The History of The First Telephone Call

On March 10th, 1876 the first telephone call was recorded. The first ever words on the telephone were spoken by Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone to his assistant Thomas Watson: ” Mr Watson- come here -I want to see you”

Alexander Graham Bell was born in 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland, Bell became an expert in sound and public speaking. His father’s work focused on developing a system of ‘visible speech’ which allowed speech sounds to be written down. He aimed this visualization to teach deaf people to speak. Encouraged by his father Bell attempted to create a working model of ear and vocal cords. He attended anatomy and physiology in London, building his understanding of how speech and hearing worked.

Due to his father’s death in 1870, the family emigrated to Canada and just a year later Bell moved to the United States where he became the Professor of Vocal Physiology and Elocution at Boston University. Experiments in speech creation, along with his knowledge of anatomy began in 1873 which lead him to further understand the human body’s anatomy.

Alexander Graham Bell did not think he was inventing ‘the telephone’ during his experiments as he was working on sending multiple telegraph messages over the same wire. Bell hypothesised that if sound waves could be converted into a fluctuating electric current, that current could then be reconverted into sound waves identical to the original at the other end of the circuit.

Due to sensing the danger of rival developments Bell and his future father-in-law filled out an application and later Bell was granted the patent on 7 March 1876. Just three days later, on 10th March, his first intelligible telephone communication was made.

On 9th July 1877, Bell, Hubbard and Watson established the Bell Telephone Company to market the new device. Bell died on 2 August 1922, where on the day of his funeral the telephone systems in the US and Canada were silenced for one minute.