From Bell to the smartphone: 150 years since the first phone call
A journey through the history of a patent that was born to shorten distances and has ended up defining our way of living and relating to each other
On March 10, 1876, 150 years ago, the first telephone call was made, a milestone that forever changed our way of communicating. “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you,” was the phrase that the Scottish inventor and scientist, Alexander Graham Bell, conveyed to his assistant, Thomas Watson, just three days after patenting his invention, which progressively relegated the telegraph, used since 1844. Quickly, that system became popular to become a mass communication medium that we all carry in our pockets today.
1854
Antonio Meucci builds a device he called teletròfon. It served to connect his office with the room, where his sick wife was.
1876
On March 7, Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone. On March 10, he makes what is considered the first telephone call.
1877
Graham Bell and Gardiner Greene Hubbard create the Bell Telephone Company, the first telecommunications company.
On December 16, the first telephone call is made in Spain. It was an experimental telephone communication via a military telegraph line, connecting the Industrial School, in Ciutadella, with Montjuïc Castle. It should be said, however, that a few days earlier there had already been a first telephone communication in Cuba, which was then Spanish territory.
1878
On January 18, what is considered the first real telephone call was made, between the Royal Palace of Madrid and the Royal Palace of Aranjuez. A call between King Alfonso XII and María de la Mercè, made a few days before their wedding.
Francesc Dalmau and his son Tomàs developed the first long-distance call between Barcelona and Girona.
1880
Rodrigo Sánchez-Arjona installed the first private telephone line in Spain and made one of the first long-distance calls between Fregenal de la Sierra, in Badajoz, and Seville.
1892
The first automatic call is made. Until then, it was a manual procedure managed by operators. It was the manager of a funeral home in Kansas City, Almon Brown Strowger, who conceived the automatic system, to prevent the city's operator from diverting calls to a competing funeral home. With the help of a friend, he built the first fully automatic exchange with a capacity for 99 subscribers.
1916
The Bell Company buys Strowger's invention for $2.5 million, known as the Strowger switch, although it did not use it until 1920, when it definitively committed to automation in the urban area after a strike by telephone operators.
1924
Telefónica is born. Two years later, in 1926, Spain already had 100,000 telephones in service.
1928
The first transoceanic call is made from the Telefónica building on Gran Vía in Madrid. It was a call between King Alfonso XIII and the President of the United States, Calvin Coolidge.
The first public telephone in Spain is installed in El Retiro Park in Madrid, where a telephone operator was in charge of making the calls.
1943
The distribution of telephone directories, popularly known as the yellow pages, is regularized. In 2012, they stopped being published in print, and in 2018, the obligation to offer them in digital format also disappeared, as well as offering telephone assistance on subscriber numbers.
1955
The one millionth telephone is installed, making Spain the eleventh country to reach this figure.
1963
The first public telephones are beginning to be installed in Spain, specifically in Barcelona and Madrid.
1973
The first call is made with a mobile phone. It was made by Martin Cooper, a Motorola engineer.
1976
Mobile telephony arrives in Spain through the TAV service (Automatic Telephone in Vehicles).
1983
Motorola distributes the DynaTAC, considered the first commercial mobile phone in history, a mobile telephony device that weighed more than a kilogram and had quite large dimensions, a very small screen, and limited battery life. To offer thirty minutes of conversation, it needed ten hours of charging. Not to mention the cost, which approached $4,000. Nevertheless, 300,000 were sold in one year.
1988
The last call managed by a telephone operator in Spain is made. It was in the Andalusian town of Polopos, in Granada.
1994
The first smartphone, the Simon, from IBM, is commercialized. However, the term "smartphone" was not used until 1997, with the launch of the GS88 (Penelope) by Ericsson.
2002
The United States Congress recognizes Meucci as the legitimate inventor of the telephone.
Telephone booths cease to be considered a universal service and begin to disappear from towns and cities.
2007
Under the direction of Steve Jobs, Apple's first iPhone is released, marking a revolution with its multitouch interface.
2026
150 years after the birth of the telephone, the landline has become a romantic memory. Today there are more than 7.5 billion smartphones in use worldwide: the touch device is no longer just a communication tool, but also our main gateway to a digital and connected world.