1916 Telephone Banquet: MIT’s Early Teleconference

On June 14, 1916, about 1,500 alumni, friends, and dignitaries convened in Symphony Hall, Boston, to celebrate the new campus opening up in Cambridge. Alumni also assembled in 34 other locations around the country and harnessed the most powerful technology of the time to communicate with each other—telephone.

The American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T) set up the connections for the telephone banquets and boasted that this was "the most elaborate trans-continental telephone stunt ever staged." From San Francisco to Minneapolis to New Orleans, alumni simultaneously listened to speeches by MIT President Richard Maclaurin, famous inventors Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison, aviator Orville Wright, and many others. They raised $3 million for the new Cambridge location and finished the evening by singing “The Star Spangled Banner,” led by the Washington, D.C. club.

The chief engineer of AT&T, J.J. Carty, remarked that it was especially fitting that this demonstration of simultaneous communications should occur at MIT since, he said, the telephone owed more to MIT than to any other institution.

Photos from the dinners show formally dressed diners looking rapt with telephone receivers pressed to their ears.

What did people eat at such a lavish and innovative event? The Boston club began with clear green turtle soup, followed by Penobscot salmon in sauce with peas, then larded filet of beef with potatoes and beans. After sweetbreads with asparagus, diners enjoyed a cigarette break. Thus rested and refreshed, they plowed through roast jumbo squab, farcies (stuffed vegetables), salad, fancy frozen pudding ices and assorted cakes, ending finally with cigars, coffee, and Clysmic (spring) water.