ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL invented the
telephone. But Thomas Alva Edison coined the
greeting.

The word "hello," it appears, came straight
from the fertile brain of the wizard of Menlo
Park, N.J., who concocted the sonorous
syllables to resolve one of the first crises of
techno-etiquette: What do you say to start a
telephone conversation?

Two contemporaries of Edison credited him
with the word, but too vaguely for Allen
Koenigsberg, a classics professor at Brooklyn
College who has a passion for early
phonographs and their history. Resolved to sort
out the "hello" mystery, Mr. Koenigsberg
embarked on a tortuous search five years ago
that led him, finally and triumphantly, to the
American Telephone and Telegraph Company
Archives in lower Manhattan, where he found
an unpublished letter by Edison. Dated Aug. 15,
1877, it is addressed to one T.B.A. David,
president of the Central District and Printing
Telegraph Company in Pittsburgh. Mr. David
was preparing to introduce the telephone to
that city.

At the time, Edison envisioned the telephone as
a business device only, with a permanently
open line to parties at either end. This setup
raised a problem: How would anyone know
that the other party wanted to speak? Edison
addressed the issue as follows: Friend David, I
don't think we shall need a call bell as Hello!
can be heard 10 to 20 feet away. What do you
think? EDISON

It was a word of destiny. Over at the
laboratories of Edison's rival, Bell was insisting
on "Ahoy!" as the correct way to answer the
telephone. It was trounced by "hello," which
became the standard as the first telephone
exchanges, equipped by Edison, were set up
across the United States and operating manuals
adopted the word. The first public exchange,
opened in New Haven on Jan. 28, 1878,
wavered between "hello" and the fusty "What is
wanted?" in its manual. By 1880, "hello" had
won out.

Like the telephone, the punchy "hello" was a
liberator and a social leveler. "The phone
overnight cut right through the 19th-century
etiquette that you don't speak to anyone unless
you've been introduced," Mr. Koenigsberg said.
And "hello" was the edge of the blade. "If you
think about it," he said, "why didn't Stanley say
hello to Livingston? The word didn't exist."
Neither did the simple and elegant "dude," so
Stanley was thrown back on the formal "Dr.
Livingston, I presume."

Mr. Koenigsberg became fascinated by the
"hello" puzzle after reading a passage in Francis
Jehl's "Menlo Park Reminiscences" (Edison
Institute, 1937), in which the author, a former
Edison employee, recalled the scene at Menlo
Park in 1878:

"The shouting and hullabaloo inside the
laboratory can only be imagined," he wrote.

"Being hard of hearing, Edison went about his
work unperturbed, while the rest of us were
nearly deafened as 'Hello-hello-hello' re-
echoed from corner to corner."

If Mr. Jehl (pronounced Yale) is to be believed,
then hello was being used well before the first
citation in the Oxford English Dictionary in
1883.

Mr. Jehl wrote that Edison was first credited
with inventing the word by Frederick Perry Fish,
a president of A.T.&T., who said in 1907 that
Edison came up with hello as a more efficient
alternative to "Are you there?" or "Are you
ready to talk?"

"Well, Mr. Edison did away with that un-
American way of doing things," Mr. Jehl quoted
Mr. Fish as saying. "He caught up a receiver
one day and yelled into the transmitter one
word -- a most satisfactory, capable, soul-
satisfying word -- 'Hello.' It has gone clear
around the world."

Mr. Koenigsberg, who teaches a course in the
history of English, was rightly suspicious of that
"one day." He wanted dates and documents to
establish a connection between the word, the
telephone and Edison.

At A.T.&T., with the help of Alan Gardner, the
company's archivist, he picked up the paper
trail. First, he made note that the early
telephone operators were called "hello girls," a
term that appears in Mark Twain's "Connecticut
Yankee in King Arthur's Court" (1889).

Mr. Koenigsberg recently came upon an earlier
use of the word by Twain. In "A Telephonic
Conversation," a comic sketch written in 1880,
Twain reproduced half of an imaginary
telephone conversation, with "hello" making an
appearance. It represents the first known use of
the word in a work of literature.

