History of Massachusetts Long Distance Telephone Service

1876 - - Bell files his patent application. First telephone patent (U.S. No. 174,465) allowed and issued to Bell on March 7th. - - March 10th, Bell speaks the first complete sentence transmitted by variable resistance transmitter ... "Mr. Watson, come here. I want you!" - - Bell lectures on and exhibits telephone apparatus at the Society of Arts, Boston; the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Boston and the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. - - The world's first long distance telephone call (one-way) was received at Paris, Ontario by Bell from his father and uncle at Brantford, Ontario over "borrowed" telegraph lines. - - Gardiner Greene Hubbard, one of Bell's financial backers and sharer in Bell's patents, offers to sell the telephone invention to Western Union Telegraph Company for $100,000. Western Union refuses the offer. - - The world's first two way long distance telephone conversation over an outdoor wire (borrowed telegraph line) takes place between Cambridgeport and Boston, Massachusetts between Bell and Watson. 1877 - - First telephones rented for business use, on a private line between Boston and Somerville, Massachusetts. - - First service rental paid for telephones (private use) in Charlestown, Massachusetts ($20 for 2 Telephones for 1 Year). - - The telephone business is formally organized with the drawing up of papers to form the Bell Telephone Company. 1879 - - The latter part of 1879 and the early part of 1880 saw the first use of telephone numbers at Lowell, Massachusetts. This story is that during an epidemic of measles, Dr. Moses Greeley Parker feared that Lowell's four operators might succumb and bring about a paralysis of telephone service. He recommended the use of numbers for calling Lowell's more than 200 subscribers so that substitute operators might be more easily trained in the event of such an emergency. The telephone management at Lowell feared that the public would take the assignment of numbers as an indignity but the telephone users saw the practical value of the change immediately and it went into effect with no stir whatsoever. (Although attempts had been made, the implementation of dial telephone systems had yet to occur.) On December 24, 1906, the first radio band wave communication of human speech was accomplished by Reginald Fessenden over a distance of 11 miles, from Brant Rock, Massachusetts, to ships in the Atlantic Ocean. Radio was no longer limited to telegraph codes, no longer just a wireless telegraph. This was quite a milestone, and many historians regard the radio era as beginning here, at the start of the voice transmitted age.

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Massachusetts in-state rate is 2.90¢/min