Taking the Call

We take a look at some of the most famous phone calls in history. And then we watch the little boy Samuel take a call from the Lord.

"Mr. Watson, come here -- I want to see you."

Those are the famous first words ever transmitted by telephone, spoken by Alexander Graham Bell March 10, 1876, into an early telephone prototype and heard by his assistant, Thomas A. Watson, in their Boston laboratory. The proof that Watson, who was in another part of the lab, heard those words on a device at his end was that he came as summoned. Watson, we can say, was the first to "take the call."

Of course, we've been doing so ever since, and some have been memorable. In 1969, for example, astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong took a call from President Richard Nixon on the moon. In 2015, the U.S. World Soccer team, which had just won the World Cup, took a congratulatory call from President Barack Obama.

Some calls are more infamous than famous, of course. On the night of June 17, 1972, Washington, D.C., police took a call from a security guard named Frank Wills, telling them he had found duct tape over a lock on a door in the...