Greg Jenner
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Appearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
And obviously it spreads much slower in the rural regions, much slower in the countryside.
I think the UK or England gets sort of fairly early on, but Europe's quite slow to pick up the phone.
But it's interesting is that you still get these shared party lines, but you also get businesses putting phones into their banks, into hotels.
So people might use the phone.
You might pop into a bank to use a phone.
So they become quite important, the phone, quite early on.
And by 1902, there were 81,000 pay phones in the USA, which is a lot of pay phones.
How many?
81,000 pay phones.
Wow.
1902.
I mean, we're within a quarter of a century of the invention of the thing.
They're everywhere.
Now, I said the hello girls, which obviously is a charming thing.
Do you know where the word hello comes from?
So it's the official telephone greeting.
And it's not the one Alexander Graham Bell wanted.
Do you know what he wanted?
I said at the beginning of the show.
A hoi hoi, I'm very angry.