"Mr. Watson -- come here! Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922)
notebook, March 10, 1876 The Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers
Alexander Graham Bell's notebook entry of March 10, 1876,
describes the first successful experiment with the telephone,
during which he spoke through the instrument to his assistant,
Thomas A. Watson, in the next room. Bell writes, "I then shouted
into M [the mouthpiece] the following sentence: 'Mr. Watson--
come here--I want to see you.' To my delight he came and
declared that he had heard and understood what I said." Bell was
born into a family deeply interested in speech and hearing. Both
his father and grandfather were teachers of elocution, and
throughout his life Bell had a keen interest in teaching the
deaf to speak. Both his mother and the woman he married--Mabel
Hubbard, one of his pupils--were deaf. The Bell papers were
donated to the Library of Congress by his heirs on June 2, 1975,
the centenary of the day Bell discovered the principle that made
the invention of the telephone