Alexander Graham Bell was born on March 3, 1847 to a family of eminent speech educators and musicians. Bell’s grandfather, Alexander Bell, was an elocution professor. His father, Alexander Melville Bell was an expert in vocal physiology and elocution. He invented “Visible Speech,” which was a code of symbols for all spoken sounds that was used in teaching deaf people to speak. “Visible Speech” shows the articulation of sound on the lips, tongue, and throat. Alexander’s mother was a portrait painter and an accomplished musician. As a child Alexander received his early education at home and graduated at age fourteen from the Royal High School, Edinburgh. He then enrolled as a student teacher at Weston House, a nearby boys’ school, where he taught music and speech and in turn he received instruction in other subjects. Bell then went off to study at the University of Edinburgh and University College, London. After that he decided to look up on a wonderful deed and became his father’s assistant. He taught the deaf to talk by adopting his father’s system of “Visible Speech.” In London he studied Hermann Ludwig von Helmholtz’s experiments with tuning forks and magnets to produce complex sounds. In 1865 Alexander made scientific studies of resonance of the mouth while speaking. When Bell’s two brothers died of tuberculosis, his dad took his remaining family to the healthier climate of Ontario, Canada in 1870. From 1873 to 1876 Alexander experimented with multiple telegraphs and one of them was an electric speaking telegraph which is known as the modern day “telephone.” Later he married a woman by the name of Mabel Hubbard who was one of his deaf scholars and was proud to name her his wife. At age twenty-nine Bell invented the first telephone which soon became a huge publicity stunt all over the world. In the year of 1882 he became a naturalized U.S. citizen. Ill-fatedly Alexander Graham Bell died August 2, 1922 in Baddeck, Nova Scotia, Canada at his summer home on Cape Breton Island. He was considered as a remarkable inventor and an astonishing teacher. Bell invented one of the most common used objects in the world and out of open heart aided the deaf.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Biography: The Life of the Invention Icon
Alexander Graham Bell was born on March 3, 1847 to a family of eminent speech educators and musicians. Bell’s grandfather, Alexander Bell, was an elocution professor. His father, Alexander Melville Bell was an expert in vocal physiology and elocution. He invented “Visible Speech,” which was a code of symbols for all spoken sounds that was used in teaching deaf people to speak. “Visible Speech” shows the articulation of sound on the lips, tongue, and throat. Alexander’s mother was a portrait painter and an accomplished musician. As a child Alexander received his early education at home and graduated at age fourteen from the Royal High School, Edinburgh. He then enrolled as a student teacher at Weston House, a nearby boys’ school, where he taught music and speech and in turn he received instruction in other subjects. Bell then went off to study at the University of Edinburgh and University College, London. After that he decided to look up on a wonderful deed and became his father’s assistant. He taught the deaf to talk by adopting his father’s system of “Visible Speech.” In London he studied Hermann Ludwig von Helmholtz’s experiments with tuning forks and magnets to produce complex sounds. In 1865 Alexander made scientific studies of resonance of the mouth while speaking. When Bell’s two brothers died of tuberculosis, his dad took his remaining family to the healthier climate of Ontario, Canada in 1870. From 1873 to 1876 Alexander experimented with multiple telegraphs and one of them was an electric speaking telegraph which is known as the modern day “telephone.” Later he married a woman by the name of Mabel Hubbard who was one of his deaf scholars and was proud to name her his wife. At age twenty-nine Bell invented the first telephone which soon became a huge publicity stunt all over the world. In the year of 1882 he became a naturalized U.S. citizen. Ill-fatedly Alexander Graham Bell died August 2, 1922 in Baddeck, Nova Scotia, Canada at his summer home on Cape Breton Island. He was considered as a remarkable inventor and an astonishing teacher. Bell invented one of the most common used objects in the world and out of open heart aided the deaf.
