A man demonstrates how to use the first telephone.

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Can You Hear Me Now?

It’s been 150 years since an odd-looking device changed how we communicate.

February 16, 2026
By Michelle Crouch

As You Read, Think About: How has the way people use phones changed over time?

Universal History Archive/Getty Images

Alexander Graham Bell

On March 10, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell leaned over a metal cone attached to a wooden base in his office in Boston, Massachusetts. “Mr. Watson, come here. I want to see you,” he said into the strange-looking device.

In another room, his assistant Thomas Watson heard the staticky words come through a receiver. Bell had just made the first phone call in history. 

For years, inventors had been working to create a device that could transmit the human voice. But Bell was the first to get a patent for the telephone. His invention would transform the way people around the world communicate. 

Getting in Touch

Today it’s easy to video chat with a relative across the country—or on the other side of the world. But 150 years ago, staying in touch took a lot more time and effort. 

“The only way to talk to someone was to visit them in person,” explains historian Josh Lauer. 

You could send a letter, but getting a response might take days or even weeks. A faster option was the telegraph, which sent messages using dots and dashes that stood for letters. But with the telephone, people who were miles apart could hear each other’s voices instantly.

Inventions That Made History: The Telephone
Watch a video to explore the history of phones.

Making Connections

Early on, phones were found mostly in businesses and wealthy people’s homes. But that soon changed. 

Crews would lay miles of copper wire to connect phones in distant places. In 1915, while in New York, Bell called Watson in California. It was the first coast-to-coast call. Over time, an enormous web of telephone wires would connect the world like never before. 

By the 1970s, phones were a part of everyday life for most Americans. Nine out of every 10 homes in the U.S. had one. But the only way to make calls on the go was from pay phones found in places likes stores and on street corners. 

Enter the cell phone, which went on sale for the first time in the U.S. in 1983. Before long, people could make and receive calls from just about anywhere. 

Phones Get Smarter

As mobile phones became more popular, texting added a new twist to communicating on the go. People could keep in touch constantly without actually talking to each other! 

By the early 2000s, phones could connect to the internet, letting people send emails and look up information at any time. Of course, these days, making calls is just a tiny part of how most people use phones.

“Smartphones, in many ways, are not even phones anymore,” Lauer says. “They are computers, cameras, televisions, music players, and video game consoles.”

Back in 1876, Bell could never have imagined that his clunky communication tool would evolve to become a pocket-sized do-everything device. And who knows how phones will change next? 

Phones Then and Now

Here’s a look at how phones have changed over the years.

H. Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock/Getty Images 

The candlestick phone was the most common type of phone in the early 1900s. Callers talked into the speaker on the base and put the receiver to their ear to listen. 

Camerique/Getty Images

For the first few decades of the 20th century, most Americans couldn’t call someone directly. Instead, they’d first have to speak with a switchboard operator. Operators connected the caller with the person they were trying to reach by plugging a wire into a specific hole on a switchboard. 

H. Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock/Getty Images

By the 1960s, most phones had a rotary dial that spun as you entered each digit of a phone number. After the arrival of the push-button phone in 1963, making calls would get much easier. 

Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

Try putting the first mobile phone in your back pocket! It weighed more than 2 pounds, and its battery lasted only about 30 minutes per charge. 

Ed Rooney/Alamy Stock Photo

Bye-bye, buttons. Released in 2007, the first iPhone had a touch screen and soon added a digital store to download apps. The era of the smartphone had begun.

1. What does the article mean when it says that 150 years ago, “staying in touch took a lot more time and effort”?

2. Why is copper wire important in the history of the telephone?

3. What is the main idea of the sidebar, “Phones Then and Now”?

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