January 25, 1925
Inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, and his assistant, Thomas A. Watson, talk by telephone to each other over a 3,400-mile wire between New York and San Francisco. This marks the first transcontinental telephone service. The two held the first wire conversation in 1876 when they spoke over a two-mile wire stretched between Cambridge and Boston.
And to think, it's been just a little over a decade since we all started to get to know this new thing called "Internet". This 1993 CBC-TV clip is a great look at how impressive that technology was then. [Link thanks to Tech-Knowledge]
Today I use my broadband internet connection, voice over IP, and a VPN to daily digitally commute to work 3000 miles away. My Messenger window shows me near real time status of friends, family, and associates world wide. For each one, communication is only a click away. On an even broader scale, as I sit hear on a cold winter day in the southeast, I look in awe at the 22mb color image send earlier in the day back to earth from the planet Mars. It's an amazing shrinking world we live in.
What would Bell and Watson say if they could see how far things have come? Could they have imagined what those telegraph wires along railroad routes would become? Yet there is so much more technology peeking at us from around the next corner. I truly hope that on January 25, 2014 I can sit back and say "Wow, look how far communications have com in the last decade". Will the internet become that utility that becomes a part of every home and business? What will the weblog of 2014 consist of? And how far away will VOIP allow me to talk?