The first telephone call (1876) : "Mr. Watson, come here, I want you"

After hearing their telephone first transmit a sound in June 1875, Bell and Watson spent the next 40 weeks making their telephone actually speak. Finally, on March 10, 1876, Watson heard Bell's voice distinctly in the receiver saying: "Mr Watson, come here, I want you."
Watson, who was in another room, dropped the receiver and rushed with wild joy across the hall to tell the glad tidings to Bell. "I can hear you!" he shouted breathlessly. "I can hear the WORDS."

America's telegraph companies saw right away that Bell's telephone posed a powerful threat to their businesses and they tried to fight back. The Western Union company called on Thomas Alva Edison to develop an alternative to Bell's invention. The American Speaking Telephone Company in New York (a Western Union subsidiary) then went head-to-head with The Bell Telephone Company of Boston.

Within months, Bell sued Western Union for infringement of his patents. Western Union argued that it was Elisha Gray who had invented the telephone - but lost the court battle and had to hand over Edison's telephone rights and withdraw from the telephone business.

The Bell company absorbed the American Speaking Telephone Company and re-emerged as the American Bell Telephone Company in April 1880.