November 26—Conversation over railroad telegraph wires—16 miles, Boston to Salem. 1877, February 12—Bell’s first public lecture and demonstration of his new invention given before the Essex Institute in Salem, where he had lived and had done some of his experimenting. April 4—First outdoor line for regular telephone use installed—Boston to Somerville. May 17—Telephone lines first interconnected by means of an experimental switchboard at 342 Washington Street, Boston. July 9—“Bell Telephone Co., Gardiner G. Hubbard, Trustee,” the first telephone organization, formed. August 1—First stock issue—5,000 shares—dividing interest in the business between seven original stockholders: A. G. Bell, Mrs. Bell, G. G. Hubbard, Mrs. Hubbard, C. E. Hubbard, Thomas Sanders and Thomas A. Watson. August 10—First Bell telephone employee hired in Boston—Robert W. Devonshire. 1878, January 28—Opening of first commercial telephone exchange at New Haven, Conn., serving 8 lines and 21 telephones. May 22—Theodore N. Vail accepts General Managership of Bell Telephone Company. 1879, March 13—Certificate of Incorporation filed in Boston for National Bell Telephone Company for purpose of unifying telephone development throughout the country. November 10—Agreement signed by Western Union Telegraph Co. admitting validity of Bell’s basic telephone patents. 1880, December 31—47,900 Bell telephones in the United States. 1881, January 1—First telephone dividend, inaugurating a continuous regular series of payments to stockholders. January 10—Formal opening of telephone service by overhead wire between Boston and Providence—45 miles. A metallic circuit was first successfully tried out on this route by J. J. Carty. 1882, April 16—Experimental laying of underground telephone cable—5 miles, Attleboro to West Mansfield, Mass. 1884, March 27—Telephone service opened experimentally between Boston and New York by overhead wires of hard-drawn copper—235 miles. 1885, March 3—Certificate of Incorporation filed in Albany, N. Y., for the American Telephone and Telegraph Company for the purpose of effecting intercommunication “with one or more points in each and every other city, town or place in said State, and in each and every other of the United States, and in Canada and Mexico—and also by cable and other appropriate means with the rest of the known world.” Telephone Milestones