Today in 1876, Alexander Graham Bell gave a public demonstration of his new invention, the telephone, at the Centennial Exhibition, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Steven Lubar in InfoCulture:
Bell demonstrated three induction telephones to a select jury that included Sir William Thomson, perhaps the best-known British electrical scientist and Dom Pedro, emperor of Brazil. It made an enormous hit: Dom Pedro expressed everyone’s astonishment with the new machine by exclaiming (so legend has it), “My God, it talks!”