Alexander Bell

Alexander Bell
(1847-1922) Alexander Graham Bell is remembered today as the inventor
of the telephone, but he was also an outstanding teacher of the deaf and a
prolific inventor of other devices. Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, to a
family of speech educators. His father, Melville Bell, had invented Visible

Speech, a code of symbols for all spoken sounds that was used in teaching deaf
people to speak. Aleck Bell studied at Edinburgh University in 1864 and assisted
his father at University College, London, from 1868-70. During these years he
became deeply interested in the study of sound and the mechanics of speech,
inspired in part by the acoustic experiments of German physicist Hermann Von

Helmholtz (1821-1894), which gave Bell the idea of telegraphing speech. When
young Bell's two brothers died of tuberculosis, Melville Bell took his remaining
family to the healthier climate of Canada in 1870. From there, Aleck Bell
journeyed to Boston, Massachusetts, in 1871 and joined the staff of the Boston

School for the Deaf. The following year, Bell opened his own school in Boston
for training teachers of the deaf; in 1873 he became a professor of vocal
physiology at Boston University, and he also tutored private pupils. Bell's
interest in speech and communication led him to investigate the transmission of
sound over wires. In particular, he experimented with development of the
harmonic telegraph --a device that could send multiple messages at the same time
over a single wire. Bell also worked with the possibility of transmitting the
human voice, experimenting with vibrating membranes and an actual human ear.

Gardiner Hubbard (1822-1897) and Thomas Sanders, fathers of two of his deaf
pupils backed Bell financially in his investigations. Early in 1874, Bell met

Thomas A. Watson (1854-1934), a young machinist at a Boston electrical shop.

Watson became Bell's indispensable assistant, bringing to Bell's experiments the
crucial ingredient that had been lacking--his technical expertise in electrical
engineering. Together the two men spent endless hours experimenting. Although

Bell formed the basic concept of the telephone--using a varying but unbroken
electric current to transmit the varying sound waves of human speech--in the
summer of 1874, Hubbard insisted that the young inventor focus his efforts on
the harmonic telegraph instead. Bell complied, but when he patented one of his
telegraph designs in February 1875, he found that Elisha Gray had patented a
multiple telegraph two days earlier. Greatly discouraged, Bell consulted in

Washington with the elderly Joseph Henry, who urged Bell to pursue his
"germ of a great invention" --speech transmission. Back in Boston,

Bell and Watson continued to work on the harmonic telegraph, but still with the
telephone in mind. By accident on a June day in 1875, an intermittent
transmitter produced a steady current and transmitted sound. Bell had proof of
his 1874 idea; he quickly sketched a design for an electric telephone, and

Watson built it. The partners experimented all summer, but failed actually to
transmit voice sounds. That fall, Bell began to write the patent specifications,
but delayed application; Hubbard finally filed for the patent on February 14,

1876, just hours before Gray appeared at the same patent office to file an
intent to patent his telephone design. Bell's patent was granted on March 7,

1876, and on March 10, the first message transmitted by telephone passed from

Bell to Watson in their workshop: "Mr. Watson, come here, I want you!"

After a year of refining the new device, Watson and Bell, along with Hubbard and

Sanders, formed the Bell Telephone Company in 1877. Bell immediately married

Mabel Hubbard, daughter of his new partner, and sailed to England to promote his
telephone. The phone company grew rapidly, and Bell became a wealthy man. He
turned to other interests on his return to the United States in 1879, while also
defending his patents (which were upheld in 1888) against numerous lawsuits.

With money from the Volta Prize, awarded to him in 1880 by the French
government, Bell established the Volta Laboratory. Among the new devices he
invented there were the graphophone for recording sound on wax cylinders or
disks; the photophone, for transmitting speech on a beam of light; an
audiometer; a telephone probe, used in surgery until the discovery of the X-ray;
and an induction balance for detecting metal within the human body. Bell founded
several organizations to support teaching of the deaf. He helped to establish

Science magazine and the National Geographic Society. He also worked on air
conditioning, an improved strain of sheep (to bear multiple lambs), an early
iron lung, solar distillation of water, and sonar detection of icebergs. The
possibility of flight fascinated Bell. He built tetrahedral kites capable of
carrying a human being. He supported Samuel Langley's pioneering experiments in
aviation, and helped found the Aerial Experiment Association in 1907. He also
designed a hydrofoil boat that set the world water-speed record in 1918.

Alexander Graham Bell was a man of warmth and human frailty, loved by his wife,
children, and grandchildren. His life did seem to demonstrate the oneness of the
world. He was lionized in society, cheered at exhibitions, applauded at
scientific meetings, and sought out by reporters. He and his wife united two
numerous and close-knit families. Children, especially those of his own extended
family, loved him. His marriage was a model of devotion throughout its
forty-five years. He was nominally a member of more clubs and other
organizations than he could recall at any given moment, and he was active in a
number of them. In addition, for many years he presided over brilliant salon of

Washington scientist and men affairs. Yet his son-in-law David Fairchild said of
him, "Mr. Bell led a particularly isolated life; I have never known anyone who
spent so much of his time alone." Fairchild meant that literally. Bell worked
through most of the night and slept through most of the morning. He purposefully
limited social activity during his summers in Nova Scotia. For more than a
quarter century he spent weekends in the total seclusion of his household. From
his boyhood, he had tended to be aloof and solitary. He himself wrote in 1984,

