Today -100: March 8, 1926: Mr. Watson, come here, and tell me how tall the Woolworth Building is

For the 50th anniversary of Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone (its patent, anyway), a wireless phone call is successfully made between New York’s AT&T offices and the British Post Office in London. Reporters talked with their trans-Atlantic counterparts, two minutes each. They chit-chat about night life and whether you can obtain liquor in New York (yes). A reporter from the Westminster Gazette asks how tall the Woolworth Building is, to settle a bet about whether it’s taller than the Eiffel Tower. There was a phone cribbage game. In other words, they ran out of stuff to say each other. The listeners on the NY side say the sound quality is equivalent to local service, those in London say it’s better. Trans-Atlantic telephone isn’t ready to go commercial yet because of intermittent static and because so many radio-heads have built sets that can listen in on calls.

The 36-year-old Charlie Chaplin is dyeing his graying hair.

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