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Alexander Graham Bell: A Life
From Beginning to End
(Biographies of Inventors),
by Hourly History.
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Amazing story of an amazing man, succinctly given.
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"Alexander Graham Bell could have lived a life pursuing the career which he appears to have been born to follow. His grandfather was a celebrated teacher of elocution (pronunciation and articulation). His father devised a new means of written language designed to educate the deaf. His older brother had followed in the footsteps of both father and grandfather. Bell himself was a gifted teacher and found a vocation in teaching English to deaf children.
"Had he limited himself to this endeavor there is no doubt he would have taught a great many deaf children to speak. But Bell was not a man to settle into a role that he already excelled at. He liked to push his intellect and boundaries. He began work on a multiple telegraph system as a hobby and ended up in a frantic race to bring to market the first telephone, a race he would win against one of the foremost inventors in history, Thomas Edison.
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"Bell foresaw the possibilities of using light as a medium for communication and invented the principles by which future fiber optics would work. His desire to save the life of a popular president would lead to the invention of the metal detector and the iron lung, which would help prematurely born children. A decade before the Wright brothers showed the world that manned, powered flight was not science-fiction, Bell was on record as stating that the development of flight would transform the world. He then set about designing aircraft that would help pioneer the new aeronautics industry.
"Finally, he would be the founder of an institution that would educate the world from the 1880s to the present day and beyond: The National Geographic Society.
"Alexander Graham Bell was a gifted and remarkable man with a once-in-a-generation mind capable of being turned to any field. His discovery of the telephone alone would transform the way societies communicate."
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"“I saw Sir Charles manipulate the machine and heard it speak . . . it made a great impression upon my mind.” .
"—Alexander Graham Bell on the subject of Sir Charles Wheatstone’s machine for producing artificial speech"
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"Alexander Graham Bell was born on March 3, 1847. He was the middle child, with his brother Melville being two years older and Edward one year younger. Bell’s father, Alexander Melville Bell, was a renowned teacher of speech and elocution.
"Bell was born at 16 South Charlotte Street, in Edinburgh, Scotland. The family then moved to 13 Hope Street when he was nine months old. His first education was received at home courtesy of his mother. From an early age, Bell showed a curiosity for the world around him. At the age of three or four, while on an outing outside Edinburgh, the young Aleck (as his family called him) decided to explore a nearby wheat field. He sat amidst the crop, which would have been tall enough to surpass his height, and sat in silence trying to determine if he could hear the wheat growing. Too late he realized he was lost, though ultimately found his way back to the sound of his father’s voice. This was one of Bell’s earliest memories and shows his intrepid and curious spirit.
"This was not the only sign of things to come. One day, Bell would be challenged by the father of his friend Ben Herdman to find a way to remove husks from wheat. Mr. Herdman was the owner of a flour mill at which Aleck and Ben were constantly getting into mischief. When he issued the challenge for the two boys to do something useful, Aleck came up with the idea of paddling the wheat. They found an old vat and gave it rough edges on the inside; then they put a rotating paddle wheel inside. When the wheel turned, the wheat was forced against the rough interior of the vat, removing the husks.
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"Bell was also a talented musician, displaying a good ear for music at an early age. He received private music lessons from a famous pianist, Auguste Benoit Bertini, leading to Bell becoming an accomplished improvisational piano player.
"In 1860, at the age of 13, Bell moved to London to be with his grandfather, Alexander Bell. Alexander Bell was a former actor and now earned his living teaching elocution. One year later, Aleck witnessed something that would make an indelible impression on his young mind. He, his grandfather, and father went to see a talk by the well-known scientist Sir Charles Wheatstone. There they were witness to a display of a machine which Sir Charles had invented that could reproduce human speech. Bell wrote of the experience that though he found the results crude, it made an impression on his mind.
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"Back in Edinburgh, Bell’s father challenged him and his older brother to make their own machine for recreating human speech. The two boys became immersed in their project, learning how different parts of the body affected the production of speech and attempting to artificially recreate it. The end result was a machine which could replicate with reasonable accuracy the wails of a baby. More important than the results they achieved, Bell learned from this exercise lessons in perseverance, research, and the functions of the vocal cords. It would prove another pivotal moment in his life.