"I somehow or other appear to be more interested in things than people—in
people wholesale, rather than in persons individual." He not only recognized"the tendency to retire into myself and be alone with my thoughts," but he
also struggled against it, with the help of his wife. Perhaps that lifelong
struggle explains in part the intensity of his dedication to bringing "he
human family in closer touch." As for his own family, what else could he say
other that he loved it. Since childhood, he and his family always were together
through happy and hard times. His love for his family showed when he decided to
move them to a much healthier climate in Canada after his brother had died. The
times Bell lived in could be highlighted as the Industrial Revolution
(1830-1914), American Civil War (1861-1865), and World War I (1914-1918). At the
time of Bell's birth James K. Polk was president of the United States; More than

200,000 emigres left Ireland; most headed for United States; The American

Medical Association was founded; and the first U.S. postage stamps were sold to
the public. At the time of Bell's death Warren G. Harding was president of the

United States; the Abraham Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. was dedicated;
the Harlem Renaissance began; Reader's Digest began publication; and Russian
airline Aeroflot began operations. Throughout his life the first transatlantic
cable exchanged between Britain and the United States (1858); Lincoln issued the

Emancipation Proclamation (1863); San Francisco's cable streetcar system began
service (1873); Kentucky Derby was run for first time (1875); the first
telephone switchboard installed in Boston (1877); Boston Pops were founded
(1885); George Eastman introduced Kodak camera (1888); Sitting Bull killed for
performing outlawed Ghost Dance ritual (1890); Edward Kleinschmidt invented
teletype machine (1914). This is an excellent book for anyone wanting to learn
about the life of the man who invented the telephone. The author of this book
covers everything from his most glorious moments to the sad and melancholy ones.

I believe the book can not be a better summary of his life, but than the man
himself talking, and without doubt tells his life and times exactly has they
really were. To me Alexander Graham Bell worked his whole life on things that
interested him, things that brought attention to him. He was always willing to
try out an idea no matter how farfetched. He didn’t do as well as we might
think in school, because of the fact that he literally did what he wanted to do.

This upheld throughout his life. I believe that it was his pursuit to the ideas
he liked which led him unconsciously to his utter absorption in it to the
exclusion of all else, and to the extraordinary inventions he conceived.

Moreover, in fact, for all the seeming disparity of his interests, there was a
basic unity in their tendency: that of furthering communication and human
togetherness. Bell’s most famous invention, the telephone, transformed the
culture, social fabric, and economy of the United States and, eventually, the
world. The importance of what he conceived and brought to birth is visible, or
rather audible, every day and everywhere. His simple device for transmuting
sound into electrical impulses, sending those impulses almost simultaneously
over great distances, and transforming them back into the original sound, has
given speech and music limitless range, encompassing not only the world but also
the solar system. The story of Alexander Graham Bell therefore deserves the
attention of anyone who wants to understand the making of the world we now live
in. Bell’s telephone and photophone, his improvements in the phonograph, and
the lifelong campaign to teach the deaf lip-reading and speech extended the ease
and scope of communication. His work in aeronautics and hydrofoil boats
expedited travel. His role in promoting the Montessori educational system, the

National Geographic Magazine, and the journal Science helped to spread
knowledge. On the occasion of Bell’s death, his rival and later friend Thomas

Edison praised him for having "brought the human family closer in touch."

Though Edison had only the telephone in mind, the thought characterized Bell’s
whole range of achievements. Bell’s humane nature was manifest in his
opposition to racism and xenophobia, his contributions to the medical
technology, and most of all his dedication to helping the deaf. In addition, the
gallantry of his long battle against disappointments to make his life after the
telephone something more than a long anticlimax enlists our sympathy and
admiration.

Bibliography

"Bell, Alexander Graham." Funk & Wagnalls New

Encyclopedia. 1995 ed. Burlingame, Roger. Out of Silence, the Life of Alexander

Graham Bell. 1964 The Macmillan Company, New York, New York. Davidson, Margaret.

The Story of Alexander Graham Bell, Inventor of the Telephone. October 1989

Parachute Press, Inc., New York, New York. Grosvenor, Edwin S. and Wesson,

Morgan. Alexander Graham Bell, the Life and Times of the Man Who Invented the

Telephone. 1997 Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, New York. Lewis, Cynthia

Copeland. Hello, Alexander Graham Bell Speaking. 1991 Dillon Press, Inc.,

Minneapolis, Minnesota. Montgomery, Elizabeth Rider. Alexander Graham Bell. 1963

Garrard Publishing Company, Champaign, Illinois. Pasachoff, Naomi. Alexander

Graham Bell, Making Connections. 1996 Oxford University Press, Inc., New York,

New York. Pelta, Kathy. Alexander Graham Bell. 1989 Silver Burdett Press, Inc.,

Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. St. George, Judith. Dear Dr. Bell...Your Friend

Helen Keller. 1992 The Putnam & Grosset Group, New York, New York. Tames,

Richard. Alexander Graham Bell. 1990 Franklin Watts, Inc., New York, New York.

User Comments