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Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922, front), Scottish inventor, and Thomas Watson (1854-1934, directly behind Bell), US inventor and telephone pioneer. Watson helped Bell to develop a practical and workable telephone. On the 10th March 1876 Watson heard the first words transmitted electrically by wire, when Bell spoke into his experimental telephone in a different room of the same building. Photographed in 1916. (KEYSTONE/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/LIBRARY OF CONGRESS/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY)