Today in Tech History

1881 – The Oriental Telephone Company

Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison established the Oriental Telephone Company Ltd. These companies were licensed to sell telephones in other countries such as Greese, Turkey, India, Japan, China and more.

Countries receiving phones would have 3-digit numbers, which changed to 4, 5, and then finally 7.

1915 – First Transcontinental Phone Service

Alexander Graham Bell inaugurates U.S. Transcontinental telephone service, speaking from New York to Thomas Watson in San Francisco. President Woodrow Wilson and the Mayors of both cities were also involved in the call.

1921 – A play called Rossum’s Universal Robots (R.U.R.) by Karel Capek debuted at the National Theater in Prague. It was the first appearance of the word robot. Spoiler alert, the robots end up killing all the humans but one.

1959 – First Transcontinental Jet Flight

The first transcontinental commercial jet trip was made by an American Airlines Boeing 707, from Los Angeles to New York.

1979 – Robot Kills Auto Worker

Robert Williams of Michigan was the first human to be killed by a robot. He was 25 years old. The accident at the Ford Motor Company resulted in a $10 million dollar lawsuit. The jury deliberated for two-and-a-half hours before announcing the decision against Unit Handling Systems, a division of Litton Industries. It ordered the manufacturer of the one-ton robot that killed Williams to pay his family $10 million. The robot was designed to retrieve parts from storage, but its work was deemed too slow. Williams was retrieving a part from a storage bin when the robot’s arm hit him in the head, killing him instantly. In the suit, the family claimed the robot had no safety mechanisms, lacking even a warning noise to alert workers that it was nearby.