Hello is the most common form of greeting used by humans all over the world. The phone rings, we grab the phone receiver and the first word we speak is “Hello”. We meet new people and the introduction starts with hello in most of the countries. So how did the word become a universal form of greeting , especially while conversing on the phone. When was it first introduced, who introduced it, what alternative word we might be using instead if somehow Hello didn’t become popular?
According to Merriam Webster, the word Hello was first used in 1877, smilarlyonline Oxford dictionarydates origin of Hello to be late 19th century. Wikipediastates that the first written use of the word was in 1833 and by 1860 it was frequently used in literature. But during this time, it was not used as a form of greeting rather was used to express surprise (hello, what’s all this then?) or to bring attention (‘Hello below !’ he cried). Hello is considered to be a variant of earlier words Hallo/Hollo/Holla. Besides these variants, Hello also existed as Hullo and Hillo as variants , though rarely used. In short, the word Hello has been spoken or used using all of the five vowels (Hallo, Hello, Hillo, Hollo, Hullo).
But the word Hello didn’t become a form of greeting until the advent of telephone. Thomas Edison has been credited for using and promoting the word Hello as a form of telephone greeting in 1877. Alexander bell, inventor of the telephone, wanted the word Ahoy (used in ships) to be used as the form of telephone greeting. Infact, he used the wordAhoyas form of telephone greeting for the rest of his life. The first telephone book published in Nov 1878 in Connecticut provided Telephone for Dummies kind of description to help it’s 391 subscribers in operating the machine. Guidelines suggested using the word “Hulloa” to start the conversation on phone and “That is all” to end the conversation. So, probably Edison’s promotion and the guidelines provided by the first telephone book pushed the word Hello. If that wouldn’t have happened we might be saying Ahoy while answering the phone (just like Mr Burns from The Simpsons). While Hello became popular, Ahoy was lost into oblivion. But unlike the word hello’s instant rise to popularity, same was not the case for the phrase “That is all” which was replaced by good-bye or bye which is considered to be variant or short version for “God Be with You” or “with ye”. In order to understand the usage of the words Hello and Ahoy from 1820 till 2000, I usedGoogle ngramand generated following plot (Y axis shows the % of books, in English, sampled by google since 1820 till 2000 which contain the words Hello or Ahoy). It can be clearly seen that the usage of word Hello soared after 1880 while Ahoy could never get any traction.
Top Image credit: Flickr userfenris117 | Used under creative commons license
What if your toothpaste flavor or color could tell you whether its raining outside or snowing and accordingly help you plan your day? I know, it sounds crazy, but researcher David Carr at MIT media lab has designed a prototype toothpaste “tastes like rain“ which can change the flavor depending on the outside temperature. In the current prototype, the toothpaste dispenser is connected to a computer which gathers weather forecast information and compares it to previous day’s conditions. Depending on the temperature comparison results, linear actuators are activated which squeeze out different flavors or colors. For example, if its mint flavor–> colder than yesterday; Cinnamon–> hotter; mixed flavor or different color stripe–> its going to rain. Whether you really need your toothpaste to be a weather forecaster or such a product will ever make to the market (probably not) that’s a different story, but it’s a creative idea indeed!
Continuing with the series “What’s your formula, equation, algorithm”, here’s a Happiness Hypothesis presented by Jonathan Haidt who is a social psychology professor at University of Virginia. If you have some ideas or equation of your own, feel free to send it to me.
Migration of animals is such an interesting phenomenon where animals and birds and insects, big and small all over the earth move around in huge numbers to optimize their chances of survival. If you are interested in this topic you might want to catch up with a new series on National Geographic titled ” Great Migrations“. First episode of seven part series airs on Nov 7th, 8 PM. The series is aptly subtitled as “Move as Millions. Survive as One” and you can preview first 15 minutes of the show here:
Coming back to above picture, you can see zebras amidst wildebeest herd and this is quite a common sighting in East African jungles where both the species migrate together and benefit from each others company. If you ask, what are the benefits they get from each other, I will try to enlist some of them which I gathered from the net.
Wildebeest and zebras can migrate in harmony as they both prefer different parts of the grass when grazing and so there is no conflict of interest in terms of food. Wildebeests are short grass grazers while zebras have long front teeth which facilitates them in feeding upon longer grass. So when the herd enters a new area, zebras basically mow the whole area which helps wildebeest to feed upon soft parts of the grass, and then zebras feed upon the leftover parts. So the feeding pattern works out for both of them.
Zebras have good memories and the are good travelers as they can remember the directions and they watch carefully when and where to cross places before jumping in. Wildebeest on the other hand move in herd without much thought which many of the times lead to their peril as well. So being with zebras gives wildebeest better navigating capabilities.
Wildebeests are good in sensing water and this feature is very helpful to both the species when they are migrating in dry lands of Eastern African jungles.
Zebras have better hearing and seeing capabilities which helps them in sensing danger better.
