The Charles Williams Jr. House, built in 1858, is a historic house in

Somerville, Massachusetts Somerville ( ) is a city located directly to the northwest of Boston, and north of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Cambridge, in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As of the 2020 United States Census, the city had a total population of 81, ...

. Charles Williams Jr. was a manufacturer of

electrical telegraph Electrical telegraphs were point-to-point text messaging systems, primarily used from the 1840s until the late 20th century. It was the first electrical telecommunications system and the most widely used of a number of early messaging systems ...

instruments at 109 Court Street in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

Alexander Graham Bell Alexander Graham Bell (, born Alexander Bell; March 3, 1847 – August 2, 1922) was a Scottish-born inventor, scientist and engineer who is credited with patenting the first practical telephone. He also co-founded the American Telephone and Te ...

and

Thomas A. Watson Thomas Augustus Watson (January 18, 1854 – December 13, 1934) was an assistant to Alexander Graham Bell, notably in the invention of the telephone in 1876. Life and work Born in Salem, Massachusetts, United States Watson was a bookkeeper and ...

experimented with the telephone in Williams' shop, and it was there that they first heard indistinct sounds transmitted on June 2, 1875. The first permanent residential telephone service in the world was installed at this house in 1877, connecting Williams' home with his shop on Court Street in Boston.John Lossing, Woodrow Wilson
Harpers' Encyclopædia Of United States From 458 A.D. To 1905
Harper & Brothers, 1905. Original from

Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsylvan ...

, Digitized: June 25, 2009. Williams had telephone Numbers 1 and 2 of the

Bell Telephone Company The Bell Telephone Company, a common law joint stock company, was organized in Boston, Massachusetts, on July 9, 1877, by Alexander Graham Bell's father-in-law Gardiner Greene Hubbard, who also helped organize a sister company – the New Englan ...

Charles Williams Jr House Sign SomervilleMA

References

Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Somerville, Massachusetts Alexander Graham Bell {{telecommunications-stub

See also

References