First Successful Telephone Call

On 10 March 1876, in Boston, Alexander Graham Bell spoke a sentence through a wire and Thomas Watson heard it in the next room. Bell’s notebook records the words: “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.” Watson came. The patent, No. 174,465, had been granted three days earlier, on 7 March.

It was the first time speech had been carried, electrically, as speech. Elisha Gray filed a caveat the same day Bell filed his application, and the fight over priority lasted for years. The call itself is dated. What followed, exchanges, long lines, a telephone in ordinary rooms, is the reason that sentence is remembered.