Alexander Bell

Alexander Graham Bell
By Matt Stickel

Introduction. How many times a day do you use a phone? How many companies depend on the phone for their business? The answer to those questions is a lot. But how many people know who invented the telephone? One man born in Edinburgh, Scotland on March 3, 1847 did, his name is Alexander Graham Bell.

His Early Life. Alexander had a nice childhood. His family and education influenced his career very much. His mother, Elisa Symonds, was a painter and a talented musician. Alexander Melville Bell, his father, taught deaf mutes how to speak and invented "Visible Speech". Visible Speech was a code of symbols that indicated the position of the throat, tongue, and lips in making noises. These symbols helped the deaf students learn to speak. His father also was an actor.

Alexander Bell was named after his grandpa. His middle name came from a friend of the family. He went by Graham most of the time. He, like his mother, was talented at music. He played by ear since he was a little boy and received a musical education.

Bell and his two brothers helped their dad in demonstrations of Visible Speech. Bell enrolled as a student-teacher at Weston House, where he taught music and speech in exchange for an education in other subjects. He became a full-time teacher at the University of Edinburgh for a year. He studied at the University of London and taught a class of deaf kids how to speak using Visible Speech.

In 1866, Bell made a series of experiments to determine how vowel sounds are produced. He read a book on acoustics written by the German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz. The book described experiments in combining the notes of electricity driven through tuning forks to make vowel sounds. It gave Bell the idea for "telegraphing" speech and got him interested in electricity.

Bell took over his father's classes in 1868 while his dad taught in the United States. Bell became his father's assistant in London the following year. He specialized in the anatomy of the vocal apparatus at University College in London at the same time.

Graham's two brothers died of tuberculosis in 1870, and Graham found out he was threatened with the disease, and that August his father moved the family to Ontario, Canada. Graham enjoyed the climate and soon recovered his health.

Alexander the Teacher. Sarah Fuller, the principle of a deaf school in Boston, asked Alexander's dad to show her teachers Visible Speech. Melville couldn't go but told them about Alexander. In 1872, Alexander opened a school to teach teachers how to teach deaf people, and a year later he became a professor at Boston University.

Bell taught many students, one being Mabel Hubbard. Her father Gardiner Hubbard was a Boston attorney. Gardiner was an outspoken critic of Western Union Telegraph Company, and once he heard Bell was working on improvements for the telegraph he offered him financial backing in hope of outdoing Western Union.

Alexander didn't attempt to transmit speech electrically when he first began his experiments in 1872. He first tried to send several telegraph messages at the same time over one wire, something that was much needed back then. In 1874, he developed the idea for the telephone while visiting his father. When he returned to Boston he continued his telegraph experiments.

Bell soon noticed he lacked the skill and time to make the necessary parts for his experiments. At Hubbard's insistence, Bell went to an electrical instrument-making shop for help. There, Thomas Watson began to assist Bell. The two became best friends, and Watson eventually received a share in Bell's telephone patents as payment for his work.

Ring Ring. During his experiments, Bell noticed that it would be possible to send voices over his harmonic telegraph that he used to send multiple messages. On June 2, 1875, while Bell was on one end of the line and Watson was on the other end working on the reeds of the telegraph, Bell heard the sound of a plucked reed coming over the wire. He ran to Watson and cried, "Watson, what did you do then? Don't change anything."

After about an hour of plucking reeds and listening to the sounds, Bell gave Watson instructions for making a pair of improved instrument. These new instruments transmitted recognizable sounds of the voice, but not words. The two experimented the whole summer long, and in September of 1875, Bell started to write the specifications for his first telephone patent.

On March 7, 1876 the patent was issued. Three days passed, and Bell had successfully transmitted human speech over the wire. Bell and Watson, sitting in different rooms, were about to try another transmitter when Bell cried to Watson saying, "Mr. Watson, come here. I want you!" Little did he know those would be the first words spoken on the telephone. Bell had spilled some battery acid on his clothes, but soon forgot about it in his excitement.

Bell demonstrated his telephones at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in June 1876. One of the judges, the Emperor Dom Pedro of Brazil, was very impressed by Bell's invention. The British scientist Sir William Thomson called the telephone "the most wonderful thing in America."

Bell and Watson gave many successful presentations of their new invention, and their work paved the way for commercial telephone service in the USA. The first telephone-company, the Bell Telephone Company, came into service on July 9, 1877. Two days later, Bell married Mabel Hubbard, and they went to England to introduce the telephone. The Bells sailed home in 1878 and moved to Washington, D.C.

Bell didn't take an active part in the telephone business, but he was often called upon to testify in lawsuits brought by men claiming they had invented the phone first, including Elisha Gray and Thomas Edison. Several suits went to the Supreme Court of the United States, and the court upheld Bell's rights in all of the cases. He was the only one who filed a patent and so the telephone was rightfully his invention.

After the Telephone. Alexander lived a creative life 45 years after the telephone, spending time with the deaf and inventing other communications devices.

The French government gave Bell the Volta Prize worth 50,000 francs in 1880 for the telephone. He used the money to establish the Volta Laboratory for research, invention, and work with the deaf. There, he and his associates developed the method of making phonograph records on disks. The patents for the records were sold in 1886, and Bell used his share to establish the Volta Bereau, to continue to work with the deaf. In 1890, Alexander started and financed the American Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf.

Bell developed an electrical instrument to locate bullets in the body in a vain effort to save President Garfield's life. The president had been shot by an assassin in 1881. A test was conducted on the president but was, unfortunately, unsuccessful because the doctors failed to remove the steel springs from the bed. Bell perfected an electric probe used in surgery several years before the X-ray was invented. He also invented a method of locating icebergs by detecting their echoes. He worked on methods of making water from vapors in the air for people adrift at sea. For 30 years, he directed breeding experiments in an attempt to develop a sheep that would be able to bear more than one lamb at a time.

Alexander was interested in flying all his life. He helped finance the American scientist Samuel Langley's experiments with heavier-than-air machines. He conducted a long line of experiments with kites capable of carrying a person. These experiments tested the lifting power of plane surfaces at low speeds. In 1907, Bell helped make the Aerial Experiment Association, which worked to advance aviation. He also helped establish the Science magazine and helped organize the National Geographic Society.

Alexander Bell became a citizen of the United States of America in 1882. He spent most of his late life at his estate on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. He worked in his laboratory or played his piano. Bell sadly died in August 2, 1922, at his Nova Scotia home.

So the next time you use the phone you can say to yourself, "I now know who invented the telephone." Alexander Bell greatly influenced world history with the invention of the telephone. Think if you still had to walk to your friend's house to find out if they're home. Think if a soldier needed reinforcements but he couldn't get them because he didn't have a phone. Now and days phones have become a lot more advanced with sending voices through the air and sending pictures through wires and satellite, but it all started with the Alexander Graham Bell telephone.

Bibliography
1. "Bell, Alexander Graham" World Book™ Software © 2000 World Book, Inc., 233 N. Michigan, Chicago, IL 60601. "Bell, Alexander Graham"
2. "Bell, Alexander Graham," Microsoft® Encarta® 98 Encyclopedia. © 1993-1997 Microsoft Corporation.
3. "Bell, Alexander Graham," Compton's Encyclopedia 1969 Edition © 1969 F. E. Compton Co.