"During Bell’s teenage years, his father was occupied with the development of a visible language; a series of symbols that reproduced the position and action of the tongue and lips as they made sounds. To accomplish this, he researched extensively almost every sound the human mouth could make. The purpose of the project was to create a written system that could be employed by deaf people to learn speech. The Bell boys became experts in visible speech and aided their father in his demonstrations of it. Bell’s mother was deaf, and this gave him sympathy for the condition which he would keep throughout his life.
"Between 1860 and 1865 Bell and his brother took turns attending courses at Edinburgh University and teaching courses at a boy’s school in Elgin, Weston House. One would teach elocution at Weston in exchange for instruction in more advanced courses, while the other attended the university; then they would switch. Bell would eventually become a full-time teacher of music and elocution at Weston."
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"“. . . a talent for communicating his knowledge in such a way as to secure and sustain the interest of his pupils. I have never seen English reading taught with greater success.”
"—Headteacher of a school where Alexander Graham Bell taught"
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"In 1865, following the death of Bell’s grandfather, the family moved to London. At this time Bell taught the family dog to “speak.” He achieved this through training it to growl on demand and then manipulating different parts of the dog’s mouth. He was eventually able to produce the sounds “How are you grandmama” from the animal. There was more to this exercise than simply a precocious adolescent diversion. This demonstrates the interest Bell had in the mechanism of sound production and how that could be manipulated.
"During the same time, he and his brother were debating speech theory with their father, as he neared completion of his visible speech system. One of the questions which arose from these debates concerned the nature of the vowel sounds produced by the human mouth: were these sounds modifications of a single pitch or made from resonances in different vocal cavities simultaneously? Bell wished to answer the question in a scientific way and began experimenting using tuning forks to measure the pitch of sounds produced using the tongue. He also created an instrument which used a stretched membrane to measure the vibrations in the air caused by human speech.
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"Bell’s experiments concluded that vowel sounds are compounds, made up of different simultaneously produced tones. He compiled his results into a report in which he noted that different vowels are produced using similar means but with differing volumes of air in the mouth. In March 1866, Bell’s father encouraged him to share his report with the foremost phonetics authority of the day, Alexander John Ellis, who was so impressed that he nominated Bell for membership of the London Philological Society.
"Ellis also encouraged Bell to continue his studies and gave him a book by a German researcher named Hermann von Helmholtz. Helmholtz had used tuning forks to determine the tones of vowels just as Bell had done. In the book, Helmholtz describes how electromagnetic streams are produced by the vibrations of a tuning fork which can be communicated to other forks and produce vowel sounds artificially. Bell read this and took it to mean that Helmholtz was working on producing human vowel sounds through electrical means. It gave him the idea of transmitting speech through a telegraph wire. One of Bell’s life’s works was now set; the other would emerge as he embarked on his career as a teacher.
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"In 1867 Bell accepted a teaching position in Bath. He, like all of the Bell children, had struggled with ill health due to the polluted atmosphere of their home cities of Edinburgh and London. The move to the west of England seemed to help with Bell’s symptoms, but his younger brother was not so fortunate. Edward died of tuberculosis later in the year.
"Bell taught in Bath for a year before returning to London in 1868. He had established himself at Bath as having a natural gift for the teaching of English, and Bell’s former headteacher regretted his departure. In a London school run by a Susanne Hull (one of his father’s former elocution pupils), Bell taught a class of deaf children using the visible speech system. This was his first introduction to what would be the other half of his life’s work: teaching speech to the deaf."
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"“A man’s judgement should be the final appeal in all that relates to himself.”
"—Alexander Graham Bell"
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"In 1869 Melville Bell was visiting the United States to promote the visible speech system. He had found little money in the development in the UK but had received sufficiently strong response in the United States that he was now giving serious consideration to emigrating. At this time, Bell was continuing to teach at the Hull school. This career seemed to be a promising avenue as the British government prepared to invest more money in the speech education of the deaf.
"But in 1870, Bell’s older brother Melville also succumbed to tuberculosis. Until then, Bell had been resistant to the idea of emigration due to the progress he was making in teaching the deaf in United Kingdom. The death of his last brother, however, appears to have decided Bell in favor of a new start overseas. The Bells landed in Canada on August 1, 1870. Bell’s parents had purchased a property in Brantford, Ontario.
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"Bell’s time was taken up with teaching jobs arranged by his father across Boston and New England. On April 6, 1871, he secured a term’s employment at the Boston School for the Deaf. He impressed the school’s principal, Sarah Fuller, so much that he was offered further employment in the fall term.