1st Influence: Bell Opens up a New Millennium for Communication Technology
In order to help deaf children, Alexander Graham Bell investigated many experiments. Bell conducted a trial in the summer of 1874 with a human ear and attached bones, a tympanum, magnets, and smoked glass. He conceived the theory of the telephone: an electric current can be made to change intensity precisely as air density varies during sound production. Unlike the telegraph’s use of intermittent current, the telephone requires continuous current with varying intensity. That same year Alexander formulated a harmonic telegraph, to transmit several messages simultaneously over one wire, and a telephonic-telegraph receiver. Striving to reproduce the human voice electrically, he became an expert with electric wave transmission. Early in 1874, Bell met Thomas A. Watson, a young machinist at a Boston electrical shop. Watson became Alexander’s indispensable colleague, bringing to his experiments the crucial ingredient that had been lacking; Watson’s technical expertise in electrical engineering. Bell was the one who supplied the ideas while Thomas made and assembled the equipment. They worked endless hours together brain storming different experiments for the telephone. Although Bell constructed the basic form of the telephone, Hubbard insisted that the young inventor should focus his efforts on the harmonic telegraph instead. Alexander fulfilled this thought and switched telegraphs. 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 him to pursue his “germ of a great invention”- speech transmission. Back in Boston, Alexander and Thomas carried on with the harmonic telegraph, but still with the telephone in mind. Operating with tuned reeds and magnets to synchronize a receiving instrument with a sender, by accident they transmitted a musical note on June 2, 1875. Bell immediately drew a sketch of the design and Watson built it. The telephone receiver and transmitter were indistinguishable: a thin disk in front of an electromagnet. On February 14, 1876, Bell’s attorney filed for the patent just hours before Elisha Gray showed up at the same patent office to file his caveat for his telephone. The U.S. Patent Office granted Bell the patent for the “electric speaking telephone” on March 7, 1876. It was the most valuable single patent ever issued, and it opened a new age in communication technology. Alexander continued his experiments to improve the telephone’s quality. Three days later on March 10, 1876, by another fault, he sent the first sentence “Watson, come here, I want you.” The first demonstration occurred at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences convention in Boston two months later gained more exposure, and Emperor Dom Pedro of Brazil ordered 100 telephones for his country. The telephone accorded only 18 words in the official catalog of the exposition, suddenly became the “Star” attraction. The first reciprocal outdoor conversation was between Bell and Watson on October 9, 1876. In 1877 the first telephone was installed in a private home. In July the first organization to commercialize the invention, the Bell Telephone Company was established. The company manufactured the first long-distance line in 1884, connecting Boston and New York. The American Telephone and Telegraph Company known as AT&T, was constructed by Alexander and others in 1885 to operate other long-distance lines. By 1889, when insulation was perfected, there were 11,000 miles of underground wires in New York City. The telephone took a great mind of thinking to invent, but also happened by a couple events of mishap. Thanks to Alexander Graham Bell, we now have one of the most useful inventions ever made used in this whole world.
2nd Influence: Bell's Contribute to Teaching the Deaf
Alexander Graham Bell always loved to lend a helping hand. Contributing to help the deaf was a huge priority of his. He had wanted to facilitate the speaking of the deaf ever since he supported his father. In 1871 Bell moved to Boston to teach at Sarah Fuller’s School for Deaf, the first such school in the world. Another occupation of his was tutoring private students. Alexander was blessed to have the opportunity to tutor pupils that graciously appreciated his help; one of them being the be loved, Mrs. Helen Keller. As a professor of vocal physiology and speech at Boston University in 1873, he initiated conventions for teachers of the deaf. Throughout Bell’s life he continued to educate the deaf, and he founded the American Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf. While testing different telegraphs to try and help the deaf, Bell met his wife. Funds came from the fathers of two of his pupils; one of these men, Gardiner Hubbard, had a deaf daughter, Mabel, who later became Alexander’s spouse. Educating the deaf was a tremendous honor to Bell. Alexander Graham Bell showed us that even though you are only one human soul on this Earth, if you stop and think about what major gift you can do to endow others in need, it will make you feel like you have just accomplished your greatest challenge yet in life.
Fun Facts
· After 1895 aviation was Alexander Graham Bell’s primary interest. He assisted Samuel Langley in building tetrahedral kites that were capable of carrying a human being. In 1907 the two founded the Aerial Experiment Association as well as bringing together Glenn Curtiss, Francis Baldwin, and others. They devised the aileron control principal (which replaced “wing warping”), developed the hydroplane, and solved balance problems in flying machines. In that same year Curtiss furnished the motor for Bell’s man-caring kite.
· Believe it or not, Bell didn’t just stop at building kites that flew individuals. Astonishingly enough, he designed a hydrofoil boat that set the world record water-speed record in 1918.
· It was an extraordinary sensation to find that the Bell Company was involved in 587 lawsuits, five of which went to the Supreme Court, and Bell didn’t lose a single case.
· The magazine Science (later the official organ of the American Association for the Advancement of Science) was founded in 1880 because of Bell’s efforts.
· As National Geographic Society president from 1896 to 1904, he fostered the success of the society its publications.
· Alexander 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.
· France and England were introduced to the telephone while Bell and his wife were on their honeymoon. · Alexander Graham Bell started the Volta Laboratory in Washington, D.C., with the Volta Price money(50,000 francs, about $10,000) awarded by France for his invention of the telephone. At the laboratory he and associates worked on various projects during the 1880s, including the photophone, induction balance, audiometer, and phonograph improvements. The photophone transmitted speech by light, using a primitive photoelectric cell. The induction balance (electric probe) located metal in the body. The audiometer indicated Bell’s continued interest in deafness. The first successful phonograph record, a shellac cylinder, as well as wax disks and cylinders, was produced.
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