telephone set,
telephone,
phone electronic equipment that converts sound into electrical signals that can be transmitted over distances and then converts received signals back into sounds; "I talked to him on the telephone"
The handset is a device the user holds to the ear to hear the audio sound. Modern-day handsets usually contain the phone's microphone as well, but in early telephones the microphone was mounted directly on the telephone itself, which often was attached to a wall at a convenient height for talking. Handsets on such telephones were called receivers, a term that is often applied to modern-day handsets, also.