In an old file, Mr. Koenigsberg discovered the
next links in the chain: unpublished letters from
1885 between Edison and Chauncy Smith, a
lawyer for Bell. Mr. Smith had asked Edison to
provide him with a "brass wheel" that would
automatically play the recorded word "hello" to
signal that a telephone connection had been
made. "I wish to get your instrument for
experiment," he wrote.
Edison told him to get lost. No more was heard
of this early answering machine, but it does
suggest that "hello" was the standard telephone
greeting, even for Bell partisans.

Mr. Koenigsberg next looked through the
minutes from the first National Convention of
Telephone Companies, held in Niagara Falls,
N.Y., in September 1880. There he found the
following words in an address from the
organization's president: "The shortest speech
that I could make to you and that would
express a great deal to you, probably would be
the one that is on all your badges -- 'Hello'!"
The delegates burst into applause. The Hello!
name tag went on to become a national
institution.

Finally, Mr. Koenigsberg found the historic
letter of August 1877. In December 1987,
justifiably excited, he published his findings in
the journal he publishes, The Antique
Phonograph Monthly. No one cared.
Mr. Koenigsberg occasionally delivers cultural
treats of this sort to his 2,000 mechanically
obsessed subscribers, but, he said, "I think they
find it irritating because it takes space away
from patent numbers and things like that."
His research enters the area of educated
guesswork when it comes to settling the
question of why Edison used "hello" in the first
place.

When Edison discovered the principle of
recorded sound on July 18, 1877, he shouted
"Halloo!" into the mouthpiece of the strip
phonograph. The word was the traditional call
to incite hounds to the chase, and is a close
relative of such words as hilla, hillo, halloa and
hallo, all used to hail from a distance.

The British "hullo," which dates from the
mid-19th century, is deceptive. It was used not
as a greeting but as an expression of surprise,
as in "Hullo, what have we here?"
It seems likely that Edison, satisfied with the
resonant halloo, continued to use it in his
experiments, at some point compressing the
pronunciation and modifying the spelling, never
his strong suit, in any case.

Mr. Koenigsberg said he would still like to know
what exactly was going through Edison's mind
at the moment of creation. For satisfaction, he
will have to turn to one of the first songs to use
the Edisonian greeting, "Hello, Central. Give Me
Heaven

Source: www.nytimes.com/1992/03/05/garden/great-hello-mystery-is-solved.html

it means "hi"

I don't even use hello

Too long

Hello obasanjo

I use sup

puresoul1:
I use sup

Is that supper?

Its the OFFICIAL way to greet someone irrespective of the time of the day.
.
My guy above that use 'sup'... can you say that to your boss? I guess no!

I spent 39 mins reading this..

I use 'hey yo'

puresoul1:
I use sup

Nonsense

First of all, I couldn't finish reading it........don't blame me



As for me, i just call the person's name as it is saved in my phone.

If its an unknown number, i don't hesitate to say 'WHO IS THIS'...

UrennaNkoli:
I don't even use hello

What do you use? Lemme borrow it

Because when you listen in, you have to be sure all members of the conversation are in amity.

in summary this article says someone invented telephone another invent conversation style


but every thing is changing. if how call my friend the first thing i go hear is 'guy how far now'

or make he say 'o boy na wha for yu ooo, u no fit call person'


but no vex oo. if i see this kind article for exam, i'll rather skip it and fail, than to try read am and pass

Lol. You all seem to be angry.. Is it because of the lengthy passage?

u no get courtesy ni


OK waiting u want first talk ?

Hello is a form of greeting young man

now I know

It depends sha... calls with my guys usually start with ''Akp@mu''...

sorextee:
I use 'hey yo'

You can only use that in an informal conversation..... You definitely can't say hey yo in a formal setting

Hello bae

I don't say hello oh.
If its bae I say Gemstone
It its Dad I say Daddy
SamE mummy
Anonymous? I keep quiet and after I hEar ur voice we converse

Hello how are you

okay

All of this because of greeting?

Na wa o

How many of you can still

remember "Hello Moto"

How u want make I read this story finish??

Who asked you guys what you say first?

The article is just explaining how "hello" came into use. Not what you say to your lovers and friends.

Is reading so difficult?

Thank you for this educational piece.
A little more knowledge never harms.

Teempakguy:
All of this because of greeting?

Na wa o

nanotechnology

tpiander:


nanotechnology

I'm sorry, what?

Caracta:
Who asked you guys what you say first?

The article is just explaining how "hello" came into use. Not what you say to your lovers and friends.

Is reading so difficult?

proof dear, that we love in Nigeria.