The first presidential phone call took place in Rhode Island, when Alexander Graham Bell called 19th President Rutherford B. Hayes as he attended a clambake at Rocky Point Park. 

To Visit: Rocky Point Ave. | Nothing to see but a sign, but you can stand where the first Presidential phone call took place, if that’s a thing you want to do. 

Episode Source Material: 

• Rutherford B. Hayes has first phone installed in White House
• A clambake, slurs and phone sex: The long, strange history of presidential calls
• American RadioWorks - The President Calling
• Alexander Graham Bell and Rhode Island
• March 10, 1876: 'Mr. Watson, Come Here ... '
• First speech transmitted by telephone - HISTORY
• TBT: When the First Telephone Call Was Made
• Encyclopedia Brunoniana | Blake, Eli Whitney
• Image 2 of Speech by Alexander Graham Bell, November 2, 1911
• History of the telephone
• Elisha Gray and Alexander Bell telephone controversy
• Elisha Gray and the Telephone Controversy with Alexander Graham Bell
• The Bell Versus Gray Telephone Dispute: Resolving a 144-Year-Old Controversy [Scanning Our Past]
• Obama’s whopper about Rutherford B. Hayes and the telephone
• Before 1929, Nobody Thought the President Needed a Telephone in his Office
• Hotline established between Washington and Moscow - HISTORY
• From the Telegram to Twitter, How Presidents Make Contact With Foreign Leaders
• Electrical telegraph
• History of the telephone
• Who answers the White House phone, anyway?
• Great Invention, But Who Would Ever Want to Use One? – Quote Investigator