Abstract
Abstract Illustrious people’s famous last words (actual or apocryphal) can fill volumes; perhaps it is time someone did a compendium of first words as well, or at least those first messages sent along any new medium of communication. In the case of Alexander Graham Bell, the first telephone message was an urgent request to his colleague Watson to come to him, as Bell had just spilled some battery acid on himself. (The phone Watson answered was in a neighboring building, so this was not as silly a request as it might have been had Watson been all the way across town.) Generally, however, the occasion is recognized as a momentous one, for which a suitably unforgettable inaugural line is crafted with some care well in advance. Neil Armstrong’s “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind,” his first words on alighting from the lunar lander onto the surface of the moon on July 20, 1969, were certainly not a spontaneous utterance, any more than was Samuel Finley Breese Morse’s first telegraph message sent to his
Published Version
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