More phones were sold in 2024 than cars, computers, and televisions combined. Over eight billion cell phones exist it the world, and that number is steadily increasing.
It’s easy to take for granted the ability to communicate with someone instantly by voice—whether that person is cross-town, cross-country, or even on another continent. It doesn’t matter if the transmission is wired or wireless, sending messages through the air has completely transformed the human experience. But there was a time before phones existed. The origin of the telephone, its debut to the world at large, happened on an exhibition floor at a World’s Fair.
When the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition opened on May 10, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell was in Massachusetts, employed as a professor at Boston University. Two months earlier, on March 7, he received a patent for the telephone. In mid-May, after the Philadelphia show had already opened, Bell demonstrated his invention at the American Academy of the Arts in Boston. It was a success, and his future father-in-law convinced him to exhibit in Philadelphia. Bell had his day job and could not travel to the show at that time. He sent a modified version of his phone to display; it did not create a sensation and was initially passed over by the judges and the rest of the visitors at the show.
After classes concluded at the university, Bell travelled to Philadelphia. He was in his booth on June 25 when judges began reviewing the technology exhibits. Running behind schedule, they planned to consider only previously reviewed products. As they walked past Bell’s booth, however, Emperor Don Pedro of Brazil paused. He recognized Professor Bell from a meeting in Boston and stopped to ask why he was there. Bell handed Don Pedro a receiver. The Emperor listened. Then he said, “My God, it talks!”
Bell won the gold medal for technology, and his instrument became the talk of the show.
The Bell Telephone Company was founded in 1877, and the following year, they displayed the phone was displayed across the ocean at the Paris Exposition. The rest, as they say, is history: more shows, more awareness, more sales.
By 1886, ten years after the Centennial, Bell Telephone installed 114,000 miles of wire across America. Despite being embroiled in patent fights with Elisha Gray, and with the company still in its infancy, they generated revenue equivalent to $102 million. At the 1915 World’s Fair in San Francisco, Bell and Watson reenacted the first phone call—only this time it was a transcontinental one, with one person in New York and the other in San Francisco.
Bell Telephone became the world’s largest corporation until it was broken apart by the U.S. Justice Department in 1984. At the time, the company employed over one million people, and assets totaled approximately $379 billion. Impressive growth for 108 years … and like the success of many other companies, it all started at an exhibition floor.
Tradeshows work. They work very well.
