On the evening of August 10, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell sat down at the counter of Robert White’s Boot and Shoe Store in the village of Paris, Ontario, and held a receiver to his ear.
Thirteen kilometres up the Grand River, in the parlour of his father’s house in Brantford, a room of guests began to take turns reciting poetry, singing, and playing music into a transmitter horn.
Bell heard every note.
It was the world’s first long-distance telephone call, transmitted over a length of Dominion Telegraph wire rented for the evening.
The building at 97 Grand River Street North is still standing today — a small brick storefront on the main street of one of Ontario’s prettiest towns. On the wall, a historic plaque reads:
“On August 10, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell received in this building the world’s first successful long-distance telephone call. The transmission originated in Brantford, eight miles distant, over a telegraph wire.”
Six years earlier, in 1870, Paris had been the very first Canadian town in which the Bell family slept — they stayed a few weeks with a family friend, the Reverend Thomas Henderson, before continuing on to their farm at Tutela Heights near Brantford.
Paris welcomed him twice. Once as a young immigrant. Once as the inventor.
