As we look back to this date, to the year 1876, we find Alexander Graham Bell speaking into the first rendition of the telephone. He supposedly spoke to his assistant Thomas A. Watson. And, that first recognizable sentence transmitted by phone? “Mr. Watson, come here, I want you.”
If you ask me, he didn’t think that one through.
I mean, when Neil Armstrong first made an appearance on the moon, he said, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Now THAT, is a good ship-christener.
But, “Mr. Watson, come here, I want you?” He may as well have said, “Mr. Watson, put the receiver to the floor so I can hear the cat heaving a hairball.” Clearly, Alex Bell didn’t think about the significance of his words.
Maybe he had no idea the impact the telephone would make on history. It may be the one invention that has most affected society. I’d say the phone and the car would be right up there, neck and neck, for one and two. Oh, and the four-slice toaster.
Bell was born in Scotland. In 1847. He probably thought a lot about words and how sound traveled when he was a little boy. His father was Professor Alexander Melville Bell, a phonetician.
I know. Phonetician sounds prophetic, doesn’t it? Like someone who takes your phone into their salon and makes it beautiful. But phoneticians are those people who deal with linguistics. They study how humans produce and perceive sounds. They also examine the physical properties of speech. A-E-I-O-U.
Despite all of this, one thing was important to Alexander as a boy. He wanted a middle name. He had two brothers, both with middle names, and Alex felt slighted. So, for his eleventh birthday, dear old Professor Dad Phonetician gave him the middle name “Graham” — after a Canadian friend of theirs named Graham. Sadly, in years to come, both of Aleck’s brothers would die of tuberculosis.
Back to the phone. When the invention was first being “hashed” out in its design, Bell wasn’t the only one to work on this concept and forthcoming models. There were others. But Bell beat the rest of them to the patent office. In fact, he had just received the patent three days before telling Watts, “I want you.”
For as big and powerful as the phone is today, it didn’t start out with much gusto. In fact, the communications company Western Union rejected the opportunity to buy the rights for $100,000. Those guys believed it wasn’t a rival to the telegraph. They later kicked themselves over that decision.
Of course, I don’t have to tell you about the phone today. There is one in every purse and pocket. I don’t think people actually use them much to make calls any longer. But they do everything else with those phones. The younger generations use them solely as their window to the world. I still rely a great deal on my computer to do work and carry out business transactions.
But, the telephone has changed our lives. Again, and again.
Now that I think of all of this, perhaps Alexander Bell guessed that the phone would change the world, but he could not have known to this extent.
It seems our civilization is dependent on the phone. People absolutely freak out when they lose them at the store or drop them in their toilets. And those quizzes on Facebook show a number of people would choose their phones over other things, like spouses and pets, and chocolate.
In twenty years, we have seen a revolution with the telephone. I can only imagine what the next twenty years will bring.
“Mr. Watson, come here, buddy. More than wanting you, I think I’m going to need you.”
===========
“TELEPHONE n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.”
― Ambrose Bierce
=========
“The telephone is the greatest nuisance among conveniences, the greatest convenience among nuisances.”
― Robert Staughton Lynd
=========
“Always ask yourself: “What will happen if I say nothing?”
― Kamand Kojouri
========
Words that came over the phone the other day.
