HIS OFFSPRING are still tussling over where it all began with Thomas Edison. Was it Edam, or Reusel-de Mierden in Brabant, or was it Den Oever near Den Helder? Edison himself couldn’t care less; his ancestry was Dutch, and that entitled him to a membership of New York’s prestigious Holland Society. He remained it all his adult life, while living across the Hudson River, in the small town of West Orange, named after Stadtholder Willem III of Orange-Nassau, who was also King William III of England and America.
Everyone knows Edison from the gramophone, light bulbs and the electric grid. He invented the direct current, DC, but ultimately lost out to the alternate current, AC, created by his fellow Dutchman, George Westinghouse. About George’s Dutch lineage at least there is no doubt, that’s Bunschoten-Spakenburg where his mom Emaline Vedder had her proud roots.
BUT WHAT almost no one realizes is that in addition Thomas Edison also echoes every day each time people answer their phones, “Hello!” It is now the most commonly used word worldwide after “Okay,” which too is compliments of a Dutch guy, about which more in a moment. Edison was an early user of Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone, and he instructed all his staff in West Orange to begin every phone call with Hello.
That was a no-no in Bell’s world. He believed he had a right to set the phone’s usage standards. Bell felt that the receiver should be picked up with a loud “Ahoy!” That was old Dutch, much like his mama who descended from the Simons lineage. Ahoy was used at sea, when Dutch ships greeted each other, with the A added to be easily understood even in strong winds. The word itself, when used ashore, was originally Hoi, which is still used in Holland, and among Dutch emigrants, centuries later.
NO WAY, said Edison. Hello, hallo or hola, all originally the same word, was better usable between two people who could not see each other, but could hear each other over the phone. And so it happened. The very first phone book, a piece of cardboard in Connecticut with fifty subscriber names on it, came with instructions for use, and it too prescribed Hello as each conversation’s opening word. This recommendation was adopted by every subsequent phone book, and so it is that today we all still walk around saying Hello and Hallo. Alexander, by the way, doubled down for life. He kept starting every phone call with Ahoy-hoy!
