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Celebrating 100 years since the first transcontinental phone call was completed

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 25 Jan 2015 11:39 User comments (1)

Celebrating 100 years since the first transcontinental phone call was completed Flying way under the radar today is the 100th anniversary of a major historical event: the first ever transcontinental phone call being completed.
On January 25th, 1915 a four-way call was made "between Alexander Graham Bell in New York; his assistant, Thomas Watson, in San Francisco; President Woodrow Wilson in Washington, DC; and Theodore Vail, President of American Telephone and Telegraph company (AT&T) in Jekyll Island, GA."

The words spoken for the first ever call? "Ahoy! Ahoy! Mr. Watson, are you there? Do you hear me?"

It took over 3400 miles of wire on three circuits to connect San Francisco to NY, with 130,000 telephone poles and thousands of tons of copper. All of the infrastructure work was done by horse and wagon, as trucks were not yet truly viable.



Source:
InformationWeek

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1 user comment

126.1.2015 11:02

I love how Bell wanted to use "Ahoy" as the standard greeting when answering the phone. To me, it just sounds too nautical. At least "Hello" is better than the teens that answer with "Yo".

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