On this day, Alexander Graham Bell conducted the first successful experiment with the telephone. This breakthrough, during which he uttered his famous directive to his assistant, "Come here Mr. Watson, I want you." That same day, an ebullient Bell wrote his father of his "great success" and speculated that "the day is coming when telegraph [phone] wires will be laid on to houses just like water and gas -- and friends converse with each other without leaving home."

In 1915 transcontinental telephone lines were completed. Invited to play a role in the formal dedication of the line in New York, Bell used a duplicate of his 1876 telephone to speak to his former assistant, Thomas Watson, in San Francisco. Echoing his famous words of Bell again commanded, "Mr. Watson, come here, I want you." Watson replied that it would take him a week to arrive.