This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio, Ohoy, and Welcome to This Day in History Class, a show that answers the call of history every day of the week. I'm Gay, Blues Yay, and today we're looking at how the Wizard of Menlo Park helped resolve one of the first questions of telephone etiquette, what do you say when someone picks up the phone? The answer wasn't as clear cut as you might expect. The day was August fifteenth, eighteen seventy seven. Thomas Edison proposed saying hello when greeting someone on the telephone. The phone had been invented only one year earlier, and at the time it was thought of mostly as a business tool. The system worked much like an early version of walkie talkies. When two phones were can they formed a line of communication that was permanently open. That way, an employee in one office could simply speak into the phone's mouthpiece and be immediately heard through the phone in a different office. The only problem was there was no way to alert a person on one side that someone on the other side wanted to have a conversation. Some offices considered installing alarm bells to get each other's attention, but renowned inventor Thomas Edison suggested a different approach. He did so in a letter to TBA David, the president of the Central District and Printing Telegraph Company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. David was preparing to set up a telephone system in his home city and had reached out to his friend Thomas Edison for advice on best practices. In a response dated August fifteenth, eighteen seventy seven, Edison told him quote, friend David, I do not think we shall need a call bell, as Hello can be heard ten to twenty feet away. What you think, given how ubiquitous Hello is today, you might imagine that it's been the standard English language greeting for as long as people have been speaking English. In reality, though the word's been in use for less than two centuries of the one thousand year history of English. That said, the etymology of hello can be traced back much farther. The word hail, for instance, has been used as a greeting or salutation since the Middle Ages, and it was still in use by the time of the Renaissance. In fact, William Shakespeare used it in two ways as a greeting like in the line hail to your grace, and as a form of praise Hail Caesar. From there, several variants emerged, including hollow, hallohillo, and holler. Around the same time, the British began shouting halloo, both to attract the attention of someone at a distance and to urge on hounds during a hunt. Another British term, hello with a U, is a bit trickier. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word hello first appeared in the early nineteenth century, but it wasn't primarily used as a greeting. Instead, it was an expression of surprise, as in, well, hello, what have we here? Still? With all those similar sounding greetings floating around, it was only a matter of time before someone spelled the word with an e. The first known use of hello in print comes from an eighteen twenty six issue of a Connecticut newspaper, The Norwich Courier. The sentence in question read Hello, Jim, I'll tell you what I've a sharp knife and feel as if I'd like to cut up something or other. From then on, hello and hello were used interchangeably, usually as a way to flag someone down or to convey surprise. It wasn't until the late nineteenth century that the word caught on is in everyday greeting, and according to some historians, that boom in popularity may never have happened without Thomas Edison and the telephone. It's clear that Edison didn't invent the word hello, but we can make an educated guess about why he suggested using it on the telephone. In July of eighteen seventy seven, while tinkering with a prototype phonograph, Edison famously shouted helloo into the mouthpiece. If he liked what he heard, The inventor may have continued using the greeting in his other experiments with recorded sound. Then, when he was asked how to start a conversation on the telephone, he may have just thrown out his go to greeting, spelling it with an E instead of an A. Of course, using Hello as a greeting had other appeals besides Edison's endorsement. For one thing, it was much simpler and snappier than other greetings used in the early day of the telephone, such as do I get you? And are you there? The only other real contender was the word a hoy a nautical greeting that had been in use for at least a century longer than Hello. The actual inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, wanted to use a hoy as the standard greeting, and while he did get his way for a time, Edison's suggestion eventually won out. The thing that really sealed the deal for Hello was the publication of the first phone book in eighteen seventy eight. The how to section at the front of the book suggested two choices for a greeting, the formal question what is wanted and the much friendlier Hello. The same suggestion was made in the operating manuals of the first public telephone exchanges, which it's worth noting were equipped by Thomas Edison. The manual's recommendation on how to end a phone conversation by saying that is all was less excess. Over the next few years, telephone service widened exponentially, necessitating the use of switchboards and switchboard operators to connect and coordinate the calls. Many of those operators, all of whom were women, greeted their callers with a simple Hello, and those interactions helped cement the words use in the public's mind. In fact, the greeting became so closely linked with telephones that people started calling the operators Hello girls. Thanks to Edison and the Hello Girls, the greeting seems to have beaten out ahoy by as early as eighteen eighty. That was the year when Mark Twain published a comedic sketch called A Telephonic Conversation, which included the first known use of the word hello in literature, a sure sign that the greeting was in common use by then. It's fair to say that Thomas Edison helped change the meaning of the word Hello from an exclamation of surprise to an everyday greeting. But one per person who never got on board with the idea was Alexander Graham Bell. He stuck to his guns and continued using a whoy as his telephone greeting of choice for the rest of his life. I'm Gabe Lucier and hopefully you now know a little more about history today than you did yesterday. If you'd like to keep up with the show, consider following us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at TDI HC Show. You can also rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts, or you can send your feedback directly by writing to This Day at iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks to Chandler Mays for producing the show, and thanks to you for listening. I'll see you back here again tomorrow for another day in History class

