The first long-distance telephone call

On March 27, 1884: The first long-distance phone call between New York and Boston was made. In March 1876, Alexander Graham Bell received the patent for his telephone and made his first phone call just three days later.

That June, he presented his invention at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia which gained the attention of the press, who in turn shared news of the telephone with the public.

In August, Bell made the first two-way long-distance call between Brantford and Paris, Ontario, Canada, a distance of about six miles. In the early years of the telephone, it was mostly seen as a means of local communication. Telephone lines connected people within cities, or to neighboring cities. But few recognized the possibility that people could communicate with each other across hundreds of miles.