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We’ve Come A Long Way Mr. Bell

© Mary M. Alward

Can you imagine what it would be like for telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell to visit the world today and see how his invention has grown? Would he be shocked, happy, appalled or horrified?

The first telephone went on sale for purchase by the public in Canada on July 10, 1877. At the time, only forty people living in Toronto, Ontario, were willing to pay the expensive price of $50.00 annually (a year) to have a telephone installed in their homes.

The first person to make a business call in Canada was Prime Minister Alexander Mackenzie. He made that first call in 1877.

The telephone system of that era (time) only allowed for a telephone subscriber (user) to call one other household. If you wanted to telephone a friend across town, she/he was the only person you could call.

The Great Depression of the 1930's, brought an end to many household telephones. Times were hard. People couldn't afford to buy food. The Bell Telephone Company (now Bell Canada) disconnected more phones than it installed. It looked like the telephone was going to fade away. But when WWII broke out and jobs were plentiful once more, the telephone made a come-back.

The CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) took their cameras to the Toronto office of the Bell Telephone Company on July 10, 1962, the 85th anniversary of the first telephone sale in Canada. Forty operators sat in front of the long switchboard connecting telephone lines for over 850,000 people in the city. One of the Bell operators told the CBC that by 1965, people would be able to dial a code and forward their calls to another number. She was right. Today, many telephone subscribers take advantage of the call forwarding feature on their telephones.

July 10, 2004 will mark the 127th anniversary of the first telephone sale in Canada. In the last few weeks, we've looked at the history of the telephone. Now, let's take a look at the telephone of today.

Not only do we have call forwarding, on home telephones, we have call waiting, call blocking, and call display. We can put people on hold. (For many years this could only be done from business phones.) We can fax messages around the world in seconds. We have voice mail, (which drives most of us crazy) visual call waiting, three-way calling, conference calls (used by business so every person can take part in the call) call return, ident-a-call, call screen, and call privacy. We have mobile phones and cell phones. Wherever we go and whatever we do, we can stay in touch with family, friends or business unless we choose not to. We can call home from a ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean or from a plane thousands of feet over the Earth. Astronauts can keep in touch with NASA from outer space. Use of the telephone and progress made from the original invention are endless. Technology is growing every day . What will the future hold in store? One day our children and grandchildren will look back on these days of the telephone as history. What futuristic technology will they enjoy?

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