"On October 1, 1872, he took on a private student, five-year-old George Sanders, the son of a Massachusetts leather merchant. George had been born deaf and had never spoken a word or attended school. Bell was living at a rooming house at 35 West Newton Street, and his new pupil moved next door with his nurse. He made immediate progress with young George, but despite his success, Bell’s enthusiasm for inventing was growing.
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"Boston was a hotbed of emerging technology, and in the late nineteenth century one invention that was the subject of great speculation was the telegraph. The Great Eastern steamship laid the first successful transatlantic telegraph cable in 1865. One of America’s first national corporations, Western Union, had a virtual monopoly of coast-to-coast telegraph services. Telegraph communication was in demand and used by businesses and rich individuals. The technology was still in its infancy though. Western Union messages took days to travel across the continent and required rekeying at least once as the signal strength waned. This meant high costs per message. There was a huge appetite for further developments of the telegraph system, and this inspired Bell.
"In November 1872 Bell began to work on a system that would allow for more than one message to be transmitted on the same wire. It didn’t take him long to replicate a device which had been patented by Joseph B. Stearns and purchased by Western Union—the duplex telegraph for transmitting multiple signals on one wire. This demonstrates Bell’s inherent understanding of the mechanics of telegraphy. His understanding stemmed not just from work in the field but also from his expertise in elocution and speech therapy. He had learned from his grandfather and father the mechanisms by which the human body produces sounds and had already experimented with artificial means of reproducing these sounds. Bell was coming into the telegraphy market from an angle that would enable him to leap ahead of other inventors who had been working in the field for far longer.
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"Throughout 1872, Bell worked on two things. By day he taught George Sanders, and by night he worked on his telegraphy experiments. Both missions proved successful. With his young charge, he began by assigning labels to the child’s favorite toys. Each label was reproduced in a card file. George was used to requesting a toy by making gestures. When a toy was presented to George, his attention was drawn to the label. He then matched the label to the corresponding card. Subsequently, George would ask for the toy by picking out the card from the file. Bell then made use of a glove inscribed with the alphabet to break down the word on the card into its constituent parts. Using the glove, he was able to carry out conversations with George in public.
"He continued tutoring George, and within three years the child was able to write letters home to his parents. This demonstrated a mastery of writing and vocabulary; his letters describing traveling home to Salem also showed an awareness of abstract concepts such as time. This is an incredible achievement considering George’s complete lack of previous education and his deafness from birth.
"Bell’s skills and inventiveness as a teacher are demonstrated by the rapid progress that George Sanders was able to make. Such was the success that he was invited to give lectures on his father’s visible speech system and the education of the deaf around Boston and at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology."
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"“I came to believe firmly in the feasibility of the telegraphic transmission of speech, and I used to tell my friends that someday we should talk by telegraph.”
"—Alexander Graham Bell"
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"Bell’s experiments in telegraphy were intended to achieve the transmission of the human voice across a wire. In this work, he was building on experimental work undertaken by others before him. The concept of transmitting words through ringing different bells, using an electrically charged wire had been suggested anonymously in a letter to The Scots Magazine in 1753. In 1814, Ralph Wedgwood proposed a working telegraph system in England, but it was not taken up commercially. Subsequently there were many more technological developments in the telegraphy field, with Samuel Morse being one of the principal pioneers.
"French inventor Charles Bourseul developed a theory of transmitting human speech electronically using a diaphragm to capture the vibrations of speech and a system of electrical contacts whose connection to a battery was triggered by the vibrations of the diaphragm. It remained a theory not put into practice but inspired a German inventor, Philipp Reis. In 1861, Reis developed a means of transmitting electronic tones across long distances through a wire. His invention was not capable of transmitting speech, but he named it the telephone.
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"So, Bell was not operating in a vacuum. He was building on the learning of men who had gone before and was experimenting alongside others who were engaged in similar quests. In May 1874 Elisha Gray developed a machine that could transmit eight musical tones electrically to a receiver. He was backed by Western Union. Thomas Edison was also occupied with the same work.
"Bell’s work, meanwhile, was halted when he attempted to file for pending patents for his harmonic telegraph. He was informed that he could not file for a pending patent in the United States as he was a foreigner; foreigners could only apply for completed patents. Similarly, he couldn’t apply for a patent in the United Kingdom due to his absence during the application process.
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"This discouraged Bell enough to discard his research into the telegraph as a device for sending multiple signals at once. He decided to focus on applications related to his teaching work instead, namely the reproduction of sound waves, and ultimately, the human voice. Again, he was inspired by the work of others. A Frenchman, Leon Scott, had developed a phonautograph device which drew the shape of sounds, and Rudolph Koenig had developed a manometric flame, a gas flame that could be controlled by the human voice.
