 A telephone call, which for marketing purposes is claimed to be the first transcontinental telephone call, occurred on January 25, 1915, a day timed to coincide with the Panama&ndash;Pacific International Exposition celebrations. However, the transcontinental telephone line was first completed on June 17, 1914, and successfully first voice tested in July 1914. A 1998 U.S. postage stamp commemorates the completion of the line in 1914. 

 Left to Right: U.N. Bethell, Senior Vice-President Amercian Telephone &amp;amp; Telegraph Co., presiding; Hon.&amp;nbsp;George McAneny, President Board of Alderman, New York City;&amp;nbsp;John J. Carty, Chief Engineer, American Telephone &amp;amp; Telegraph Co.;&amp;nbsp;Alexander Graham Bell,&amp;nbsp;John Purroy Mitchel, Mayor of New York; C.E. Yost, President of Nebraska Telephone Co., Omaha; Hon. William A. Prendergast, Comptroller of the City of New York In front of Dr. Bell is the replica of his original telephone. In front of Mr. Bethell is the glass case containing a piece of the wire over which Dr. Bell and Mr. Watson carried on the first telephone conversation in the world.  

Old AT&T Building

1st transcontinental telephone call

A transatlantic telephone service began between New York and London with a phone conversation between Bell AT&amp;T President W.S. Gifford and Sir Evelyn P. Murray, the head of the British General Post Office.

Walter Sheeman Gifford, president of AT &amp; T, seated at a desk.

Telephone Building

1st Transatlantic telephone call

The site was formerly occupied by the Western Union Telegraph Building. The current 29-story, 422-foot-tall (129 m) building was commissioned after AT&amp;T's 1909 acquisition of Western Union. It was constructed from 1912 to 1916 under the leadership of Theodore Newton Vail, to designs by William W. Bosworth.

although one section was not completed until 1922. 

Sited over the former Western Union Building on In 1932 a long distance telephone call between the US and Europe was routed through AT&amp;T.It was the site of one end of the first transcontinental telephone call, the first intercity Picturephone call, and the first transatlantic telephone call. Though AT&amp;T's headquarters relocated to 550 Madison Avenue in 1984, 195 Broadway remains in use as an office building as of 2020.

The Greek design carried into the large lobby, clad with marble walls and floors, and containing sculptural ornament by&amp;nbsp;Paul Manship&amp;nbsp;and&amp;nbsp;Gaston Lachaise.  

'Built in 1923 as the Headquarters for American Telephone and TelegraphWilliam Welles Bosworth, Architect'

Old AT&T Building (195 Broadway)

AT&amp;T had long believed in the vision of adding video to telephone calls. Bell Labs, AT&amp;T’s R&amp;D division, held a well-publicized demonstration of its television research at its New York Headquarters in April 1927; the centerpiece of the event was a conversation between US Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover in Washington and AT&amp;T President Walter Gifford in New York. Hoover’s live moving image was seen, at 50 lines resolution, by both Gifford and the invited audience.

By 1927 AT&amp;T had created its earliest electromechanical television-videophone called the ikonophone (from Greek: "image-sound"), which operated at 18 frames per second and occupied half a room full of equipment cabinets.An early U.S. test in 1927 had their then-Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover address an audience in New York City from Washington, D.C.; although the audio portion was two-way, the video portion was one-way with only those in New York being able to see Hoover.

On this day in 1927, then Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover’s image was transmitted via AT&amp;T from Washington to New York using a mechanical system developed by Herbert E. Ives. This is the first time television was sent on long distance wires.In the photo above, Dr. Ives is on the far right, watching AT&amp;T president Walter Gifford, in New York, speak with Secretary Hoover in Washington. The conversation, in which both men could see and hear each other, was a two way television/telephone hookup, which is also a first.Although this is the first time a television signal was sent over long distance lines, it was not the first time pictures were sent on a telephone line. That occurred Oct. 3, 1922, as Charles Francis Jenkins, transmitted “shadowgraph” images from his studio in a Washington DC suburb to the main post office there, via telephone wires, some five miles away. Hoover was the first president to appear on TV, even though he wasn’t president yet.&nbsp;

Old AT&T Headquarters

1st public demonstration of inter-city television 

AT&amp;T provides voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications and professional services to businesses, consumers, and government agencies.

AT&T Co. (American Telephone and Telegraph Company)

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