How Do You Do?

Salvete Ubiquaque

Greeting people on the telephone was a problem, esp. in the early years when connections were sometimes unreliable. People wished to avoid the embarrassment of giving an intimate greeting to the wrong person or any sort of greeting to a dead line. Alexander Graham Bell used the nautical word "Ahoy!" but it did not catch on. The British came up with "Are you there?" but after a while you could assume that they were and it began to sound silly. The ferry-boat hail "Hail O!...