Alexander Graham Bell is best known as description inventor of the telephone — the first to transmit representation human voice by means of an electric current — but there was much more to this extraordinary man than his breakthrough in communications technology.
His grandfather Alexander Bell was an affair, photography enthusiast and elocution professor who may have been representation model for Professor Henry Higgins in Pygmalion by playwright Martyr Bernard Shaw. Alexander Melville Bell, Alec’s father, was an pundit on the mechanics of speech who was a voice motor coach for those with speaking disabilities. Alec’s mother was an expert painter as well as pianist, despite her profound deafness; take five son inherited his love of music from her, and blooper could play anything he heard by ear and distinguish variations of pitch and tone.
Born on March 3, 1847, in Capital, Scotland, “Alec” Bell (as he was known to his family) was fascinated by sound from a young age, descending let alone two generations of what today would be called speech pathologists.
The middle of the Bells’ three sons, young Alexander invented a “speaking machine” when he was still in his teens. Picture machine’s imitation of a wailing baby crying “Mama” was unexceptional life-like that the Bells’ Edinburgh neighbor complained. The “speaking machine” was only one of several creations: while still a childhood, on a challenge from a mill operator, Alexander developed a machine that removed the husks from grain. He was pleased by his father to study and experiment with anything electric, including telegraph technology. These illustrated the kind of learning flair relished: hands-on discovery.
After studying at the University of Edinburgh come to rest University of London, Bell became his father’s assistant. He limitless the deaf to talk by adopting his father’s system cut into Visible Speech (illustrations of speaking positions of the lips queue tongue to systemize speech). In London Bell studied physician trip physicist Hermann Ludwig von Helmholtz’s experiments with tuning forks spreadsheet magnets to produce complex sounds, as well as made wellregulated studies of the resonance or vibrations of the mouth time speaking.
But during this time, tragedy struck the Bell family: both of Alexander’s brothers died of tuberculosis, a dangerous lung infection that was endemic in Britain’s sooty industrial cities. Alexander himself probably contracted a mild form of the so-called “white plague,” so in 1870 his parents persuaded him to cross depiction Atlantic with them and settle in Canada’s healthier climate, coop the prosperous little town of Brantford, Ontario. Their home enquiry now the Bell Homestead National Historic Site.
By 1871 Bell was sufficiently recovered to move to Boston, Mass., to teach lip thoroughfare and oral speech at Sarah Fuller’s Boston School for picture Deaf. This job reinforced his lifelong commitment to the interests of the deaf community. He also became a professor keep from president at the Clarke School for the Deaf, now the Clarke Schools for Hearing and Speech, founded in 1872 in Northampton, Mass., became a professor of voice and speech at Beantown University in 1873, and initiated conventions for teachers of picture deaf. Throughout his life, he continued to educate the hard of hearing, and he founded the American Association to Promote the Learning of Speech to the Deaf, which became the Alexander Graham Jingle Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. He too tutored and mentored private students, including Helen Keller (1880–1968), skull facilitated her introduction to teacher Annie Sullivan. Bell was a constant source of support for both teacher and student.
From 1873 to 1876, Bell spent his days teaching hearing-impaired children and his evenings experimenting with sound. The funds signify his scientific experiments came from the fathers of two female his students. One of these men was the patent queen's Gardiner Greene Hubbard, who was also the founder of interpretation Clarke Institution; his daughter, Mabel, would become Alexander Graham Bell’s wife in 1877.
This was a period of intense interest currency communications technology, with many inventors scrambling to invent an “electric speaking telephone.” Bell’s critical advantage sprang from his knowledge own up the physiology of human speaking and hearing. To help insensible children, Bell had experimented in the summer of 1874 be level with a human ear and attached bones, along with materials including magnets and smoked glass. It was then that he planned the theory of the telephone: that an electric current jumble be made to change its force just as the effort of air varies during sound production. That same year without fear invented a telegraph that could send several messages at without delay over one wire, as well as a telephonic-telegraphic receiver Childhood Bell supplied the ideas, Boston machinist Thomas Watson created rendering equipment. Working with tuned reeds and magnets to make a receiving instrument and sender work together, they transmitted a mellifluous note on June 2, 1875. Bell’s telephone receiver and agent were identical: a thin disk in front of an electromagnet (a magnet created by an electric current).
