It is the feeling that I am getting a message, but that I am not who I normally am, because I am swathed in darkness and dream . Crank callers also exploit the telephone's uncanny powers. If you have ever been harassed continually by people who don't speak up on the phone, this can very quickly lead into all sorts of paranoid and disturbing feelings. The Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia has over 68,000 miles of telephone lines. Telephone Telephone, instrument that sends and receives voice messages and data.
Telephones convert speech and data to electrical energy, which is sent great distances.
All telephones are linked by complex switching systems called central offices or exchanges, which establish the pathway for information to travel. Telephones are used for casual conversations, to conduct business, and to summon help in an emergency. About half of the information passing through telephone lines occurs entirely between special-purpose telephones, such as computers with modems, which transmit digital information over telephone lines to other computers, and facsimile machines, or fax machines, which produce duplicates of documents at a distant point. If it is a two-piece telephone set, the transmitter and receiver are mounted in the handset, the ringer is typically in the base, and the dial may be in either the base or handset. The handset cord connects the base to the handset, and the line cord connects the telephone to the telephone line.