Today in 1877, the first telephone in Michigan rang, owned by the Grand Rapids Plaster Company, a friend of Alexander Graham Bell.
TRANSCRIPT
On this day in 1877, the very first telephone rang in Michigan. It belonged to the owner of the Grand Rapids Plaster Company, who was a close friend of Alexander Graham Bell. He sent his friend a pair of the new devices so that a public demonstration could be held. According to the Michigan Telephone Company history archives, The Bell Telephone company only incorporated about a month earlier. While the early models of the phone had some design problems, the public quickly accepted the new method of communication. Just one month after this public demonstration, the first commercial telephone line in Michigan went up, connecting a drug store in Detroit to its lab facility about 2 miles away. By October police stations in Detroit were connected to each other through phone lines. And by the end of the decade, cities across Michigan and the country were sprawling with cables carrying hundreds of thousands of conversations.