Hullo, d’you know who made that first call? We’ll hold
Tomorrow is 103 years since the first transcontinental phone call was made. Things have progressed. For one, it’s been a long time since we used 3,400 miles of wires to ring someone
They say beauty is skin-deep, though we often tend to overlook the real meaning of this. Ever cared to learn the story behind that beauty? And why do you think by beauty we’re only referring to people? See that smartphone? Who would have thought that a bunch of nuts, bolts and wires would someday be replaced with a genius piece of equipment with the components all squeezed into a pocket-sized wonder?
Certainly not the folks way back before the 1910s, and even well before that.
Over this weekend — Saturday, July 29, to be exact — we’re marking the103rd year of the first test transcontinental phone call. From New York to San Francisco. Coast-tocoast. That’s 2,907.1 miles, or 4,678.5 kilometres. Almost the distance from Hyderabad to Manila. Six hours, 25 minutes by plane. Forty-five hours via road. Two days, 22 hours by bus. Eleven days, six hours by bike. Almost 40 days on foot. A shade over three hours using the 960mph Iron Man Mark VII armour (some peg it at a ridiculous 3,713mph, just below Mach 5).
Of course, those figures above are for the present. Ever wondered how voice travelled on that call?
About 3,400 miles of wires was placed between the two locations; naturally, as a voice signal travelled, it weakened at some point — until it hit audions (the first vacuum tubes) along the way, which boosted it. Stops at Pittsburgh and Salt Lake City also gave it a lift.
While indeed successful, the 1914 trial — performed by then-AT&T president Theodore Vail — was only a precursor to the main event where it was formally unveiled for commercial use: it was delayed for six months in order to be in time for San Francisco’s 1915 World Fair.
And who made the call? None other that Alexander Graham Bell himself. You knew this.
From New York, he said the words he had famously spoken on March 10,1876, using his most defining and most famous invention. He said to his assistant, Thomas Watson, who was in a room nearby: “Mr Watson, come here. I want to see you.” Good ol’ Watson, this time in San Francisco, replied: “It will take me five days to get there now!”
Oh, and a three-minute phone call back then from NY to SF would set you back $20.70 during that time — the equivalent of $485 (Dh1,781) today (dare to complain about your phone bills again?). Now wasn’t that (shockingly) beautiful?
It was a big deal back then. Of course, that set the stage for more advancements in call innovation.
I first remember fully being in my senses when I was about three years old. At that time, we had one of those classic rotary dial phones. You know the first two numbers I was made to memorise? Aside from our house number, it was our phone number: 8333201 — the classic in-case-of-emergency things-to-remember.
It wasn’t until I was in fifth grade that we switched to a more modern push-button phone. Then one day, my late great Dad brought home something I’ve never seen before: a Motorola Bag Phone — you know, those types that literally have a bag, plugged into your car’s cigarette lighter socket and which can give you a backache carrying it around. Oh, the excitement I felt when my Dad lemme have a go at it and have a dear cousin of mine receive my first call over a mobile phone. (For good measure, he also had a Motorola StarTAC, the ones where a SIM card meant putting the entire credit card-sized plastic into the phone — but, as with my son at present — I was too young to have it then.)
It was only fitting that my first mobile phone was a Motorola, a T2288, and of course, I wouldn’t be in if I didn’t have a Nokia — the 3310 was my first.
Nowadays, it’s normal to have a smartphone. As routine as spotting a shawarma or biryani place or a or roast chicken joint — you’ll find one at every street corner in Dubai. Same with phones.
Anywhere you look, people are either yapping with someone on a call or tapping away for any mobile reason imaginable.
But despite all of today’s advancements, be it e-mail, social media, messaging —it’s the most simple things that still stand out for me — and all having the same action: calling someone by phone.
The call from my Mom while she was at work sometime in 1990, telling me that I’d be seeing my Dad again after some years. The call from my wife while at work early in the morning on the day before Christmas in 2006, informing me that my son was about to be born. (Panic mode! I was about two hours by bus away from home then! And he was indeed born on the evening of December 25). The call from Dubai at around 10pm on an April 2008 night before I turned in, notifying me that Khaleej Times has hired me. The call I received not so long ago, alerting me that I’ve been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Journalism. (Okay, I made that up; you can’t blame a journalist for dreaming of receiving the highest honour in their profession, right?). Again, a beauty indeed. And yeah, that story about that phone call at the beginning of this piece certainly seemed like a dream, if you consider that it typically only takes 1/15th of a second today to get your voice from one point to another using a phone.
Kudos to our forefathers. That call may have travelled thousands of miles, but it paved the way to reduce the distance between people.
None other that Alexander Graham Bell himself. From New York, he said to his assistant, Thomas Watson [who was in San Francisco]: “Mr Watson, come here. I want to see you.”
From New York to San Fran. Coast-tocoast. That’s 2,907.1 miles, or 4,678.5 kilometres. Almost from Hyderabad to Manila. Six hours, 25 minutes by plane. Forty-five hours via road.