This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio, Ohoy, and Welcome to This Day in History Class, a show that answers the call of history every day of the week. I'm Gay, Blues Yay, and today we're looking at how the Wizard of Menlo Park helped resolve one of the first questions of telephone etiquette, what do you say when someone picks up the phone? The answer wasn't as clear cut as you might expect. The day was August fifteenth, eighteen seventy seven. Thomas Edison proposed saying hello when greeting someone on the telephone. The phone had been invented only one year earlier, and at the time it was thought of mostly as a business tool. The system worked much like an early version of walkie talkies. When two phones were can they formed a line of communication that was permanently open. That way, an employee in one office could simply speak into the phone's mouthpiece and be immediately heard through the phone in a different office. The only problem was there was no way to alert a person on one side that someone on the other side wanted to have a conversation. Some offices considered installing alarm bells to get each other's attention, but renowned inventor Thomas Edison suggested a different approach. He did so in a letter to TBA David, the president of the Central District and Printing Telegraph Company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. David was preparing to set up a telephone system in his home city and had reached out to his friend Thomas Edison for advice on best practices. In a response dated August fifteenth, eighteen seventy seven, Edison told him quote, friend David, I do not think we shall need a call bell, as Hello can be heard ten to twenty feet away. What you think, given how ubiquitous Hello is today, you might imagine that it's been the standard English language greeting for as long as people have been speaking English. In reality, though the word's been in use for less than two centuries of the one thousand year history of English. That said, the etymology of hello can be traced back much farther. The word hail, for instance, has been used as a greeting or salutation since the Middle Ages, and it was still in use by the time of the Renaissance. In fact, William Shakespeare used it in two ways as a greeting like in the line hail to your grace, and as a form of praise Hail Caesar. From there, several variants emerged, including hollow, hallohillo, and holler. Around the same time, the British began shouting halloo, both to attract the attention of someone at a distance and to urge on hounds during a hunt. Another British term, hello with a U, is a bit trickier. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word hello first appeared in the early nineteenth century, but it wasn't primarily used as a greeting. Instead, it was an expression of surprise, as in, well, hello, what have we here? Still? With all those similar sounding greetings floating around, it was only a matter of time before someone spelled the word with an e. The first known use of hello in print comes from an eighteen twenty six issue of a Connecticut newspaper, The Norwich Courier. The sentence in question read Hello, Jim, I'll tell you what I've a sharp knife and feel as if I'd like to cut up something or other. From then on, hello and hello were used interchangeably, usually as a way to flag someone down or to convey surprise. It wasn't until the late nineteenth century that the word caught on is in everyday greeting, and according to some historians, that boom in popularity may never have happened without Thomas Edison and the telephone. It's clear that Edison didn't invent the word hello, but we can make an educated guess about why he suggested using it on the telephone. In July of eighteen seventy seven, while tinkering with a prototype phonograph, Edison famously shouted helloo into the mouthpiece. If he liked what he heard, The inventor may have continued using the greeting in his other experiments with recorded sound. Then, when he was asked how to start a conversation on the telephone, he may have just thrown out his go to greeting, spelling it with an E instead of an A. Of course, using Hello as a greeting had other appeals besides Edison's endorsement. For one thing, it was much simpler and snappier than other greetings used in the early day of the telephone, such as do I get you? And are you there? The only other real contender was the word a hoy a nautical greeting that had been in use for at least a century longer than Hello. The actual inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, wanted to use a hoy as the standard greeting, and while he did get his way for a time, Edison's suggestion eventually won out. The thing that really sealed the deal for Hello was the publication of the first phone book in eighteen seventy eight. The how to section at the front of the book suggested two choices for a greeting, the formal question what is wanted and the much friendlier Hello. The same suggestion was made in the operating manuals of the first public telephone exchanges, which it's worth noting were equipped by Thomas Edison. The manual's recommendation on how to end a phone conversation by saying that is all was less excess. Over the next few years, telephone service widened exponentially, necessitating the use of switchboards and switchboard operators to connect and coordinate the calls. Many of those operators, all of whom were women, greeted their callers with a simple Hello, and those interactions helped cement the words use in the public's mind. In fact, the greeting became so closely linked with telephones that people started calling the operators Hello girls. Thanks to Edison and the Hello Girls, the greeting seems to have beaten out ahoy by as early as eighteen eighty. That was the year when Mark Twain published a comedic sketch called A Telephonic Conversation, which included the first known use of the word hello in literature, a sure sign that the greeting was in common use by then. It's fair to say that Thomas Edison helped change the meaning of the word Hello from an exclamation of surprise to an everyday greeting. But one per person who never got on board with the idea was Alexander Graham Bell. He stuck to his guns and continued using a whoy as his telephone greeting of choice for the rest of his life. I'm Gabe Lucier and hopefully you now know a little more about history today than you did yesterday. If you'd like to keep up with the show, consider following us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at TDI HC Show. You can also rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts, or you can send your feedback directly by writing to This Day at iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks to Chandler Mays for producing the show, and thanks to you for listening. I'll see you back here again tomorrow for another day in History class