Beep

This ramble began with an innocent comment from My Beloved early this morning; I heard a 'beep' last night. Consider this sound we have now become so used to. Everywhere you turn in our modern world, you hear a beep. Beeps come from your phone, they come from your car, smoke detectors, alarm clocks, alarms and so many other innocuous devices that we pay little attention to them. We are inundated with this sound.

When you think about it, the earth is reported to be 4.5 billion years old (give or take). For all of those millions upon millions of years, as our planet went through the various eras and epochs, and where life emerged about one billion years ago (the first signs of algae and other primitive life, I believe), until about sixty years ago, never in the history of the planet was there a 'beep'. Well, where did it come from then?

We are now in the electronic age. We have circuit boards and knobs and blinking lights and everything that comes along with them. I wonder who heard the first beep? I would think it was someone involved with the building of ENIAC or the component parts before that. Although, with vacuum tubes, I don't know that ENIAC would have made that sound. It may not have come until that system evolved.

Along with that, who decided that sound should be called a 'beep'? If you hear it, it sounds like 'eep'. Why do we need a 'b' in front of it? I think it should be considered an accomplishment or an honor to be the first person in recorded history to hear a certain sound.

Unless of course you believe in aliens like my friend Sharon. Then, beeps were likely around before that. She may even have heard them.