Bell Connects Coasts: First Transcontinental Call Made
Bell engineers strung copper wire from New York to San Francisco and on January 25, 1915, Alexander Graham Bell picked up the phone in New York and spoke the same words he had said in the first telephone call thirty-nine years earlier: 'Mr. Watson, come here. I want to see you.' Thomas Watson, sitting in San Francisco, replied that it would take him a week this time. The 3,400-mile transcontinental line required 130,000 telephone poles and 2,500 tons of copper wire, connected by mechanical repeaters that boosted the signal across the continent. The call proved that voice communication could span a nation in real time. AT&T staged the demonstration at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition to maximum publicity effect. Within a decade, transatlantic telephone service followed. The call that bridged America marked the moment telecommunications became a continental utility rather than a local curiosity.
January 25, 1915
111 years ago
Key Figures & Places
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