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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio, Ohoy,

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Speaker 1: and Welcome to This Day in History Class, a show

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Speaker 1: that answers the call of history every day of the week.

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Speaker 1: I'm Gay, Blues Yay, and today we're looking at how

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Speaker 1: the Wizard of Menlo Park helped resolve one of the

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Speaker 1: first questions of telephone etiquette, what do you say when

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Speaker 1: someone picks up the phone? The answer wasn't as clear

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Speaker 1: cut as you might expect. The day was August fifteenth,

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Speaker 1: eighteen seventy seven. Thomas Edison proposed saying hello when greeting

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Speaker 1: someone on the telephone. The phone had been invented only

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Speaker 1: one year earlier, and at the time it was thought

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Speaker 1: of mostly as a business tool. The system worked much

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Speaker 1: like an early version of walkie talkies. When two phones

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Speaker 1: were can they formed a line of communication that was

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Speaker 1: permanently open. That way, an employee in one office could

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Speaker 1: simply speak into the phone's mouthpiece and be immediately heard

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Speaker 1: through the phone in a different office. The only problem

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Speaker 1: was there was no way to alert a person on

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Speaker 1: one side that someone on the other side wanted to

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Speaker 1: have a conversation. Some offices considered installing alarm bells to

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Speaker 1: get each other's attention, but renowned inventor Thomas Edison suggested

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Speaker 1: a different approach. He did so in a letter to

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Speaker 1: TBA David, the president of the Central District and Printing

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Speaker 1: Telegraph Company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. David was preparing to set

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Speaker 1: up a telephone system in his home city and had

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Speaker 1: reached out to his friend Thomas Edison for advice on

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Speaker 1: best practices. In a response dated August fifteenth, eighteen seventy seven,

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Speaker 1: Edison told him quote, friend David, I do not think

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Speaker 1: we shall need a call bell, as Hello can be

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Speaker 1: heard ten to twenty feet away. What you think, given

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Speaker 1: how ubiquitous Hello is today, you might imagine that it's

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Speaker 1: been the standard English language greeting for as long as

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Speaker 1: people have been speaking English. In reality, though the word's

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Speaker 1: been in use for less than two centuries of the

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Speaker 1: one thousand year history of English. That said, the etymology

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Speaker 1: of hello can be traced back much farther. The word hail,

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Speaker 1: for instance, has been used as a greeting or salutation

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Speaker 1: since the Middle Ages, and it was still in use

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Speaker 1: by the time of the Renaissance. In fact, William Shakespeare

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Speaker 1: used it in two ways as a greeting like in

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Speaker 1: the line hail to your grace, and as a form

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Speaker 1: of praise Hail Caesar. From there, several variants emerged, including hollow, hallohillo,

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Speaker 1: and holler. Around the same time, the British began shouting halloo,

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Speaker 1: both to attract the attention of someone at a distance

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Speaker 1: and to urge on hounds during a hunt. Another British term,

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Speaker 1: hello with a U, is a bit trickier. According to

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Speaker 1: the Oxford English Dictionary, the word hello first appeared in

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Speaker 1: the early nineteenth century, but it wasn't primarily used as

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Speaker 1: a greeting. Instead, it was an expression of surprise, as in, well, hello,

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Speaker 1: what have we here? Still? With all those similar sounding

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Speaker 1: greetings floating around, it was only a matter of time

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Speaker 1: before someone spelled the word with an e. The first

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Speaker 1: known use of hello in print comes from an eighteen

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Speaker 1: twenty six issue of a Connecticut newspaper, The Norwich Courier.

