My friend Stefanie from St. Louis, Missouri took me to task the other day after she followed the link in my blog entry to the CBC website about Canadian inventions and saw that the telephone was our number two pick. I did a little research after she emailed me and I have to say I agree with her - claiming that the telephone is a Canadian invention is a huge stretch. According to the CBC, our apparent claim to fame is based solely on the fact that Mr. Bell, who was not even a Canadian, having been born in Scotland, thought up the idea for the phone while living in Brantford. He then moved back to Boston and worked on his idea. He later had a summer home in the Maritimes and worked on several other inventions there but notwithstanding that, I think it is only fair that we as a nation should not take the credit for this particular item. The Blackberry, yes. The original telephone, not so much. Stefanie, on behalf of all of us misguided and/or misled Canadians, I do apologize. And I have to say, I'm surprised at the CBC for perpetuating this fallacy.If you care to read a little more about this topic, you can follow this link:
I am excited to report that I recently bought a new "old" phone (see photo) at a friend's yard sale. I have it plugged in at home along with my cordless phones. It doesn't have call display and if I dial a number, I have to do it one digit at a time and wait for the dial to return to its original position before dialing the next number but to me, those minor inconveniences are outweighed by the fact that this phone will still work if the power goes out and I especially like the ring tone - it's not a tone at all, it is an actual bell ringing inside and it sounds lovely. My only concern is that when you pick up the whole phone, you can hear something rattling around inside. I'm not sure what that might be but it doesn't seem to interfere with the phone's function, so I'm not going to worry about it for now.
Mr. Bell, wherever you were from and wherever you were when you came up with this idea, thank you.
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