Boston and New York Learn to Talk

On March 27, 1884, engineers for the American Bell Telephone Company strung a new kind of wire between Boston and New York and put a call through it for the first time. The circuit ran the full 235 miles on two strands of hard-drawn copper, a tougher wire than the galvanized iron lines cities had relied on before, strong enough to hang from poles that whole distance without sagging or snapping. The Southern New England Telephone Company did much of the construction along the route. The test held for about ninety minutes before a cable failed at a river crossing, and it took several more months of work to fix that and the other problems that turned up. It was enough of a proof, though. Six months later, on September 4, 1884, the line opened to paying customers: two dollars for a daytime call between the two cities, one dollar after dark.