In the early days of telephony, you could not simply pick up, dial a number, and connect to the party you are trying to reach. You had to be connected – “patched” – by an operator. For long distance calls it was even more cumbersome, with a series of operators connecting from city to city and then more regionally — and that wasn’t even the biggest problem. The electrical signal tended to degrade. Without amplification it only reached from New York to Chicago. Fortunately, Alexander Graham Bell, who invented the telephone system in the first place, had a solution to the amplification problem.

On this day, January 25, 1915, the first transcontinental phone call took place for the media and dignitaries in attendance. There were four groups in on the inaugural call: President Woodrow Wilson in the White House, AT&T’s president in Georgia, Bell himself with VIPs in New York, and his former assistant Thomas Watson taking the call in San Francisco.

While long distance telephone service was feasible from the day of the demonstrations, it remained a pursuit for the rich – several minutes of long distance cost $6 – about $120 in today’s money. The costs gradually decreased with the advent of the more efficient method of microwave transmission, telephone repeater towers, and by the 1950s satellite technology.