Slashdot Mirror


A Call That Made History, 100 Years Ago Today

alphadogg writes These days, making a call across the U.S. is so easy that people often don't even know they're talking coast to coast. But 100 years ago Sunday, it took a hackathon, a new technology and an international exposition to make it happen. The first commercial transcontinental phone line opened on Jan. 25, 1915, with a call from New York to the site of San Francisco's Panama-Pacific International Exposition. Alexander Graham Bell made the call to his assistant, Thomas Watson. Just 39 years earlier, Bell had talked to Watson on the first ever phone call, in Boston, just after Bell had patented the telephone.

4 of 51 comments (clear)

  1. They should've made the call in Panama by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    The historical date of the first transcontinental call could've been many years earlier.

  2. Re:Done without negative feedback by wierd_w · · Score: 3, Funny

    Negative feedback amplifier?

    Is that what a person upmodding a troll AC post is? ;)

  3. Re:The Bell Telephone: Patent Nonsense? by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 3, Funny

    "On May 22, 1886 .. Zenas F. Wilber, a former Washington patent examiner, swore in an affidavit that he'd been bribed by an attorney for Alexander Graham Bell to award Bell the patent for the telephone over a rival inventor, Elisha Gray, who'd filed a patent document on the same day as Bell in 1876." ref Bell's telephone sketch Elisha Gray's sketch of a telephone

    You have to admit, both of thoes were pretty sketchy.

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  4. Re: BOO to a DOUCHE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Tesla didn't do squat when the Martians invaded Earth. Edison commanded a fleet of electric ships armed with disintegrator beams and kicked their asses.