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Speaker 1: The sentence in question read Hello, Jim, I'll tell you

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Speaker 1: what I've a sharp knife and feel as if I'd

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Speaker 1: like to cut up something or other. From then on,

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Speaker 1: hello and hello were used interchangeably, usually as a way

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Speaker 1: to flag someone down or to convey surprise. It wasn't

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Speaker 1: until the late nineteenth century that the word caught on

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Speaker 1: is in everyday greeting, and according to some historians, that

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Speaker 1: boom in popularity may never have happened without Thomas Edison

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Speaker 1: and the telephone. It's clear that Edison didn't invent the

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Speaker 1: word hello, but we can make an educated guess about

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Speaker 1: why he suggested using it on the telephone. In July

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Speaker 1: of eighteen seventy seven, while tinkering with a prototype phonograph,

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Speaker 1: Edison famously shouted helloo into the mouthpiece. If he liked

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Speaker 1: what he heard, The inventor may have continued using the

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Speaker 1: greeting in his other experiments with recorded sound. Then, when

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Speaker 1: he was asked how to start a conversation on the telephone,

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Speaker 1: he may have just thrown out his go to greeting,

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Speaker 1: spelling it with an E instead of an A. Of course,

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Speaker 1: using Hello as a greeting had other appeals besides Edison's endorsement.

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Speaker 1: For one thing, it was much simpler and snappier than

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Speaker 1: other greetings used in the early day of the telephone,

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Speaker 1: such as do I get you? And are you there?

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Speaker 1: The only other real contender was the word a hoy

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Speaker 1: a nautical greeting that had been in use for at

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Speaker 1: least a century longer than Hello. The actual inventor of

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Speaker 1: the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, wanted to use a hoy

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Speaker 1: as the standard greeting, and while he did get his

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Speaker 1: way for a time, Edison's suggestion eventually won out. The

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Speaker 1: thing that really sealed the deal for Hello was the

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Speaker 1: publication of the first phone book in eighteen seventy eight.

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Speaker 1: The how to section at the front of the book

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Speaker 1: suggested two choices for a greeting, the formal question what

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Speaker 1: is wanted and the much friendlier Hello. The same suggestion

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Speaker 1: was made in the operating manuals of the first public

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Speaker 1: telephone exchanges, which it's worth noting were equipped by Thomas Edison.

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Speaker 1: The manual's recommendation on how to end a phone conversation

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Speaker 1: by saying that is all was less excess. Over the

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Speaker 1: next few years, telephone service widened exponentially, necessitating the use

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Speaker 1: of switchboards and switchboard operators to connect and coordinate the calls.

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Speaker 1: Many of those operators, all of whom were women, greeted

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Speaker 1: their callers with a simple Hello, and those interactions helped

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Speaker 1: cement the words use in the public's mind. In fact,

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Speaker 1: the greeting became so closely linked with telephones that people

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Speaker 1: started calling the operators Hello girls. Thanks to Edison and

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Speaker 1: the Hello Girls, the greeting seems to have beaten out

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Speaker 1: ahoy by as early as eighteen eighty. That was the

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Speaker 1: year when Mark Twain published a comedic sketch called A

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Speaker 1: Telephonic Conversation, which included the first known use of the

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Speaker 1: word hello in literature, a sure sign that the greeting

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Speaker 1: was in common use by then. It's fair to say

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Speaker 1: that Thomas Edison helped change the meaning of the word

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Speaker 1: Hello from an exclamation of surprise to an everyday greeting.

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Speaker 1: But one per person who never got on board with

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Speaker 1: the idea was Alexander Graham Bell. He stuck to his

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Speaker 1: guns and continued using a whoy as his telephone greeting

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Speaker 1: of choice for the rest of his life. I'm Gabe

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Speaker 1: Lucier and hopefully you now know a little more about

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Speaker 1: history today than you did yesterday. If you'd like to

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Speaker 1: keep up with the show, consider following us on Twitter, Facebook,

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Speaker 1: and Instagram at TDI HC Show. You can also rate

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Speaker 1: and review the show on Apple Podcasts, or you can

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Speaker 1: send your feedback directly by writing to This Day at

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Speaker 1: iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks to Chandler Mays for producing the show,

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Speaker 1: and thanks to you for listening. I'll see you back

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Speaker 1: here again tomorrow for another day in History class