By the 1870s, America was rapidly transforming into an industrial powerhouse due to an explosion of innovation in the fields of technology, engineering, and transportation. Alexander Graham Bell’s invention, the telephone, would change our whole way of talking to each other. His years of teaching deaf mutes to speak gave him a deep understanding of the tones and frequencies necessary for the telephone to work. Securing the telephone patent did not come easy, as Bell faced fierce competition from American inventor Elisha Gray. By the end of the twentieth century, almost every household in America had a telephone.