Whether it's a Japanese, Chinese, South Korean or an Indian film, they all answer the phone with the same English greeting which must have really annoyed the inventor Graham Alexander Bell because he said it should be answered with 'Ahoy' which absolutely nobody took any notice of.
The first words ever spoken into a telephone were today in 1876 by the inventor who called his assistant, Thomas Watson, and said: 'Mr. Watson. Come here. I want to see you' which doesn't really seem inspiring enough for something which would become such a part of our lives years later, maybe if he had known just how important his invention would become he would have put a bit more thought into it especially as he had to keep repeating it whenever a new major connection was developed.
Graham Alexander Bell has gone down in history as the man behind the telephone but a working telephone had been demonstrated years earlier by Italian Antonio Meucci who filed a temporary patent on his invention called the Teletrofono but due to being sick and poor and Italian, he failed to send in the $10
necessary to renew his patent and two years later, Bell registered his telephone patent.
Meucci attempted to sue Bell for stealing his idea by retrieving the original sketches and plans he sent to a lab at Western Union, but these records, quite amazingly, disappeared which Bell said just proved he never sent them in the first place and he should know because he worked at the very Western Union lab where
Meucci swore he sent his original sketches.
Phones have come a long way since Bell urged his assistant to come and see him and sometimes the mobiles we all have are used to actually call someone but if nothing else that day in 1876 means we can go almost anywhere in the World and greet people and know we will be understood.
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