On This Day in History, January 25: The Bells Are Ringing
On Jan. 25, 1915, New York City officials, prominent businessmen and the directors of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) all surrounded Alexander Graham Bell as he sat by his invention, the telephone, on the 15th floor of New York’s Telephone Building. Across the continent in San Francisco, Thomas A. Watson also waited, similarly flanked by business executives and politicians.
At 4:30 p.m. (EST), Dr. Bell picked up the telephone receiver in front of him and said, “Mr. Watson, are you there?” Watson pressed the receiver to his ear, assured his erstwhile boss that, yes, he had heard the question clearly. Bell then repeated the words he had spoken in 1876, when he and Watson had conducted the world’s first telephone conservation, between two floors of a Boston boardinghouse, “Mr. Watson,” he said, “come here I want you.” From 2,572 miles away came Watson’s response: “It would take me a week to get to you this time.” Thus was transcontinental telephone communication established.
The telephone line that allowed Watson and Bell to speak across the continent weighed nearly 3,000 tons and was suspended from 130,000 telephone poles. The line had spurs running to Jekyll Island, Ga., and Washington, D.C., and operated as one large party line, allowing hundreds of people to listen in on a conversation between two principals in any of the four cities.