ChronoFive
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Setting the scene
By the 1870s, the telegraph dominated long-distance communication, but it could only send one message at a time using Morse code. Inventors worldwide raced to create a 'harmonic telegraph' that could send multiple messages simultaneously, and to transmit voice. Alexander Graham Bell, a Scottish-born teacher of the deaf in Boston, had been experimenting with acoustic devices since 1874, funded by his father-in-law Gardiner Hubbard. He worked with Thomas Watson, a skilled electrician, in a rented attic laboratory.
What happened
On March 10, 1876, three days after receiving U.S. Patent No. 174,465 for 'the method of, and apparatus for, transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically,' Bell successfully transmitted speech. According to his notebook, he spilled acid and called, 'Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.' Watson, in the next room, heard the words clearly through the receiver. The patent, filed February 14, 1876, beat rival Elisha Gray's caveat by just hours—a timing that sparked 600 lawsuits.
Why it still matters
Bell's telephone patent became the most valuable in history, founding AT&T and creating the Bell System monopoly that dominated American communications for a century. By 1880, 47,000 phones existed in the U.S.; by 1900, 1.3 million. The invention shrank the world, enabling instant voice communication and eventually leading to radio, television, and the internet. Bell, who considered the telephone an interruption to his real work teaching the deaf, later helped found the National Geographic Society and refused to have a phone in his study.
Background
Telephone networks soon transformed business and personal communication.