Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

A Call That Made History, 100 Years Ago Today

Posted by timothy on from the bet-he-was-slammed-for-texting-too dept.

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.

2 of 51 comments (clear)

  1. After the patent? by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Bell had talked to Watson on the first ever phone call, in Boston, just after Bell had patented the telephone.

    really? He patented it before ever testing it? Same shit, different millennium, eh?

    --
    My God, it's Full of Source!
    OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
  2. BOO to a DOUCHE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    BOOOO to Edison. The only thing he was first at was being a corporate sell out and generally evil. (the two have a correlation of close to 1.0)

    Let's celebrate Tesla instead!!

    http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla

    and also worth reading afterwards...

    http://theoatmeal.com/blog/tesla_response