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Why we say 'hello' on the phone (and not 'ahoy')

Edison's case for 'hello' was simple: it was loud enough that phones wouldn't need a bell.

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The real story

Alexander Graham Bell wanted people to answer the phone with 'ahoy', the sailor's call. On 15 August 1877, Thomas Edison wrote to a Pittsburgh telegraph company president: 'I do not think we shall need a call bell as Hello! can be heard 10 to 20 feet away.' 'Hello' was then an uncommon word, a variant of 'hallo' and 'hullo' used to get someone's attention. When the first commercial telephone exchange opened in New Haven in 1878, Edison's word was in the instructions.

By 1889 switchboard operators were nicknamed 'hello girls', even though many companies told them to say 'Number, please' instead. In World War I, more than 200 bilingual American women served as Signal Corps 'Hello Girls' in France, connecting calls near the front lines. The US Army treated them as civilians, and they only won recognition as veterans in 1977, nearly 60 years later.

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The facts we checked

  • When the telephone was new, people didn't know what to say when they picked it up
  • Alexander Graham Bell suggested 'ahoy'; Thomas Edison pushed for 'hello' in 1877
  • 'Hello' won, and early telephone operators were even nicknamed 'hello girls'

Sources

We checked every number and date on screen before the video was made.

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