Used by: All Muggles
Purpose: To speak from long distances, or quickly get ahold of one another.
Note: Is faster than owl-mail.
To seek a person, or "to call", the muggle lifts the phone reciever off of the hook and presses a seven-digit number (*if you're living in the USA) that travels through the telephone lines until it reaches their house, and sends their telephone ringing.
A telephone reciever has 2 parts to it. A listening part and a talking part. The listening part is held to your ear, so you can hear what the reciever is saying. The talking part is by your mouth, so you can talk to the reciever.
A telephone has 12 buttons: the numbers 0-9, and a *, # button. Some phones also come with a thing called an "answering machine". Which allows muggles to record their voices before a mechanical "beep" which tells the caller to leave a message. Their voice is recorded, and later heard by muggles who weren't able to answer the phone when the caller called. Another specail feature of some phones is a thing called "Caller ID". It allows the Muggle to see who is calling before they answer the phone. And last, but not least, in our brief explanation of a telephone, some telephones come "cordless" so the muggles can carry them around the house while they do their work, etc.