National Telephone Day is April 25

Everyone is probably aware that Alexander Graham Bell was the inventor of the telephone in 1876. You may not be aware that April 25 is National Telephone Day.

The bathtub was introduced in England by Lord John Russell in 1828. I always used to joke when I was a deejay in Ottumwa, Iowa, that you could have soaked in the tub for nearly 50 years and never been interrupted by a telephone call.

I wonder what Alexander Graham Bell would think of the cellphones and smartphones in use today.

The AP stylebook says it's the one word, "cellphone," and Merriam-Webster and Oxford Dictionaries both list it as "cell phone."

In celebration of this life-changing invention, here are a few facts about the telephone.

• The first 911 call was made in 1968 in Haleyville, Ala., by a U.S. senator.
• The first cell phone came out in 1984 and cost $4,000. It weighed 1.75 pounds.
• Phones got smart in 2004 when Blackberry added full web-browsing capabilities to its line of cellphones.
• Smartphones took over the market in 2013.
• In most other countries of the world they are called mobile phones.

So you can see since cellphones became a reality the changes in phone technology have come at a very rapid pace.

Do you have a special ringer on your cellphone, like a few bars of your favorite song or something?