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🗓️ 10 March 2025
⏱️ 23 minutes
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March 10, 1876. Inventor Alexander Graham Bell makes the first successful telephone call in history, revolutionizing human communication.
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0:00.0 | It's January 25, 1915, at the exchange of the American Telephone and Telegraph Corporation in San Francisco. |
0:16.2 | Inside, a room full of smartly dressed businessmen talk among themselves, but when the clock strikes |
0:21.8 | one o'clock, a hush of anticipation settled across the room. A phone rings, and all eyes go to the |
0:29.2 | building's special guest, the co-inventor of the telephone, Thomas Watson. Four decades ago, |
0:35.6 | Thomas and his former employer, Alexander Graham Bell, |
0:38.9 | revolutionized communications with their invention to telephone. |
0:42.8 | Now, from opposite coasts, they're about to partake in another milestone |
0:46.8 | by conducting the first transcontinental phone call. |
0:50.9 | Excited whispers fill the room as Thomas lifts the receiver and holds it to his ear. |
0:56.3 | At first, he hears nothing. |
0:58.7 | Then there's a slight buzz, followed by the familiar, soft Scottish accent of his former employer. |
1:05.6 | Aplaus breaks out as Thomas confirms that he can hear Alexander Grand Bell all the way across the country. |
1:12.6 | When the applause dies down, Thomas hears Bell say a sentence already burned into his memory. |
1:18.5 | Mr. Watson, come here. I want to see you. It's the same sentence that Bell chose to utter on their |
1:24.3 | first successful telephone call years ago. |
1:30.0 | But today, Thomas has a different response to it. |
1:35.9 | With a chuckle, he replies, I could, but this time it would take me a week to get to you. |
1:38.7 | He smiles as Bell laughs on the other end. |
1:46.0 | Though they may be 3,400 miles apart, this moment feels just like that fortuitous day in Bell's attic when the pair conducted their first-ever phone call. Except this time, the stakes are far lower. |
1:56.0 | Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Watson's conversation during the first transcontinental call |
2:01.8 | is a light-hearted recreation of events 39 years before. |
2:05.8 | On that occasion, Bell summoned Thomas with exactly the same words, |
... |
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