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March 18, 2011

Strange But True!

Q. What Thomas Edison innovation (not an invention) do English speakers use every day?

A. The word “hello” as a telephone greeting is the surprising answer here, though the first written use of “hello” goes back to the early 1800s, say John Lloyd and John Mitchinson in “The Book of General Ignorance.” In an 1877 letter, Edison suggested the best way of starting a telephone conversation was with “hello,” because it “can be heard 10 to 20 feet away.” He discovered this while testing inventor Alexander Graham Bell’s prototype phone; Bell himself preferred the rather nautical “Ahoy, hoy!”


 
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