This week: Phone, phone, phone. You’ve got one in your pocket, one in your office, you might even still have one in your house! Let’s talk about the word phone. It’s older than you think.
Phone Home
Ah, autumn. Leaves are changing colors, everyone’s drinking pumpkin spice whatevers, and the algorithms have decided that I’m shopping for a new phone. Which is the only possible explanation for why my social media feeds are full of ads for the newest iPhone. Which, fine. It’s shiny but I’m not in the market. However, since we’re here and ads are staring me in the face, let’s talk about phones.
So, we know the story, right? Alexander Graham Bell is in his lab and his assistant is in the next room. Bell uses the device he’s been working on to call Watson, saying, “Mr Watson, come here, I want to speak to you.” And the rest is legend. Because the truth is, that while Bell did patent a telephone, it’s invention was a group effort, even if that group did not work together. But, more relevant to our discussion, even though Bell often gets credit for the device, he certainly didn’t invent the word. No, that credit belongs to Robert Hooke.
Per The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins:
Telephone, from the Greek roots for “far” and “sound” was a term first used to describe any device for conveying sounds to a distant point. In 1667, for example, Robert Hooke invented a device…he called a string telephone. Another inventor, in 1796 called his megaphone a telephone, as did the inventor of a speaking tube.
And so on. Lots of people arrived at the word telephone to describe their devices.
(Including one Jean-François Sudré, composer and inventor of Solrésol, an artificial language composed1 entirely of musical notes. He used “telephone” to describe a way of using his conlang2 over long distances. For further reading, fellow SubStacker and linguist Rebecca Ericson has a fantastic piece on the history of Solrésol on her Everybody Talks newsletter. Go read it and then subscribe to her newsletter!)
But the remarkable thing about telephone is its persistence. Most words that have been around a century or three acquire new meanings and usages the way old houses acquire creaks and groans3. But not telephone. It’s meaning has been refined a bit, but not noticeably changed. The form, however, is a different story.
These days, we’re pretty used to using phone as a compound noun. I carry my smartphone in my pocket. Before that, I had a cell phone, or a mobile phone4 depending on whose English I was speaking5. Even then, the terminology wasn’t limited to the technology but expanded to include the form factors. Over the years I had flip phones and bar phones6, portable phones and cordless phones. For a while in college7, we even had a spoon phone8.
In each of these cases, the word phone has not changed. Though shortened, it remains as a separate, identifiable part of a compound noun or noun phrase. More importantly, the basic noun phone means the same thing in each of these compounds regardless of whether the preceding word is identifying a technology, form factor, or combination of the two.
The point is, the word phone has stayed remarkably consistent. Which is why it’s always so interesting to see how science fiction writers and creators try to replace it.
Think about the two biggest sci-fi space operas out there: Star Wars and Star Trek. Both franchises go out of their way to rename their phones. Luke gives Threepio a comlink and uses it to yell for help when the trash compactor gets going; Kirk and Spock whipped out their communicators every time they needed to be beamed off a planet ahead of the ravenous hordes. And yet, both these devices are used to transmit sound over long distances. Almost like a…telephone.
Not that it was always this way. SF Grand Master Robert Heinlein frequently referred to telephones and phones in his stories and novels from the 1940s onwards. In fact, he took pains to refer to them by familiar names as their usages and form factors in the stories would be quite familiar to modern readers, but almost unfathomably futuristic to contemporary readers - carrying an entire phone in your pocket? As if.
Eventually though, as real world technology innovated and became more accessible, people needed new words so that their stories would seem properly futuristic. Thus, comlinks and communicators, datapads and filmbooks.
All that said, nothing is set in stone and technology is changing at an ever-accelerating rate. There’s nothing to suggest that the phones of tomorrow, whatever comes after smartphone will still be called a phone. Maybe we’ll all have eye-phones implanted into our skin, maybe we’ll all be picking up our finger-phones and making gestures in the air. Or, maybe one of the tech giants will pull a marketing coup and get us all to use their product name as the generic. Call me on your Googlephone. Or, maybe, we’ll all just refer to these little black mirrors as our phones and have done with it. Thoughts?
91 Days
We’re in the final stretch. Only two more issues to go in the current series, but that’s no reason not to subscribe. The project has gone very well and it will continue. I’m not sure when or in what form, but it will continue through the SubStack website, so subscribe now!
Down the Rabbit Hole
Tokyo, like lots of mega-cities, is actually a thousand different cultures sitting on top of each other. One of my favorite little cultures that exists within Tokyo is that of the stationery obsessed. There are some truly dedicated people inhabiting tiny little stores making bespoke stationery books and inks. Here are a few:
Traveler’s Factory - makers or the Traveler’s series of DIY planners and diaries
Giovanni - feels like stepping into a medieval Italian paper-maker’s shop
Kakimori - they’ll build you a custom ink from colors they keep on hand
Pigment Tokyo - I haven’t actually been here yet but I’m looking forward to checking it out
Tokyo Pen Shop Quill - for all your fountain pen needs
From the Archives
Speaking of planners, organizers, and other stationery goodness, back in January, 2021, I wrote about the art of techo kaigi, or creating your planner for the coming year. It’s a bit early yet, but the new year will be here sooner than you think…
Snicker.
That’s “constructed language” to you and me.
Or the way middle-aged backs acquire aches and pains.
I think handphone was a thing for a while in Europe? Maybe it still is?
For whatever reason, when I came to Japan, Americans all said cell phone, but Japanese people, when speaking English, would say mobile phone.
Flip phones broke pretty easily. My bar phones - I had three over the years - were sleek, compact, shiny little things that could take a ton of damage like when a clumsy owner fell off his bike onto one. The phone was fine, my hip hurt for a month.
Throughout most of my college years, my roommates and I had a combination fax/phone/modem. But you could only use one of those functions at a time, so, uhm, arguments ensued. It also sat right next to the laundry alcove, which meant that someone doing laundry could listen to your conversation or, more importantly, that conversations would have to be shouted over the noise of the washer and dryer.
Story for another day.
Interesting how "phone" has persisted for so long -- I wonder how long this will go on for, especially as the utility of the phone is moving away from speaking-and-hearing-device towards a multipurpose mini-computer. (And thanks for the shoutout! I love to imagine Jean-François blasting his tuned cannons across the battlefield and wondering if anyone understand him.)