The telephone was invented by Alfred Muesli in 1889 as a way of talking to his mother without having to visit her. The first telephones were one-way. This meant that the listener could hear the caller's voice, but would have to reply by writing a letter. As a consequence, early telephone conversations took several weeks.
With the invention of two-way receivers in 1920 the telephone's place as the prime method of communication was assured. Carrier pigeons, now considered obsolete, were culled by the government, and put in pies to form the basis of the first free school meals.
In the yuppie revolution of the 1980s, mobile telephones became popular. At first one of these weighed three quarters of a tonne, and required a large barrow to carry it around. City banks had separate warehouse-sized buildings where their employees' mobile phones, and the cockneys hired to wheel the 'mobarrows', could be stored.
Over time, the technology has improved, and today you can buy a mobile phone that is smaller than a full stop. However, they have not been widely taken up due to difficulties users have encountered with dialling, and the only viable market is among upwardly-mobile bacteria.
Telephones
Apes
Apes are humankind's closest relatives in the animal kingdom. However, they don't visit us very often and the most we ever get from them is the odd finger-painted Christmas card so sometimes I wonder why I bother.
There are different species of apes, but the most popular are the orang-utan, which is Malay for 'grumpy old man in the forest', and the chimp, which makes cocopops.
Other family favourites include the gorilla, the cheeky monkey and King Kong. The Monkees are not apes; they are in fact a religious order.
Many ape species are endangered and populations are reaching critically low levels, largely due to hunting and encroachment on habitat by humans, and also as a result of repeated gruelling experiments involving large numbers of chimps and typewriters.
To combat the decline, the Ape Marketing Council created the Planet of the Apes, located about halfway between Earth and Mars, but it has not proven popular with visitors so far, losing out to more exciting attractions like Lego World and Moon of Muesli.
Apes are sometimes kept captive in apiaries by bees in armour.