"Bell’s parents had disapproved of his obsession with telegraph technology, preferring him to focus on his work as an educator. His letters show how his mind was moving in that direction, describing these inventions to his parents and how they could be adapted to educate the deaf by allowing them to see the sounds they were making.
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"In the summer of 1874 back home in Brantford, Bell assembled a device that used the ear of a dead man to draw sound waves (utilizing the delicate bones of the inner ear). During these experiments, Bell realized that an undulating electrical current could be made to replicate the changing frequencies that make up human speech. This would be a pivotal concept behind the telephone. He received financial backing from George Sanders' father and sought out further backing from the father of another pupil, Gardiner Greene Hubbard. Hubbard would be an important patron, a man who understood the technology and shared Bell’s vision. He was a patent attorney so he also understood the highly competitive nature of the race to develop the technology which Bell was theorizing.
"A three-way partnership was agreed on between Bell, Sanders, and Hubbard to bring to market a telegraph system for the sending of multiple signals simultaneously. Thomas Edison had already done this in March 1874, but his system could only transmit four signals. Bell was confident his harmonic telegraph could at least double that output. At the beginning of 1875 Bell acquired an assistant in Thomas A. Watson, a machinist. Watson and Bell worked out of Salem, Massachusetts, and in February 1875 they developed a machine that could transmit and reproduce writing. The machine was the telautograph, and it was the first patent which Bell would achieve. The patent was granted on April 6, 1875.
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"Hubbard explained to Bell that he was now engaged in a race. Their main competitor was the Western Union-backed Elisha Gray. Though Bell’s mind continued to move back to the means of transmitting the voice by wire, Hubbard’s thoughts were focused exclusively on the invention that would make the biggest financial impact: the multiple signal telegraph. Hubbard would continue to steer his protege in this direction. It was at Hubbard’s urging, and from his experience as a patent attorney, that Bell began keeping all documentation related to his inventions including letters describing his theories to his parents. These documents and notes would be crucial in a patent dispute.
"On June 2, 1875, Bell and Watson succeeded in developing a machine that transmitted a tone to a metal reed in the receiver. When the corresponding reed at the other end was twanged, Bell heard a tone at his end. This was achieved without any external electrical power source such as a battery. What Bell and Watson had created was a telegraphic transmitter where the vibrations of sound itself were able to induce an electrical current; they proved the basic principle of inducing current through sound vibrations which would be reproduced at the other end.
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"On June 30, 1875, Watson built an apparatus designed by Bell for the transmission of speech. This was the first ever Alexander Graham Bell telephone. It worked as a result of air pressure from speech acting against a membrane which in turn caused a steel armature to vibrate which induced movement in a magnet and a continuous, undulating electrical current which flowed to a receiver. At the other end, the current caused a vibration in a reed in the receiver which reproduced the voice. The first test took place on July 1, 1875, and while Bell shouted, spoke, and sang into one end, Watson heard his muffled voice at the other, transmitted along the wire.
"The year of 1875 was pivotal in Bell’s life, as the first prototype telephone was brought into existence. Bell was only 28 at this point and was already pioneering a new technology despite no formal knowledge of or training in electrical engineering. But there was another aspect of his life that he had neglected—the finding of a wife. Before emigrating to North America, he had proposed and been rejected by one woman, and had then begun courting another. Now he found himself in love again, this time with Mabel Hubbard. Mabel was one of his pupils, deaf since an attack of scarlet fever in her childhood. She was also the 18-year-old daughter of Bell’s business partner, Gardiner Greene Hubbard. Mabel agreed to the proposal on November 25, 1875.
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"Bell’s parents had been against the match, citing his lack of financial means with which to keep a wife. Bell was also under pressure from Hubbard to choose his inventing work over his teaching of the deaf. It may have been the need to provide for Mabel that tipped Bell towards making a financial success of his invention.
"From 1876 onwards he would become completely fixated on the development of the telephone. Bell arranged for a Canadian businessman, Thomas Brown, to take a copy of his patent application to England to be filed before Bell filed his American patent. If filed in England first, Bell alone would have the rights to the invention outside of America. This appears to be some astute thinking from Bell with regards to securing the future of his matrimony and family from any souring of his business partnership. But, on reaching England, Brown didn’t file the patent.
