Title: 10 Common Things People Believed Were Invented By The Devil - Listverse
Headings: 10 Common Things People Believed Were Invented By The Devil
10 Common Things People Believed Were Invented By The Devil
10 Forks
9 Musical Instruments
8 Socialism
7 Smoking
6 The Telephone
5 Dice
4 The Smurfs
3 The Cross
2 Soccer
1 Theater

Content: 6 The Telephone
Writer Ambrose Bierce once defined the telephone as “an invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.” He was being satirical, but when the telephone was invented, there were many who viewed it with suspicion and suspected a diabolical origin. When the telephone was first introduced in Sweden, many rural folks feared it was magical and that telephone wires would attract lightning or evil spirits. Preachers outright decried the telephone as an instrument of the Devil, and lines were often pulled down or sabotaged by irate farmers. The Amish and Old Order Mennonites of Pennsylvania had a similar view. Their societies were informed by gelassenheit, a sense of belonging and separation from the outside world driven by dress, language, tradition, nonverbal communication, and a moral code. New forms of communication were perceived as a threat to face-to-face communication, which enforced the social order. One Mennonite reported an elder gravely warning, “There goes the devil’s wires .” Ethiopian journalist Paulos Gno Gno wrote about the introduction of the telephone at the court of the Emperor Menelik: The first telephone was installed in Menelik’s palace in 1889 and the news of the displeasure among many clergymen who resented the new technology finally reached the Emperor’s ears.