Ring Ring: The First Coast-to-Coast Phone Call

Alexander Graham Bell's historic call to San Francisco was preceded by a 1914 Sci-Fi book that envisioned "photo phones".

On 25 January 1915, an age obsessed by telepathy and radio marked a big breathrough: The first coast-to-coast telephone call. It was an amazing triumph in long-distance communication.

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When Thomas A. Watson in San Francisco answered his phone, he did so to demonstrate the new American Telephone and Telegraph "intercontinental phone" to investors in New York, Boston, San Francisco and Washington D.C., not to mention a few millionaires at Jekyll Island, GA.

Watson was reprising his role in the famous 1876 demonstration, the very first telephone call ever made.

As the New York Times reported:

On October 9, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas A. Watson talked by telephone to each other over a two-mile wire stretched between Cambridge and Boston. It was the first wire conversation ever held. Yesterday afternoon the same two men talked by telephone to each other over a 3,400-mile wire … They heard each other much more distinctly than they did in their first talk thirty-eight years ago.

Alexander Graham Bell makes a telephone call from New York to Chicago, 1892
The first fund-raiser had proved quite successful: Bell Telephone Company was formed in 1877. A similar long-distance call had been made between New York and Chicago in 1892.

It had taken more than 12 years to perfect, build and install the wiring and switching system required to successfully transmit sound at double the distance.

Bell and his assistant Charles Tainter Sumner had actually experimented with a wireless system as early as 1880. It was set up on the roof of the Franklin School in Washington D.C. to transmit voice signals 213 meters (700 feet) away on a beam of light. Bell called it the "photophone."

Unfortunately, over long distances a photo phone was useless: Telephone wires were much more practical.

Tom Swift and His Photo Telephone

In early 1914, volume 17 of the popular "Tom Swift" series of fictional adventures written by Victor Appleton for boys had picked up on this theme in a book titled Tom Swift and His Photo Telephone.

In the breathless "gee whiz" style popular at that time, Tom discusses the transmission of photographs by telephone -- photographs that play a key role in the book's mystery plot.

While the plot of the book may seem awfully corny to modern readers, it is rather stunning to find that one's great-grandfather was fantasizing about photo telephones long before cell phones ever arrived on the market.

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When Alexander Graham Bell died in 1922, he considered the photo telephone to be his very greatest invention -- far more important than the telephone itself.

He was right: The technology for which he filed four patents played a central role in the development of 21st century fiber optics.

Sources

_{PBS - Gallery: Telephones Through The Years
New York Times Learning Network blog- Alexander Graham Bell Demonstrates AT&T's Transcontinental Telephone Line}