Thread: Ahoy! Ahoy!
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Old 01-07-2016, 07:39 PM   #5
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And speaking of "ahoy"

Telephone trivia: Alexander G. Bell wanted telephone subscribers to shout "Ahoy" into the instrument upon "answering" ... calmer heads suggested the public would figure out the most appropriate greetings on their own.

Most of us settled for the generic "Hello?" Interesting that a single word can be both greeting and question depending on the inflection.

"Ahoy?" ... seems filled with trepidations at worst and a bit awkward at best.

*****

Fact is the telephone was an accident. Bell was trying to invent what he would call a "harmonic telegraph" which would allow (what we now call) frequency multiplexing so that multiple messages could be passed simultaneously on a single set of wires.

He had never considered voice-over-wire communications. Until he spilled battery acid in his lap.
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