early 12c., one of the ecclesiastical princes who constitute the sacred college (short for cardinalis ecclesiae Romanae or episcopus cardinalis), from Latin cardinalis principal, chief, essential (see cardinal (adj.)). Ecclesiastical use began for the presbyters of the chief (cardinal) churches of Rome.
In 1889, the rotary telephone dial was invented by Almon B. Strowger , a Kansas City undertaker. The first dial exchange was installed at La Porte, Indiana, in 1892. In 1943, Philadelphia was the last major area to give up dual service.
The original phone. On March 10, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell spoke into his device and said to his assistant, âMr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.â 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.o 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 â70s, the rotary dial phone thankfully began its slow death.