Edition: U.S. / Global  Great 'Hello' Mystery Is Solved
Published: March 5, 1992   The word "hello," it appears, came
straight from the fertile brain of the wizard of Menlo Park,
N.J., who concocted the sonorous syllables to resolve one of the
first crises of techno-etiquette: What do you say to start a
telephone conversation?  Two contemporaries of Edison credited
him with the word, but too vaguely for Allen Koenigsberg, a
classics professor at Brooklyn College who has a passion for
early phonographs and their history. Resolved to sort out the
"hello" mystery, Mr. Koenigsberg embarked on a tortuous search
five years ago that led him, finally and triumphantly, to the
American Telephone and Telegraph Company Archives in lower
Manhattan, where he found an unpublished letter by Edison. Dated
Aug. 15, 1877, it is addressed to one T.B.A. David, president of
the Central District and Printing Telegraph Company in
Pittsburgh. Mr. David was preparing to introduce the telephone
to that city.  At the time, Edison envis