The achievement was a long time coming. Bell System engineers achieved the first voice transmission across the Atlantic, connecting Virginia and Paris briefly in 1915. In 1916, they held the first two-way conversation with a ship at sea. When World War I came, however, limits on technology and material availability put such work on hold.
Then in 1926, the first two-way conversation across the Atlantic was managed, followed by commercial transatlantic telephone service in 1927.
