evidence: The widespread use of "hello" as a greeting is thanks to Thomas Edison. After Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in the late 1800s, people needed a way to answer the new device, and Edison took it upon himself to come up with a salutation. When he did, The New York Times recalls that he wrote an enthusiastic letter to a friend named Mr. David on August 15, 1877, explaining his solution. [...] Graham Bell did not like Edison's idea one bit. He preferred the word "ahoy," which came from the Dutch greeting word "hoi." (Yes, it was mostly a nautical term back then, too.) And yet, when the first telephone exchanges equipped by Edison were set up all across the United States, the operating manuals that came with them included two greeting options: "Hello" or "What is wanted?" Likely because "What is wanted?" is quite lengthy, by the 1880s, "hello" was the common and preferred greeting. Next time someone asks you about the origin of "hello," you can explain to them that it goes all the way back to Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison (and that "ahoy" almost ended up being the de facto greeting—yikes).