In 1876, a 29-year-old Scottish immigrant named Alexander Graham Bell sat in a modest laboratory in Boston and did something no human being had ever done before — he spoke into a wire, and someone in the next room heard his voice. His exact words were: “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.” His assistant, a 22-year-old mechanic named Thomas Watson, came running. That was it. Just 9 words, shouted through a crude device that used a vibrating wire dipped in acid water to convert sound to electricity changed the world forever. The telephone took off fast. By 1880, there were roughly 130,000 phones in the United States, and by 1910, nearly 6 million. Bell himself demonstrated the device at the 1876 Centennial Exhibit in Philadelphia, making a major impression on Emperor Dom Pedro II of Brazil. It seems Western Union Telegraph Company was less impressed. They reportedly declined to buy Bell’s patent for $100,000, a business decision that ranks alongside passing on the Beatles. It wasn’t long before the telephone quickly became indispensable. During the 1918 flu pandemic, New York City’s phone traffic spiked to 3.2 million calls a day as quarantined residents relied on the telephone for groceries, medical advice, and human contact. By 1946, half of American homes had a telephone, and by 1970, more than 90% did. Then came mobile phones, with more than 9 billion people worldwide owning a smartphone today. Alexander Graham Bell couldn’t have imagined any of this, but what he did realize from the start was that his invention could destroy distance. In just a century and a half, his invention has connected billions, lifted millions from poverty, saved lives, and created economic opportunity on a scale Bell would never have dreamed of when he shouted those 9 words to Thomas Watson.
