the.com/telephone
a hundred years of yelling 'can you hear me now?' into the void.
means A device that transmits speech over distances by converting sound into electrical signals and back again.
from Built from two Greek pieces: 'tele,' meaning 'far off,' and 'phone,' meaning 'sound' or 'voice' — so quite literally 'far-sound.' The 'tele-' prefix is the same one that wandered into telegraph, television, and telescope, a tidy little Greek root for anything happening at a distance. The word was coined in the 19th century, riding the wave of new long-distance technology, and beat out rival names for the gadget.
- first words
- Bell summoned his assistant after spilling acid
- hello
- Edison popularized it; Bell preferred 'ahoy'
- phone numbers
- Originally invented to survive measles-stricken operators quitting
- area codes
- Lower digits given to busier cities for faster dialing
- ring sound
- Modern phones fake the bell you no longer have
bell telephone company — founded by alexander graham bell in 1877, dominated us telecommunications for over a century
red telephone box — k6 design by giles gilbert scott, iconic british telephone booths installed across uk from 1935