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user-inactivated · 3680 days ago · link · · parent · post: TIH: March 10, 1876 - Speech transmitted by telephone by Alexander Graham Bell
I like to believe that eventually Bell called Grey (Gray?) and told him to eat dirt.
I hope not. It's kind of tragic from Gray's point of view. Scientific development goes on concurrently all over the world. Look at Tesla and Marconi. Somebody gets in first and is famous and sets the stage for the next 100 years. For reasons we do not know, the other guy shows up one day later and loses out.
If 8bitsamurai had been taken one minute earlier, you'd be ninebit or sevenbit today. How would you feel if 8bit called you and told you to eat dirt?
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user-inactivated · 3680 days ago · link ·
I'd wonder how 8bit got my phone number, haha.
The humor for me comes from the fact that it's a phone call. Plus it's not all bad, if melancholy:
- Gray's second place showing in the race to lay claim to the invention of the telephone did not tarnish his professional reputation however. In 1880 he was named professor of dynamic electricity at Oberlin College in Ohio, where he taught with distinction. Gray died in Newtonville, Massachusetts, in 1901. Discovered among his belongings was a note indicating a lingering disappointment concerning the telephone. It read, in part, "The history of the telephone will never be fully written.... It is partly hidden away ... and partly lying on the hearts and consciences of a few whose lips are sealed -- some in death and others by a golden clasp whose grip is even tighter."