Perhaps you do not know, but Brazil already has much more than 180 million mobile phones in operation – according to the Brazilian Government News Agency.

Believe it or not, an emperor has everything to do with these numbers. A major contributor for development of telephony was precisely the emperor of Brazil: Dom Pedro II, a passionate for science and arts. 

Dom Pedro II reigned in Brazil between July 18, 1841 and November 15, 1889, the date of the proclamation of the Brazilian Republic.  

You see, in 1876 Dom Pedro and the American President Ulysses S. Grant opened the exhibition of Philadelphia, when and where Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated his new invention: the phone, the fantastic beginning of a whole new era of progress for humanity. 

In that occasion many did not pay much attention to the small invent, but Dom Pedro did. On that occasion, he mentioned the classic William Shakespeare in Hamlet: To be or not to be, then to exclaim: This thing speaks!  He was amazed.

Dom Pedro was then the first Brazilian to use a telephone. He actually had relevant participation in the disclosure and the subsequent funding of the invention. 

According to the Telephone Museum in 1879, only 12 years later, an imperial decree by Dom Pedro II authorized the operation of the first telephone company in the country. The first phones were then installed in Rio de Janeiro.

Moral…

Money really talks!

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