Today’s DOTD - Drink Of The Day - is a Tin Can Telephone Cocktail inspired by the first ever successful phone call ever, which originated in Boston.
Many know the story of the telephone’s invention by Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Watson, ending in the call with the famous words “Mr. Watson, come here. I want to see you.” However, did you know that very phone call took place in Boston?
In fact, much of the experimentation and research to develop the first telephone happened in Boston, leading up to the world’s first phone call on March 10, 1876.
Here’s the full story of how the telephone came to be in Massachusetts’ capital city.
History of the telephone’s invention in Boston
Born in 1847 to a mother who was fully deaf and a father who worked as an elocutionist (a professional public speaker), Alexander Graham Bell was interested in sound and science from a very young age.
In the 1870s, Bell moved to Boston to continue experiments on the harmonic telegraph and teach at multiple Boston area schools for deaf students - some of whom had parents that would later act as Bell’s backers.
Bell became a professor of sound for Boston University’s School of Oratory in 1874. According to the B.U. Bridge, Boston University’s community newspaper, it was during this time that Bell’s research lead him to be interested in transmitting the human voice by wire.
For two years, Bell experimented in Boston with his assistant Thomas Watson, an electrical worker from Salem. Bell was granted a telephone patent on March 7, 1876, beating out Illinois-based scientist Elisha Gray, who also was working on a telephone.
Three days later, on March 10, 1876, Bell successfully made the world’s first telephone call from his lab at 5 Exeter Pl. in Boston, saying the famous words “Mr. Watson, come here. I want to see you.” Watson, on a different floor of the Boston building, heard every word through the phone.
A plaque commemorating the first phone call can be seen today at 5 Exeter Pl. There is also a historical marker on Cambridge St. near City Hall, which marks a different lab space where Bell and Watson constructed much of the telephone equipment.
Though Bell did much of his research for the telephone in Boston, he was not born there. According to Lemelson MIT, Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. After completing his education at the University of Edinburgh and the University of London, Bell moved to Canada with his family for a year, then moved to Boston in 1871, where his career flourished. Bell split the rest of his life between Boston and Cape Breton Island in Canada, where he died in 1922.
While you could raise your phone to salute Dr. Bell, we suggest raising a glass of today’s Drink Of The Day - a Tin Can Telephone Cocktail!
Ingredients
Here’s what you’re going to need for this drink:
