evidence: Thomas Edison is credited with popularizing hullo as a telephone greeting. In previous decades, hullo had been used as an exclamation of surprise (used early on by Charles Dickens in 1850)[12] and halloo was shouted at ferry boat operators by people who wanted to catch a ride.[13] According to one account, halloo was the first word Edison yelled into his strip phonograph when he discovered recorded sound in 1877.[12] Shortly after Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, he answered calls by saying "ahoy ahoy", borrowing the term used on ships.[13][14] There is no evidence the greeting caught on.[13] Edison suggested Hello! on August 15, 1877 in a letter to the president of Pittsburgh's Central District and Printing Telegraph Company, T. B. A. David: [...] The first name tags to include Hello may have 1880 at Niagara Falls, which was the site of the first telephone operators convention. By 1889, central telephone exchange operators were known as "hello-girls" because of the association between the greeting and the telephone.[14][15] [...] Hello is alternatively thought to come from the word hallo (1840) via hollo (also holla, holloa, halloo, halloa).[23] The definition of hollo is to shout or an exclamation originally shouted in a hunt when the quarry was spotted:[24][25]