There is also a hypothesis that lions prefer eating wildebeest meat, or maybe they are easy to hunt, so being with a weak prey such as a wildebeest is a good thing for zebra, quite clever. [Source: goafrica.about.com]
In the picture below, you can see a young zebra following it’s mother while migrating. Baby zebra stays with it’s mother and recognizes her by voice, smell and stripe patterns. It’s interesting to note that no two zebras look exactly the same and baby zebras can figure out that pretty easily.
Picture credit: Boston.com/National Geographic/Marc Moritsch/Mitsuaki Iwago/ Minden Pictures
Continuing with the series of interesting take by various researchers, scientists, writers on how they view the world in terms of equations and algorithms, here is another one by Stewart Brand describing pace layering of a healthy civilization. Stewart is Founder of Whole Earth Catalog, cofounder of Global Business Network, and author of How Buildings Learn.
In 2007, Edge foundation asked world renowned researchers and scientists to post their formulae or equations for 21st century. This is one of them posted by Univ of Oxford Evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins. I will post more of them in coming days.
Andre Geim (age 51) and Konstantin Novoselov (age 36) from Univ of Manchester won this year’s Nobel prize in physics for their innovative and pathbreaking work in the field of Graphene. Congratulations!! What’s interesting to note here is that they are probably the quickest recipient of Nobel prize after their discovery. They reported a novel technique of generating Graphene sheet in 2004 and they won the prize in 2010, that’s pretty fast! They were predicted to win the Nobel prize in 2008 by Thomson Reuters.
Graphene is a form of carbon. As a material it is completely new – not only the thinnest ever but also the strongest. As a conductor of electricity it performs as well as copper. As a conductor of heat it outperforms all other known materials. It is almost completely transparent, yet so dense that not even helium, the smallest gas atom, can pass through it. Carbon, the basis of all known life on earth, has surprised us once again.
Geim and Novoselov extracted the graphene from a piece of graphite such as is found in ordinary pencils. Using regular adhesive tape they managed to obtain a flake of carbon with a thickness of just one atom. This at a time when many believed it was impossible for such thin crystalline materials to be stable. [Nobelprize.org]
Interestingly, I attended few talks yesterday and have to attend to few more today focused on Graphene and Carbon nanotubes!! To know more about Graphene, here is a great article written by Nobel Laureates themselves in 2007 which was published in Nature Materials. The abstract of the article is as follows:
Graphene is a rapidly rising star on the horizon of materials science and condensed-matter physics. This strictly two-dimensional material exhibits exceptionally high crystal and electronic quality, and, despite its short history, has already revealed a cornucopia of new physics and potential applications, which are briefly discussed here. Whereas one can be certain of the realness of applications only when commercial products appear, graphene no longer requires any further proof of its importance in terms of fundamental physics. Owing to its unusual electronic spectrum, graphene has led to the emergence of a new paradigm of ‘relativistic’ condensed-matter physics, where quantum relativistic phenomena, some of which are unobservable in high-energy physics, can now be mimicked and tested in table-top experiments. More generally, graphene represents a conceptually new class of materials that are only one atom thick, and, on this basis, offers new inroads into low-dimensional physics that has never ceased to surprise and continues to provide a fertile ground for applications.
This is a video of the ad campaign being run by Republic of Macedonia to bring religion back to schools. First thing I would like to point out that Einstein never said those words; the story is a complete fiction which has been spreading across the internet since 2004. It’s very much possible that you might have got a forwarded mail describing this story about how little Einstein humbled his atheist teacher in the discussion about existence of God. Secondly, I am not exactly sure if the logic to prove existence of God , shown in this video works. It can be also argued that only Evil exists in the world and God is non-existent. If we see something good that’s because of non-existence of Evil. Thirdly the video also shows typical stereotyping of atheist as a pure evil and mean person who will go as far as spreading his beliefs to innocent children in school. And whenever a genius with religious belief is required, poor Einstein gets thrown in to the mix somehow. Einstein has been misquoted on various other occasions as well such as
“Science without religion is lame, and religion without science is blind” which is correct quote but incomplete. He clarifies , “It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”
Lastly, I believe that religious belief should be a personal thing and should be practiced at a personal level and it should not be imposed upon anyone, especially children. Likewise atheist should not try to impose their ideas on anyone. Anyways, I do not want to get started on any religious discussion here, but found the video interesting so thought of posting it. It would be interesting to hear back from you guys.
May 20, 2012 1799 Honore De Balzac 1851 Emile Berliner 1908 James Stewart 1920 Betty Driver 1942 Lynn Davies 1944 Joe Cocker 1946 Cher 1961 Nick Heyward
What if your toothpaste flavor or color could tell you whether its raining outside or snowing and accordingly help you plan your day? I know, it sounds crazy, but researcher David Carr at MIT media lab has designed a prototype toothpaste “
