It appears that the first major posek to address the question of using the telephone to fulfill mitzvot at a distance was Rabbi Chaim Yehuda Leib Litvin (העילוי מסאָסני, who died in 1903, Brody) in a teshuva sent to the Rabbinic leadership of the German Jewish community of Frankfurt am Maine (with particular mention of his good friend יאקב פוזנא – not sure who that is and why his name is spelled with an א instead of an ע?) in August of 1885. This teshuva was printed in his שערי דעה תשובה עד. 

His straightforward teshuva concluded with the following paragraph.

He believed that in an emergency situation (שעת הדחק) that everyone must agree that even the Shofar can be fulfilled over a telephone. His approach set the tone for the vast majority of Poskim (with the exception of Rav Uziel) until Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach published his response in 1948 (See מנחת שלמה חלק א סימן ט). Rav Shlomo Zalman made his name in part as an expert on the status of electricity and his authority in this area gave him the ability to shift the Halakhic discourse entirely. Over the next few essays, I would like to show an alternative mesorah to this question that may, sadly, be essential in the near future.