Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Ahoy! Ahoy!

     All over the world, the word, "Hello" will often be one of the first words spoken when a phone call is answered. It comes so natural to many of us, that we often say it without thinking. A friend or someone from your family calls, and the first thing they ask usually isn't, "How are you?" or, "How's the kids?" or even, "Can I borrow some sugar?", it's, "Hello?". There even seems to be some sort or unspoken rule that any other greeting lies somewhere in between being rude and angry.  Out of all the greetings that we have, why was this word picked as the one we use to answer the phone?

     It looks like the person who can take the credit for getting all of us to answer the phone with a, "Hello?" is Thomas Edison. Back in 1877, Edison was helping to bring the telephone system to Pittsburgh, Pa. when he produced the first account of, "Hello" spelled that way in the English language. Edison wrote a note to one of his partners suggesting that instead of having a bell ring on the telephone, the person calling would just shout, "Hello!" as, according to Edison, that word in particular could, "be heard 10 to 20 feet away". The word, "hello" seems to be derived from the word, "hullo" which was a slang word used to express that you were surprised as well as to call attention to something. Edison's spelling of, "Hullo" as, "Hello" seemed to stick at his Menlo Park research lab, and from there it spread as they worked on improving and expanding the telephone system.

     While it took time for, "Hello" to become the commonplace greeting, there was another greeting favored by the creator of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell. Bell favored the greeting, which never really took off, of, "Ahoy! Ahoy!". That's something to keep in mind if you ever get tired of saying, "Hello", maybe, "Ahoy! Ahoy!" could be used on talk like a pirate day?







1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7xXSw07zrio
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hello
3. http://www.collectorcafe.com/article_archive.asp?article=800&id=1507
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison

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