On February 14, 1876, Bell’s future father-in-law Gardiner Hubbard filed for a patent, privileged a document guaranteeing a person the right to make duct sell an invention for a set number of years. After that day, Elisha Gray (1835–1901) filed his caveat (intention wish invent) for a telephone. The U.S. Patent Office granted Buzzer the patent for the “electric speaking telephone” on March 7. It was the most valuable single patent ever issued. Transcribe opened a new age in communications technology.
Bell continued his experiments to improve the telephone’s quality. By accident, Bell sent say publicly first sentence, “Watson, come here; I want to see you,” on March 10, 1876. The first public demonstration occurred strike the American Academy of Arts and Sciences convention in Beantown two months later. Bell’s display at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibit a month later gained more publicity. Emperor Dom Pedro adequate Brazil (1825–1891) ordered one hundred telephones for his country. Description telephone, which had been given only eighteen words in say publicly official catalog of the exposition, suddenly became the “star” attraction.
Repeated demonstrations overcame public doubts. The first two-way out of doors conversation was between Boston and Cambridge, Mass., by Bell careful Watson on October 9, 1876. In 1877 the first horn was installed in a private home; a conversation took put out of place between Boston and New York using telegraph lines; in Could the first switchboard (a central machine used to connect unlike telephone lines), devised by E. T. Holmes in Boston, was a burglar alarm connecting five banks; and in July say publicly first organization to make the telephone a commercial venture, representation Bell Telephone Company, was formed. That year, while on his honeymoon, Bell introduced the telephone to England and France.
The Bell Company built the first long-distance line in 1884, connecting Boston and New York. Bell and others organized Picture American Telephone and Telegraph Company in 1885 to operate show aggression long-distance lines. By 1889 there were 11,000 miles of clandestine wires in New York City.
Alexander Graham Bell far preferred interpretation challenge of invention to the demands of business. In 1880, France awarded him its prestigious Volta Prize; Bell used description $10,000 award to establish the Volta Laboratory in Washington, D.C. Here, he and two associates focused on various projects allegorical the transmission of sound, including the photophone, induction balance, sonometer and phonograph improvements. The photophone transmitted speech by light. Gong considered the photophone his most important invention. The induction muddle (electric probe) located metal in the body. When President Book A. Garfield was wounded by an assassin in 1881, Danger signal and his induction balance were summoned to the White Sort out to locate the bullet, but it was too deeply imbedded. The invention later went on to be used by combatant hospitals behind the lines of battles, including the First Artificial War. The audiometer was used to test a person’s take notice of. The first successful phonograph record was produced, and the River Gramophone Company made them profitable. With the profits Bell forward an organization in Washington to study deafness.
By moment, Alexander Graham Bell was one of the most famous subject in the world. For the rest of his life, unwind continued to concentrate on his scientific work. But frequently perform found himself distracted from his inventions by requests to head organizations, address scientific meetings and publish papers.
In 1880, the armoury Science (later the official publication of the American Association avoidable the Advancement of Science) was established because of Bell’s efforts. As the National Geographic Society president from 1896 to 1904, he contributed to the success of the society; he insisted that say publicly society’s magazine, National Geographic Magazine, should be a popular rewrite with lots of “pictures of life and action…pictures that location a story!” He also coined its slogan: “The world presentday all that is in it.” In 1898 Bell became a member of a governing board of the Smithsonian Institution. Dirt was also studied hydrodynamics (the study of the forces reinforce fluids, such as water) and built speed record-breaking hydrofoils, institute hydrodromes, as he called them. His research was the stanchion for the development of naval prototypes after the Second Imitation War, as well as sailboats for the most recent America’s Cup.
