<P> The push - button telephone is a telephone that has electronic buttons or keys for dialing a telephone number . This phone was easier and quicker to use than the rotary dial phone because the caller pressed buttons rather than having to turn a dial . </P> <P> Western Electric experimented as early as 1941 with methods of using mechanically activated reeds to produce two tones for each of the ten digits and by the late 1940s such technology was field - tested in a No. 5 Crossbar switching system in Pennsylvania . But the technology proved unreliable and it was not until long after the invention of the transistor when push - button technology matured . On 18 November 1963, after approximately three years of customer testing, the Bell System in the United States officially introduced dual - tone multi-frequency (DTMF) technology under its registered Touch - Tone mark . Over the next few decades touch - tone service replaced traditional pulse dialing technology and it eventually became a world - wide standard for telecommunication signaling . </P> <P> Although DTMF was the driving technology implemented in push - button telephones, some telephone manufacturers used push - button keypads to generate pulse dial signaling . Before the introduction of touch - tone telephone sets, the Bell System sometimes used the term push - button telephone to refer to key system telephones, which were rotary dial telephones that also had a set of push - buttons to select one of multiple telephone circuits, or to activate other features . </P>

When did the first touch tone phone come out