Title: 
Headings: 

Content: the telephone. Before the telephone was invented, it was impossible to communicate by voice across any kind of distance. The landlinein 1876, along with the telegraph a few decades earlier, revolutionized communications, leading leap by leap to the powerful computers tucked snugly in our pockets and purses today. And in the process, living standards exploded, with inflation-adjusted GDPsurging from US$1,200 per person in 1870 to more than $10,000 today. What follows are a few facts I like to share with my students, as well as several others that you might not be aware of about how the phone has reshaped our lives – and continues to do so. ‘Watson – I want to see you!’ One of the reasons I use the telephone in my lectures is because inventor Alexander Graham Bell actually created his phone and made the first call while a professor at Boston University, where I teacheconomics. Alexander Graham Bell opened the first long-distance line from New York to Chicago in 1892. Gilbert H. Grosvenor Collection/Library of Congress., CC BY
The first telephone call happened on March 10, 1876, a few days after the Scottish-born inventor received a patent for the device.