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"This was fortuitous, however, as Bell added to his American patent a note on the use of variable resistance transmission which would not have been in the English one. This was an important clause as his eventual invention would make use of it. Hubbard had his lawyers file the patent while Bell waited for word of the English patent, which would never come. The patent from Bell was filed on February 14, 1876—the same day as one from Elisha Gray for a caveat patent, i.e. a patent for a device not yet completed. This was the same sort of patent which Bell had been denied as he was a foreigner in the United States.
"It was now that Bell’s notes, letters, and other papers proved to be the difference. He had kept any document which contained descriptions of or conversations about his telephone. He had even asked his parents to carefully file any letter in which he made mention of it. He had taken up the habit of dating each document in the event he had to prove when certain ideas had been discovered. So when Elisha Gray’s patent request made mention of an undulating current, Bell was able to show an 1875 document that mentioned the same principle. The patent examiner highlighted another area of similarity between Gray and Bell. Gray had made mention of a variable-resistance transmitter. Bell had documented this a year earlier but hadn’t actively pursued it in his work. He had added it, almost as an afterthought, to the parent application from those earlier notes. It would seem that when the patent examiner, Zenas F. Wilber, pointed this out it struck a chord in Bell. When he returned to his experiments, it was with this concept very much in mind.
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"There was nothing underhand or unethical about this. Bell wasn’t shown the actual caveat which Gray had applied for. But as his patent had, fortunately, been submitted earlier in the day than Gray’s he had the right to review areas of similarity. Of course, if Bell had waited for news of his English patent being granted then Gray’s would have taken precedence. Bell undoubtedly had the documentary evidence to prove the origins of all aspects of his invention. And as he was applying for a full patent, not a caveat, he would have been given precedence. But Hubbard’s impatience, resulting in the patent submission behind Bell’s back, may well have made the difference in Alexander Graham Bell being credited with the invention which would make his fortune and change the world forever.
"The patent was granted on March 7, 1876. On March 10, Watson and Bell had constructed an apparatus at 5 Exeter Place, Salem. It used a liquid variable-resistance transmitter, and through it, Watson became the first man in the world to hear a voice through a telephone. Bell said, “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.” Bell then heard Watson say “Mr. Bell, do you understand what I say?” In a letter written to his father the same day, Bell described his vision of homes connected to each other by telegraph wires enabling people to communicate with each other without leaving home. From his teenage years, he had been thinking about the idea of reproducing human speech via artificial means. He had believed it possible to transmit the sounds of speech via electrical means and having brought his invention to life, he could see how it had the potential to change the world."
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"“Mr. Watson, come here I want to see you.”
"—Alexander Graham Bell, first words transmitted via telephone."
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"Bell worked on two versions of the telephone: the liquid variable resistance and the magneto telephone. By May 1876 he was beginning to show his new inventions. He started with a group of Harvard professors and then performed a public display at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on May 25. Bell’s backers wished him to display on a much larger scale to show the world his inventions—not just the telephone but his multiple telegraph as well. For this purpose, the greatest stage in the world was available to Bell in the shape of the International Centennial Exhibition.
"President Ulysses S. Grant and the emperor of Brazil attended the opening ceremony on May 10, 1876, and saw the exhibits covering art and technology from 37 countries. Bell was persuaded to travel to Philadelphia for his inventions to be included in the judging for the prize of best electrical invention. Also there was his rival for the development of the multiple telegraph, Elisha Gray. Bell appears not to have been the best at marketing his inventions, however, and took some persuading to make the trip. It seems likely he was overawed by the occasion. Having arrived and set up his exhibit on June 25, Bell was helped in gaining the attention of the judges by Dom Pedro, the emperor of Brazil, who had visited the Boston School for the Deaf and had taken an interest in Melville Bell’s books on visible speech.
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"He and the other judges had been receiving a demonstration of Elisha Gray’s multiple harmonic telegraph, backed by an impressive display provided by the Western Union. Dom Pedro then saw Bell at the other end of the huge hall in which the electrical inventions were being judged. His breaking off to talk to Bell attracted attention, and soon the judges were gathered at Bell’s exhibit. He explained the multiple telegraph, and Sir William Thomson (head of the judging panel) and Dom Pedro were both able to use it to send simultaneous signals. Then Sir William was given a demonstration of the telephone. Hearing Bell’s voice on the other end, he became very excited. Dom Pedro and Elisha Gray also received a demonstration; they were able to hear some or all of Bell’s words from another room through the telephone wire.
