Today is Telephone Day, because it was on March 10, 1876 that Alexander Graham Bell made the first telephone call, to his assistant in another room. The first words spoken were “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.” 10 things you might not know about telephones.
The word telephone comes from the Greek words “tele”, which means far or distant, and “phone”, which means voice. So, the name of the device translates as “distant voice”. The device we know today wasn’t the first to be called by the name. The word “telephone” was first used in 1828 by Francois Sudre to describe a musical signalling device.
When we pick up the phone, we say, “Hello”, but that wasn’t the greeting proposed by Bell. He preferred “ahoy-hoy,” an old nautical greeting. It was Thomas Edison who popularised “hello”. According to legend, Bell refused to conform to this and answered his calls with “ahoy-hoy” until the day he died. It‘s also said that Bell refused to have a telephone in his house because he considered it a distraction from his work.
While Bell is usually credited with inventing the telephone, Antonio Meucci, an immigrant from Italy, first demonstrated a similar device which he called the “teletrofono” in New York in 1860, 17 years before Bell created his invention. As of 2002, Meucci was voted by U.S. Congress to be recognised as the inventor of the telephone.
The first payphone was installed in 1889 in Hartford, Connecticut. It was inspired by inventor Willian Gray, who was frustrated that he had to beg his neighbours for a phone to call a doctor when his wife was ill. While use of payphones is declining thanks to mobile phones, there are still about 100,000 of them still in use in the US.
All telephone service in the USA and Canada was suspended for a full minute in August 1922 – during Alexander Graham Bell’s funeral.
Martin Cooper, an engineer at Motorola, made the first handheld mobile phone call on the streets of New York on April 3, 1973, using a prototype of the Motorola DynaTAC.
The first smart phone was made by IBM in 1994. It was called Simon and featured a touch screen, email capabilities, and a handful of basic apps such as a calculator and sketch pad.
There’s more gold in a ton of mobile phones than there is in a ton of Gold mine ore. On average, there are around 0.034 grams of gold in an average smartphone.
There are more mobile phones in the world than there are people. The number is is expected to reach 18.22 billion in 2025.
The longest long distance telephone call ever took place in 1969. It was between US president Richard Nixon and astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, who were on the Moon at the time. Nixon called to congratulate them on their achievement.
Beta
(Combat Team Series #2)
Steff was abducted by an evil alien race, the Orbs, at fourteen. Used as a weapon for years, he eventually escapes, but his problems are just beginning. How does a man support himself when his only work experience is a paper round and using an Orb bio-integrated gun?
Warlord is an alien soldier who knows little but war. When the centuries-old conflict which ravaged his planet ends, he seeks out another world where his skills are still relevant. There are always wars on Earth, it seems. However, none of Earth's powerful armies want him.
Natalie has always wanted to visit England and sees a chance to do so while using her martial arts skills, but there are sacrifices she must make in order to fulfil her dream.
Maggie resorted to crime to fund her sister's medical care. She uses her genetic variant abilities to gain access to the rooms of wealthy hotel guests. The Ballards look like rich pickings, but they are not what they seem. When Maggie targets them, little does she know that she is walking into a trap.
Hotel owner Hamilton Lonsdale puts together a combat team to pit against those of other multi-millionaires. He recruits Warlord, Natalie, Maggie and Steff along with a trained gorilla, a probability-altering alien, a stockbroker whose work of art proved to be much more than he'd bargained for, a marketing officer who can create psionic forcefields, a teleporting member of the landed gentry, and a socially awkward fixer. This is Combat Team Beta.
Steff never talks about his time with the Orbs, until he finds a woman who lived through it, too. Steff believes he has finally found happiness, but it is destined to be short-lived. He is left with an unusual legacy which he and Team Beta struggle to comprehend; including why something out there seems determined to destroy it.
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