The brief history of the telephone conversation

Odds are pretty good that when you answer the phone, “hello” is the first thing out of your mouth. But have you considered taking “ahoy” for a spin instead?

When Alexander Graham Bell received the patent for the telephone in 1876, “hello” hadn’t been in our vocabulary for very long. According to National Public Radio, the first published use of “hello” was in 1827 — just shy of 50 years before Bell’s patent. And instead of using it to greet others, people employed it as a way to catch someone’s attention or communicate surprise, not unlike the way we use “hey” today.

So when Bell thought about the appropriate way to answer a telephone call, he landed on “ahoy,” a word with a much longer history. According to the Somerville Public Library, the idea gained some traction when the first telephone operators were trained to answer the phone with “Ahoy! Ahoy!”

Bell’s arch-rival Thomas Edison, who invented a transmitter that improved upon Bell’s original invention, encouraged users to answer the phone with a crisp “hello” instead. When the first telephone directories advised “hello” over “ahoy,” the issue was largely settled, though according to the Somerville Public Library, Bell insisted on using “ahoy” or “ahoy-hoy” for the rest of his life.