North American telephones were silenced in Bell’s honor following his death
By the time Alexander Graham Bell passed away, the number of telephones in the country had risen to over 14 million. On August 4, 1922, they all fell silent for a full minute.
Bell's funeral is the cause. The Bell Telephone System was established in 1877 by the American inventor who was also the first to patent telephone technology in the country. Bell wasn't the only person to create "the transmission of speech by electrical wires," according to Randy Alfred for Wired, but obtaining patent primacy in the US gave him the freedom to pursue invention throughout his life. Bell didn't stop there, even though the telephone fundamentally altered the world.
Bell died on August 2, 1922, a few days after turning 75. When his funeral started around 6:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, all telephone exchanges in the United States and Canada briefly shut down out of respect, according to Alfred. At the exact moment Bell was lowered into his grave, all telephone service in the US and Canada was shut down for a full minute. As the 13 million telephones on the continent fell silent, an army of 60,000 telephone operators silently stood at attention, refusing to connect any new calls.
The New York Times reported that Bell was also honored by deaf rights activists on the day of the funeral. According to Felix H. Levey, president of the Institution for the Improved Instruction of Deaf Mutes, "President Bell's conspicuous work in behalf of the deaf of this country would alone entitle him to everlasting fame, entirely apart from his monumental achievement as the inventor of the telephone."
