On Oct. 9, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell made a telephone call to his assistant a few miles away — the first demonstration of what would ultimately become a global telephone network.

The story of the first phone call and how it sparked the technologies that connect billions of people every day.

If you’re reading this on your phone, give a nod to Dr. Alexander Graham Bell. On this day 140 years ago, he made the first-ever phone call in history. Bell was sitting in the laboratory above his ...

Before Alexander Graham Bell enlightened the world with his 1876 patent for the telephone box and the first telephone was installed in the U.S. Capital building in 1880, there was no way for the ...

Telephone exchanges were referred to as ‘central offices’ or ‘wire centers’. These were buildings (service centers) that housed the equipment for a particular geographical region’s public switched ...

ONTONAGON, Mich. (WILX) - On this day in 1879, Michigan’s first independent telephone company was formed. The Ontonagon ...

Do you have a question about history? Send us your question at history@time . com and you might find your answer in a future edition of Now You Know. These days, the history of the phone booth seems ...

An engineer demonstrates a car phone five months before the historic first call on a competing company’s commercial mobile telephone service in 1946. Bettmann via Getty Images I have a cell phone ...