January 25, 1915…The First Transcontinental Phone Call Made
100 years ago today, Alexander Graham Bell (shown below) in New York placed a call to his long time assistant, Thomas Watson in San Francisco at 4 PM Eastern time. The second transcontinental call to San Francisco was made at 4:30 over an even greater distance from Jekyll Island, Georgia, which had to be routed through Boston.
This is the 8H studio map, the rehearsal and run sheets for the April 12, 2014 show with Seth Rogen as host. At the link above is a clip of the Undercover Sharpton sketch you should watch for context. Notice on the map that sketch sets are often set in front of other sketch sets. […]
A Rarity…Inside The First RCA Color Semi Trailer A few days ago we saw the first RCA Color trucks at their 1954 debut at the Rose Parade. Those were the large bus type vans, but I think the tractor-trailer version came along in late 59 or early 60. The photo on the left is the […]
The Historic Hudson Theater…Newly Renovated & Broadway Ready Look what they found in the basement! In 1995, the theater was bought by the Millennium Broadway Hotel and used it as a conference center, but last year it was sold to the London based Ambassador Theater Group. Since then, the theater has undergone more major renovation, […]
A Funny Story… This shot of a TK11 is from WTVT in Tampa, but listen to the story that the cameraman posted along with this old photo of him. “It was my first day on camera and I was nervous. Very nervous, and alone with only the newsman and me in the studio on a […]
When asked to describe the call, replied: “You see, wire telephone is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in San Francisco! 😉
You had to have either a beard or mustache to get in . . . 😉
This is an incredible piece of history. Reading the NY Times story, the cost for a call was very expensive: “New York and San Francisco would be $20.70 for the first three minutes, and $6.75 for each minute thereafter” That was huge cash back then.
“For English, press one; for Chinese, press two…”
Until the introduction of the vacuum tube, a call from New York could only go as far as Denver if you were lucky, and you had to shout to be heard.
He’s speaking with a technical support rep in New Delhi.
“You’ll never know just how much I love you”