The plaque reads:
The first transcontinental telephone call was transmitted by a telephone instrument of this type on January 23, 1915. Mr. Theodore N. Vail, President of American Telephone and Telegraph Company, talked from Jekyll Island to Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of telephone in New York; Thomas A. Watson, assistant to Dr. Bell, in San Francisco; and to President Woodrow Wilson in Washington, D.C.
Let’s go back in time. Consider when phones were called telephones, only mounted on the wall, only had cables linking them, and were hideously expensive to use.
No longer!
Afterthought: why is Assistant Watson not a “Mr.”?
Also: visit this monument on Jekyll Island, Georgia.
1 April 2006 at 8:54 am
Kelley says:
Reading your notes on the first transcontinental telephone call reminded me, oddly enough, of my experiences teaching at a beloved little state college in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom: Lyndon State College. A large amount of capital funding for the college, the fruits of which students and faculty enjoy today, was given to the institution by this Mr. Theodore N. Vail. Thanks for the info, no less for the sparks of memory!
1 April 2006 at 6:04 pm
Sammy says:
K—I am often amazed and startled at the fact that seemingly unrelated world-trivia actually overlaps.