Call to Australia sets distance record
Oct. 28, 1930: A Los Angeles oil executive managed to talk by phone to a business associate in Australia, The Times reported under the headline, “Are You There, Australia? Voice Goes 17,000 Miles in Phone Link.”
“Thousands of miles of telephone wire and several large radio receiving and sending stations were brought into use ... when Edwin W. Pauley, president of the Petrol Corp., communicated by telephone with Murray R.A. Little,” the Los Angeles company’s Australian distributor in Sydney, the paper said.
The call, according to local officials, was the farthest in the history of telephone communication. “It was one of the first to be made on the new telephone link between the United States and Australia,” the article said.
The cost of a call from Los Angeles to Sydney was $57 for the first three minutes and $19 for each additional minute, The Times noted.
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