My interview with William Caughlin, the head of AT&T Archives and History Center, started with an ironic twist. Our Microsoft Teams video call failed, so we ended up talking over the “regular” phone.
Perhaps “regular” isn’t entirely accurate, given the infrastructure. But it was fitting for the topic of our conversation: the very first phone call, which occurred exactly 150 years ago.
On March 10, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell made a famous exclamation to his assistant: “Mr. Watson, come here, I want you.” That sentence crossed a single copper wire to the next room. Though the technology that enabled the call has changed drastically over the past century and a half, the experience was fundamentally the same. Two people in two different locations were having a conversation — and seeking a connection — in real time.
Caughlin told me that Bell had been working on experiments for a year by then. But even though he was able to transmit speech sounds over copper wire in 1875, it was inarticulate. “Watson could hear noises, sounds, but he couldn’t really make out what Bell was saying. But Bell knew he was on the right path at that point,” Caughlin said.
Those experiments culminated on March 10, when the sounds became clear.
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Artifacts of the future
To celebrate the anniversary of that first transmission, AT&T created a pop-up exhibit at its Dallas headquarters, open to the public through Thursday, March 12.
Some notable artifacts on display from this day 150 years ago include the copper wire over which the message was sent, which in 1914 was wrapped in a loose spool and set behind glass. There’s also Thomas Watson’s notebook, where he recorded those historic first words.
“It’s one of the greatest treasures in our collection,” said Caughlin.
The original copper wire over which Bell transmitted the first phone call in 1876 is featured in a pop-up exhibit.
The first transcontinental call, with Bell in the center, took place in New York City in 1915. In front of the person to Bell’s right is the original copper wire used in the first phone call in 1876.
From left, Chief Engineer of AT&T John J. Carty; President of the New York City Board of Aldermen George McAneny; Vice President of AT&T U.N. Bethell; Alexander Graham Bell; Mayor of New York City John Purroy Mitchel; President of Nebraska Telephone Co. Casper E. Yost; and New York City Comptroller William A. Prendergast.
In his journal, Thomas Watson recorded what was said during the first phone call from Bell.
And with its red ribbon and official seal, the original March 7, 1876, patent for “Improvement in Telegraphy,” is said to be the most valuable patent ever granted.
At a pop-up exhibit at AT&T’s headquarters, the original patent for Bell’s telephone is framed, along with the copper wire used to transmit the first phone call and Watson’s journal that chronicled the experiments.
The telephone occupied Bell’s attention for only a few years. Though it launched an industry, Bell was still tinkering elsewhere, according to Caughlin.
“He was a lifelong learner, a scientist, researcher, and even though he left the telephone business in 1878, he continued experimenting.”
Bell considered the “photophone” to be his greatest invention, said Caughlin. In 1880, Bell transmitted a human voice over a beam of light. It was a precursor to today’s fiber-optic cables, which essentially do the same thing: sending pulses of light through glass fibers across thousands of miles. Bell transmitted his voice using mirrors and a parabola receiver 1,300 feet away in another building. It required direct sunlight, but the voice was very clear.
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Bell patented the “photophone,” a system for transmitting voice via beams of light using mirrors and a large parabola.
Also in the archive is the original transistor that was invented by AT&T physicists John Bardeen and Walter Brattain, which Caughlin says is “the second greatest invention that ever came out of AT&T.”
It’s the technology that underlies most of the items on my desk and whatever device you’re reading this story on. “In your smartphone, you have something like 20 billion transistors,” Caughlin pointed out.
Its 1950 patent is also included in the collection.
The first transistor is part of AT&T’s archives.
Connections then and now
In that Boston lab in 1876, the network consisted of a copper wire running from Bell’s transmitter to the receiver Watson was using. Now, AT&T says it moves an exabyte (1 billion gigabytes, or the storage equivalent of nearly 4 million iPhone 17E smartphones) of data across its network every day.
Voice calls represent a small fraction of that traffic. The technology that connects our phones — 5G networks, fiber backbones, satellite calling — continues to evolve even as the number of calls remains a small portion of how we communicate. Nearly three times more texts than voice calls passed through AT&T’s network in 2025.
I, for one, will almost always prefer to chat via text rather than make a phone call, mostly for expediency.
But phone calls haven’t disappeared. If anything, they’ve morphed into a nuisance, given the barrage of scam calls and now impersonal AI-based customer service systems that get in the way of human connection. Today’s carriers and phone-makers are having to implement more aggressive filtering tools, though with mixed success.
And yet when I want to connect and focus my full attention on someone, a voice call or video call is the way to do it. And unlike days past, I can make a call from anywhere without worrying about long-distance charges. Heck, I don’t even need to memorize phone numbers anymore — I just tap one of my favorite contacts or ask the resident disembodied voice assistant to make the call for me.
Bell no doubt knew the importance of hearing someone’s voice, live, over the phone line. A century and a half later, through incredible advancements in telephony technology, that connection is still just as valuable.
