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.