, and then release. Based on my limited interaction with rotary dial phones, this must have been incredibly tedious. As push-button phones gained popularity in the 1960s and ’70s, the rotary dial phone thankfully began its slow death.

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Popular from the 1890s to the 1930s, the candlestick phone was separated into two pieces. The mouth piece formed the candlestick part, and the receiver was placed by your ear during the phone call. This style died out in the ’30s when phone manufacturers started combining the mouth piece and receiver into a single unit. Thankfully.

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On March 10, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell spoke into his device and said to his assistant, “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.” In doing so, Bell launched the telephone era with the first bi-directional electronic transmission of the spoken word. At least that is how the story typically goes. While Bell received the first patent for a telephone, the origin of the telephone is complicated and inconclusive, with Elisha Gray, Antonio Meucci of Italy, and Innocenzo Manzetti each claiming to be the phone’s true inventor.