<Li> Early months of 1879: The Bell Telephone Company is near bankruptcy and desperate to get a transmitter to equal Edison's carbon transmitter . </Li> <Li> 17 February 1879: Bell Telephone merges with the New England Telephone Company to form the National Bell Telephone Company . Theodore Vail takes over operations . </Li> <Li> 1879: Francis Blake invents a carbon transmitter similar to Edison's that saves the Bell company from extinction . </Li> <Li> 2 August 1879: The Edison Telephone Company of London Ltd, registered . Opened in London 6 September 1879 . </Li>

When did the telephone become a household item