Since U.S. transcontinental telephone service was inaugurated by a call between Alexander Graham Bell, who invented the first practical telephone, and Thomas Watson, his assistant who later used his royalties from the Bell Telephone Company to found the Fore River Ship and Engine Building Company, which would become home to one of the biggest shipyards in America by 1901.

That’s right, it’s only been one hundred years since the inaugural telephone call from New York to San Francisco was made by Bell to Watson. And yet, one hundred years later we can call, email, tweet, and message in real time not just with New York and San Francisco, but with London and Shanghai.

When you consider how many years we existed as a civilization before we even had a light-bulb, it’s simply amazing.