Alexander
Graham Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland
on 3rd March, 1847. His father was Alexander
Melville Bell, a leading authority in elocution and speech correction.
The second of three sons, Bell was mainly educated at home. However,
he did spend two years in Edinburgh Royal High School and attended
a few lectures at Edinburgh University.
In 1864 Bell began work as a teacher at Elgin's Western House Academy.
Four years later he moved to London where
he became his father's assistant. Bell's health began to deteriorate
and as both his brothers both died of tuberculosis,
and in 1870 the family decided to emigrate to Canada. They settled
in Brantford, Ontario, and Bell's health immediately began to improve.
Bell gave lectures on Visible Speech, a method of teaching speech
to the deaf that had been developed by his father. In 1871 he was
invited to give a series of speeches in the United States. He opened
a school for the teachers of the deaf in Boston
and in 1873 became professor of vocal physiology at the city's university.
After experimenting with various acoustical devices Bell produced
the first intelligible telephonic transmission with a message to his
assistant, Thomas Watson, on 5th June, 1875. When he heard that Elisha
Gray was working on a similar device, Bell patented his telephone
on 3rd March, 1876. The following year formed the Bell Telephone Company.
The telephone was an instant success. Within three years there were
30,000 telephones in use around the world. Gray later claimed the
invention of the telephone but lost the long legal battle in the Supreme
Court.
With the 50,000 francs that he obtained from the French government
for winning the Volta Prize in 1880, Bell established the Volta Laboratory
in Washington. Over the next few years
he invented the photophone, a machine which used selenium crystals
to transmit words in a beam of light. This was followed by a device
that could identify metal in the human body. This was used to locate
bullets after someone had been shot.
In 1883 Bell invented the graphophone, the first practical system
of sound recording. The laboratory also experimented with flat disc
records, electroplating records, and impressing permanent magnetic
fields on records (an early type of tape recorder).
In 1898 Bell became president of the National Geographical Society.
With the help of Gilbert Grosvenor, his future son-in-law, Bell established
the illustrated National Geographic Magazine.
Bell also built a research laboratory in Nova Scotia where he invented
an air-cooling system, a way of desalinating sea-water and a sorting
machine for punch-coded census cards.
In his later years Bell took a keen interest in aeronautics. His wife,
Mabel Hubbard Bell, founded the Aerial Experiment Association and
Bell built giant man-carrying kites. In 1919 Bell produced a hydrofoil
craft that reached speeds of 70 miles per hour. Alexander Graham Bell
died in Nova Scotia, Canada, on 2nd August, 1922.
(1)
United States Patent Office granted Alexander Graham Bell a patent
for the telephone on 7th March, 1876.
The method of, and apparatus for, transmitting vocal or other sounds
telegraphically by causing electrical undulations, similar to form
to the vibrations of the air accompanying the said vocal or other
sounds.
(2)
Advertisement for the Bell Telephone Company (May 1877)
No skilled operator is required; direct conversation may be had by
speech without the intervention of a third person. The communication
is much more rapid, the average number of words being transmitted
by Morse Sounder being from fifteen to twenty per minute, by telephone
from one to two hundred. No expense is required either for its operation,
maintenance, or repair. It needs no battery and has no complicated
machinery. It is unsurpassed for economy and simplicity.
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