The story of the first telephone call – nine words that changed the world

“Mr Watson, come here. I want to see you.” Hardly momentous words, but their implications were enormous.

Spoken by Scottish-born Alexander Graham Bell in his Boston laboratory on March 10 1876, they were the first intelligible words to be transmitted electrically through a wire from one place to another. With that, the telephone age began.

Thomas Watson, Bell’s assistant, received that call only in the next room – but Bell’s ambitions ran much further. The 29-year-old professor...