When my friend sent me a New York Times article about the history of recorded vulgarity, I was immediately elated at prospective visions of ’30s-looking dudes with giant moustaches and striped bathing costumes making underground wax cylinder recordings of lines like “I dare say, Good Phineas, that I have heard some haughty tales of a particular female whose figure is more acute to the senses than the barbs of Waltie Winchell!”

What I did not expect, however, was the article to mention Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell. Here’s the real money shot:

But conflicting accounts have Edison and his assistants shouting “Mad dog” into the machine, then running it backwards to hear the phrase “God damn.” And others have claimed that far more colorful language flew around Edison’s all-male laboratory and wound up on those earliest recordings. It’s known that Edison’s rival, Alexander Graham Bell, proposed developing a “swearing top,” a spinning toy that would blare curse words.

Now, it’s one thing to grow up and find out that Christopher Columbus actually took natives as slaves, or that Ben Franklin sired 900 illegitimate children or something, but it’s entirely another to find out that two of the most innovative minds in human history not only had a bizarre, childish vulgar streak, but that they also managed to be vulgar on a level of unique, inexplicable brilliance that would have taken a team of MAD Magazine writers led by Hunter S. Thompson decades to come up with.

I can’t wait for the follow-up piece about Issac Newton’s never-realized “farting metronome” and Einstein’s elusive d*ck-shaped waffle iron.