Details in this article were provided by Brant Historical Society
The millennial generation spends a lot of time on their phone, it’s an indisputable fact. I mean how could they not? With the rise of technological advances in the past couple of decades, phones have been able to do increasingly more while taking up less space than they used to. So who can we thank for this incredible efficiency or rather where can credit this incredible efficiency?
Right here in Brantford, Ontario was where the idea of the telephone was born. In the summer of 1874 Alexander Graham Bell became slightly obsessed with the ear and how it received sound to the point where he got an ear from the Harvard Medical School. “I carried this ear with me to my father’s house near Brantford and there I commenced to make my experiments” Bell recounted. The Bell Homestead still stands on Tutela Heights Road as a historic site credited to the conception of the telephone.
Boston was where the first telephonic moment was made. Bell and his electrician assistant Thomas A. Watson had set up a makeshift laboratory in Bell’s Boston home, Watson had pressed the receiving springs to his ears when he finally heard Bell’s voice over 66 feet away from him. “Don’t change anything, let me see” Bell had shouted. A significant moment was made that day and Bell and Watson knew it.
At the Dominion Telegraph Office — at 150 Colborne street — the first long-distance phone call was made between Brantford and Paris, Ontario. Bell awaited the call at 91 Grand River St. N and again it was a success.
In appreciation of the invention the Bell Memorial Park was unveiled October 24th, 1917 with Bell himself in attendance.
It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyways: the invention of the telephone changed the game in the way of communications. A revolutionary thought that was able to connect towns to towns, countries to countries, and people to people. It continues to be a method of communication that has evolved itself into more ingenious ways of use.
