U.S. Census Bureau Daily Feature for March 10

WASHINGTON, March 10, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Following is the daily "Profile America" feature from the U.S. Census Bureau:

FIRST PHONE CALL

Profile America — Tuesday, March 10th. For many Americans, trying to envision life without our various telephones would be like trying to live without indoor plumbing. The telephone is 139 years old today. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell made the first, very local, telephone call in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Over a wire to his assistant in the next room, Bell said, "Mister Watson, come here; I want to see you." Only when Bell improved his invention to carry a voice for several miles did the public discover a need for them. Now, the public has an insatiable appetite for multipurpose phones, and there are 96 cell phone subscriptions for every 100 people in the population. Of America's 116 million occupied housing units, just 2.6 million, or 2.3 percent, have no phone service available. You can find more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau online at www.census.gov.

Sources: Kane's Famous First Facts, 7751
First call: http://www.americaslibrary.gov/jb/recon/jb_recon_telephone_1.html 
Cell phone subscriptions: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.CEL.SETS.P2 
Households with phones: http://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=ACS_13_1YR_DP04&prodType=table

Profile America is produced by the Center for New Media and Promotions of the U.S. Census Bureau. These daily features are available as produced segments, ready to air, on the Internet at http://www.census.gov (look for "Multimedia Gallery" by the "Newsroom" button). 

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SOURCE U.S. Census Bureau

Related Links

http://www.census.gov