__1922: __ All telephone service in the United States and Canada is silenced for one minute to mark the funeral of Alexander Graham Bell. The tribute starts a trend that may deserve a revival in the 21st century.

Bell was one of several inventors of the transmission of speech by electrical wires. He achieved patent primacy in the United States and prevailed in a lengthy litany of litigation.

Bell was swift to get his device to market. Just months after his famous "Mr. Watson, come here" phone call of March 10, 1876, the telephone was one of the marvels of the U.S. Centennial Exposition in in Philadelphia.

Bell founded the Bell Telephone System in July 1877 and was able to step down from its board just two years later. He was 32, rich and famous.

Bell devoted his years to further invention and to philanthropy. He was a founding member of the National Geographic Society in 1888.

The Bell System – including American Telephone and Telegraph, research arm Bell Labs, manufacturing unit Western Electric and regional phone companies – served most of the United States and Canada until 1982.

Bell noted on his 75th birthday in 1922 that he refused to have a telephone in his private study. He died a few months later on Aug. 2 at his summer esate in Nova Scotia.

He was buried on the estate two days later, in a coffin built by the laboratory staff of his own workshop. As a mark of respect every telephone exchange in the United States and Canada closed for a minute when his funeral began around 6:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.

Thirteen million phones. No phone calls. No phone conversations. No phone service. One minute.

Apparently it made an impression. When Thomas Edison died nine years later, the nation cooperated in a similar tribute.

Suggestions that all generators and electrical service be shut down for a minute were immediately recognized as impractical: Too many lives depended on electrical equipment, directly or indirectly.

Instead, President Herbert Hoover agreed to to turn off all the lights in the White House for one minute at 10 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on the night of Edison's funeral. He encouraged all Americans to do likewise.

Across the country homes and businesses went dark for a minute. It was Oct. 21, 1931: three days after Edison's death and exactly 52 years after his first big success with the incandescent light bulb.

Source: Various

Photo: Alexander Graham Bell speaks into a prototype model of the telephone.

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