In an era before Zoom and Microsoft Teams, transatlantic calls were an expensive business.
On 6 March 1926, the inaugural two-way transatlantic call was made between London and New York City, and less than a year later, the first service was launched, marked by the President of America's AT&T company, Walter S. Gifford in New York speaking to head of the British General Post Office, Sir Evelyn P. Murray, in London. What did they talk about? The weather, of course.
It's said that by the end of that day on 7 January 1927, over $6 million worth of business had been conducted between the two cities — an instant revolution in commercial communications. But then, you had to speculate to accumulate; those initial cross-pond calls cost in the region of $25 a minute (equivalent to around $460 now). And it didn't take long for the bills to start racking up.
In 1928, an American businessman by the name of Floyd.B. Odlum showed how easy it was to fritter away your cash on the phone, when he rang up a business associate in New York from his room at the Savoy in London, and they spoke for 95 minutes. The call — confirmed by the Transatlantic telephone service to be "easily a record" in terms of both length and cost — set back Odlum (or his business at least) a staggering £285. That's over £15,500 in today's money. Although the story was splashed over newspapers the next day (great publicity for Odlum) he refused to reveal exactly what the call had been about, but he seemed happy about it nonetheless. "Was it worth it?" Odlum said to a newspaper, "It sure was — if you'll excuse an Americanism."
Odlum, however, was a mere spendthrift compared to American businessman, William C Durant, who had recently shelled out £5,000 on long-distance phone calls between London, New York, Berlin and Paris — in under a week. That's over quarter of a million pounds in today's money.
Another prestigious hotel, Brown's, claims to have been the site of London's (and the UK's) first telephone call, made during Alexander Graham Bell's visit in 1877.
