First telephone call

On March 10, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell made the first telephone call to his assistant in the next room. "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you."

Bell discovered that he could hear sound over a wire while working to improve the telegraph. The dot-and-dash Morse code system at the time could only send or receive one message at a time. Bell was working on a "harmonic telegraph" based on the notion that several signals could be sent at once if they differed in pitch. When he heard the first sound, it marked the beginning of a new industry and the eventual end of the Western Union-dominated telegraph industry. The benefits of the ability to transmit speech far outweighed the benefits of a multiple telegraph.