Alexander Graham Bell receives U.S. Patent No. 174,465 for the telephone. This invention becomes the foundation of AT&T.

On March 7, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell was granted U.S. Patent No. 174,465, titled Improvement in Telegraphy, by the United States Patent Office. The patent described a method for transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically by causing electrical undulations that corresponded to sound vibrations. This legal recognition marked the first successful patent protecting a practical telephone system. The patent was issued in Washington, D.C., just days before Bell’s first successful intelligible voice transmission on March 10, 1876, when he famously called to his assistant, “Mr. Watson—come here—I want to see you.” While the patent text focused on technical principles rather than a finished consumer device, it established Bell’s priority over other inventors working on similar technologies at the time, including Elisha Gray, whose competing patent caveat was filed the same day but later. Following the patent grant, Bell and his financial backers moved to commercialize the invention. In July 1877, they formed the Bell Telephone Company to license and operate telephone services in the United States. Over the following decades, this enterprise evolved through a series of reorganizations and mergers, eventually leading to the creation of AT&T, formally incorporated in 1885 as a long-distance subsidiary of the Bell system. Bell’s 1876 patent thus served as the legal and technical foundation for one of the world’s largest telecommunications organizations.