--- title: Telephone History: First Transatlantic Speech Transmission description: On Oct. 21, 1915, a voice from Virginia was heard in Paris canonical: https://time.com/4081211/transatlantic-speech-transmission-1915/ author: Julia Zorthian article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-10-22T17:00:06.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T11:57:50.083Z article:section: History og:title: The First Time Speech Crossed the Atlantic Ocean og:description: On Oct. 21, 1915, a voice from Virginia was heard in Paris og:url: https://time.com/4081211/transatlantic-speech-transmission-1915/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0bc824ce0cd5315d/6988695a3c1639613b45a584/radio.jpeg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Western Electric Company's Model Number 8-A Amplifier With Three Stages Of Amplification Tubes-Two Number 102-D & A Number 205-D Tubes og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The First Time Speech Crossed the Atlantic Ocean twitter:description: On Oct. 21, 1915, a voice from Virginia was heard in Paris twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0bc824ce0cd5315d/6988695a3c1639613b45a584/radio.jpeg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Speech Crossed The Atlantic for the First Time 100 Years Ago This Week  by [Julia Zorthian](https://time.com/author/julia-zorthian/)  ## Julia Zorthian Oct 22, 2015 5:00 PM UTC  Radio Telephone Broadcasting Equipment from the early 1900s Radio Telephone Broadcasting Equipment from the early 1900sMuseum of Science and Industry / Getty Images  by [Julia Zorthian](https://time.com/author/julia-zorthian/)  ## Julia Zorthian Oct 22, 2015 5:00 PM UTC A hundred years ago, the word “hello” spoken in Arlington, VA was [heard in Paris](https://books.google.com/books?id=VJY2AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA497&lpg=PA497&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false). The word originated from the vibrations in the vocal chords of Mr. B. B. Webb, an engineer at the Arlington radio station. That sound passed through Webb’s lips, crossed Virginia airspace, entered a radio mouthpiece. There it was converted into electromagnetic waves, and in that moment on Oct. 21, 1915, human speech did something it had never done before: crossed the Atlantic. On the European end, an antenna atop the Eiffel Tower picked up the radio waves. Two engineers with the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (now AT&T) stationed at the receiver, which demodulated information from the signals into audio, heard Webb’s voice on the Paris side. The two engineers were H.E. Shreeve and A.M. Curtis, who reported that they could also hear other phrases from Webb, concluding with “Goodbye, Shreeve.” That night, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company president Theo Vail [sent a dispatch](https://books.google.com/books?id=VJY2AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA497&lpg=PA497&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false) that said: --- > “” --- In 1915, the telephone call was not particularly new; Alexander Graham Bell’s famous first phone call had taken place in 1876 using a liquid transmitter and electromagnetic receiver. And the first wireless phone call took place four years later, with speech traveling over 213 meters to Bell’s laboratory. The speech transmission to Paris was possible because engineer and tower designer Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel wanted to keep the tower that bore his name useful. So, he [affixed an antenna](http://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-eiffel-tower) to the top in 1898, so that people could conduct experiments in wireless telegraphy. The city subsequently re-funded the tower rather than disassembling it for scrap metal. Paris and Arlington had [exchanged wireless signals for the first time](http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9801E2D71E3BE633A25751C2A9679D946296D6CF) two years earlier, in 1913, to measure the difference in longitude between the two cities. After the speech transmission in 1915, it would then take more than 11 more years for the first two-way transatlantic call to take place, between New York and London (and in the meantime, TIME was founded; read the magazine item about the call [here](http://time.com/vault/issue/1927-01-17/page/28/)). Of course, speech transmission has come a long way in the past hundred years. Radio calls eventually developed into [mobile radio telephone](http://time.com/vault/issue/1952-09-29/page/86/) systems, which gave way to cellular systems, then digital cellular networks and the technology carrying cell phone calls today. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4081211/transatlantic-speech-transmission-1915/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4081211/transatlantic-speech-transmission-1915/"},"headline":"Speech Crossed The Atlantic for the First Time 100 Years Ago This Week","datePublished":"2015-10-22T17:00:06.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T11:57:50.083Z","description":"On Oct. 21, 1915, a voice from Virginia was heard in Paris","url":"https://time.com/4081211/transatlantic-speech-transmission-1915/","keywords":["Technology","radio","cell phone"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0bc824ce0cd5315d/6988695a3c1639613b45a584/radio.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Julia Zorthian","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/julia-zorthian/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0bc824ce0cd5315d/6988695a3c1639613b45a584/radio.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Western Electric Company's Model Number 8-A Amplifier With Three Stages Of Amplification Tubes-Two Number 102-D & A Number 205-D Tubes","caption":"Western Electric Company's Model Number 8-A Amplifier With Three Stages Of Amplification Tubes-Two Number 102-D & A Number 205-D Tubes","creditText":"Museum of Science and Industry / Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/technology/","name":"Technology"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4081211/transatlantic-speech-transmission-1915/","name":"Speech Crossed The Atlantic for the First Time 100 Years Ago This Week"}}]}] ```