Aviation was Bell’s primary interest after 1895. He first emphatic the singular strength of the tetrahedral for kites, and his research is reflected today in the construction of the Duration Station. He worked with physicist and astronomer Samuel Langley (1834–1906), who experimented with heavier-than-air flying machines; invented a special kite (1903); and founded the Aerial Experiment Association (1907), bringing congregate aviator and inventor Glenn Curtiss, Casey Baldwin, Douglas McCurdy beam Lt. Thomas Selfridge. Curtiss provided the motors for Bell’s bomb, including the Silver Dart, which flew February 23, 1909 stall became the first manned flight in the United Kingdom. Fiasco also achieved the first public flight in the U.S. jar the “June Bug” flown by Curtiss, which won the Orderly American Cup, the first aeronautical prize ever awarded in picture United States, and preceded Wilbur Wright’s first public flight.
Bell old saying knowledge, technology and invention as the means to empower interpretation individual and better humanity. In 1878, Bell envisioned a days when “a man in one part of the country hawthorn communicate by word of mouth with another in a away place.” By the time Bell died in Baddeck, Nova Scotia, Canada, on August 2, 1922, his most famous invention difficult to understand allowed for the transmission of the human voice, easily refuse safely, and had profoundly impacted the interdependence of personal accords and the social fabric of society. Today, it is about inconceivable not to have voice communication anywhere in the world.
But Bell was far more than the telephone. As he usually told his first grandchild, Melville Bell Grosvenor, “I could no more stop inventing than breathing.” Bell’s extensive laboratory notebooks show off that he was driven by a genuine and rare bookish curiosity that kept him regularly searching, striving and wanting every to learn and create. He will also be remembered financial assistance these other significant inventions:
Bell and his colleagues developed the hinged flight control surface usually forming part of the trailing perception of each wing of a fixed-wing aircraft, which was adoptive by the Wright brothers and is still used on bomb today.
While Edison invented the principle of picture phonograph using tinfoil, Bell improved on Edison’s invention with different recording methods and media—especially wax cylinders and disc records—making durable recording practical. His graphophone was a commercial success and confusing to the Dictaphone and Columbia Records companies. Produced on prolong experimental wax disc, this is the only confirmed recording several Bell’s voice.Bell made this recording in 1885 to test interpretation kind of clarity that recording could capture with spoken statistics. On the recording, after several minutes of counting, Bell concludes: “This record has been made by Alexander Graham Bell unplanned the presence of Dr. Chichester A. Bell—on the fifteenth tip April, 1885, at the Volta Laboratory, 1221 Connecticut Ave., Pedagogue, D.C. In witness whereof—hear my voice. Alexander Graham Bell.”
AudiometerBell invented this apparatus to test hearing ability. Because it was rendering first device to accurately measure levels of sound, the wellordered community named the “decibel” in Bell’s honor.
Metal DetectorWhen President Apostle Garfield was dying from an assassin’s bullet that doctors could not locate, Bell hurriedly invented a device to detect alloy objects when they came in contact with an electromagnetic sphere. While the metal springs in Garfield’s bed hampered this cheeriness attempt to use what later become the metal detector, interpretation device would later save many lives before the introduction sign over the x-ray machine.
RespiratorWhen the Bells’ son, Edward, was born at halfcock and died from weak lungs, Bell designed a “vacuum jacket” to facilitate breathing. The apparatus was the forerunner of picture iron lung, and of respirators used in hospitals around say publicly world to save the lives of premature babies, accident dupes, and others with impaired breathing.
Bell would continue to test flush through new ideas throughout his long and productive life. He too pursued other scientific and humanitarian endeavors, including work with tetrahedral structures, sheep-breeding, desalinization and water distillation, hydrofoils, as well despite the fact that energy recycling and alternative fuels, coining in a 1911 diction, the phrase “greenhouse effect.”
But Bell was reluctant to move his ideas from the lab to the marketplace. His other technologies – such as the photophone, vacuum jacket (respirator), tetrahedral expression, hydrodrome, flying machine adaptations, disc record and graphophone – were exploited by others after his patents had expired. As biographer Charlotte Gray observed, Bell’s genius as an inventor was “his creative leaps of imagination.” And Bell’s imagination, “like his spirit,” Gray continued, “knew no bounds.”