"Bell continued to test the limits of his new invention. When visiting his parents in Brantford, Ontario, he ran wire around the house, then from the house to the Brantford telegraph office. He then went further, running a line from the Bell house to the town of Paris, eight miles away. For this experiment, he used a three-way receiver and was able to verify that multiple voices could be carried on the line at the same time. In October 1876, Bell and Watson had their first two-way conversation between rooms at 5 Exeter Place, followed by a conversation two miles apart on October 9. By December they had established the limit of the technology currently, with Bell’s voice hardly intelligible over the 143 miles from Boston to North Conway, New Hampshire.
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"By the end of 1876 William Orton, head of Western Union, was expressing an interest in the technology. He was offered the rights to the invention for $100,000 by Hubbard but refused it. Instead Orton contacted Thomas Edison and instructed him to begin work on his own version. Edison had success in producing a version which produced a clearer, louder voice than Bell’s. Orton founded the American Speaking Telephone Company with Edison and Elisha Gray.
"Bell was almost broke, spending increasing amounts of time lecturing on the subject of the telephone to promote it, while his business partners tried to create a company from scratch in a technological field that was brand new. In competition they now faced two talented electrical inventors backed by the wealthiest corporation in America.
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"The Bell telephone reached the market in 1877. Hubbard had decided to lease the telephone to homes and businesses, maintaining control of both device and system. The idea of line rental from a telecoms company is one that is familiar to us. It proved a farsighted decision by Hubbard, though one that meant profits built much more slowly. On July 4, 1877, a year after the demonstration at the International Centennial Exhibition, some 200 telephones were in use. Within a month this had increased to 778 and by the end of August to 1100. Hubbard expanded the business by allowing other companies to use the technology under license. On August 27, 1877, this enabled the New York Telephone Company to construct the first phone line in New York City.
"In Canada, the telephone patent was put into the name of Bell’s father. He would connect three homes in Brantford and then the Canadian prime minister’s house to the home of the governor-general, renting them a telephone each. By the end of August, after significantly less than a year on the market, the telephone was in use in New York, Canada, Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco. It was the invention of the age and even in its technological infancy was transforming the way people did business and communicated with each other."
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"“Telephones for the transmission of articulate speech through instruments not more than twenty miles apart. Conversation can easily be carried on after slight practice and with occasional repetition of a word or sentence.”
"—Flyer issued as part of marketing of the Bell Telephone in 1877"
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"On July 11, 1877, Bell married Mabel Hubbard. He was 30 and she 19. They traveled to England for a honeymoon where Bell found that his fame had preceded him. The couple was wined and dined by the elite of English society including Queen Victoria. By this time, Mabel was pregnant and was advised against making an Atlantic crossing. Their daughter, Elsie May Bell, was born on May 10, 1878 while in England.
"Back in the United States, the Western Union Company were winning the fight to dominate the telephone market. They had the advantage of their existing wire networks to connect their telephones, meaning they could be up and running in new towns and cities much faster than the Bell operation. They also had the advantage of Thomas Edison’s developments on the receiver. Edison’s telephone was providing a much higher quality of voice than Bell’s. Towards the end of 1877, while Bell was still in England, stock speculators were downplaying the value of Bell, and their stock remained low. Meanwhile, Western Union was buying Bell stock, trying to obtain control of the company and eliminate their rival.
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"Hubbard decided to fight back by launching a patent infringement lawsuit, using a Western Union agent, Peter A. Dowd, as his fall guy. A new general manager was hired for the Bell Telephone Company, Theodore N. Vail. Fresh investment was also brought in along with a new president, Colonel William H. Forbes. Forbes and Vail would lead the market battle against Western Union. Watson had improved the product they were selling after discovering two inventors, Emile Berliner and Francis Blake, who had improved on Edison’s design. Watson bought the rights to their design and brought them both into the Bell Telephone Company. The quality gap at least was closed.
"The copyright infringement trial took place amid a storm of publicity from Western Union claiming that Bell had stolen his invention from Elisha Gray. The first depositions were taken on March 5, 1877. Bell shares were worth $50 at the time. As the trial wore on it became clear that Western Union had little hope of proving that their man was the real inventor of the telephone. When Bell himself took the stand he was helped by his considerable presence and ability of oratory. His near photographic memory was also a huge help. Bell explained his thought processes in developing the telephone and talked through the extensive notes and paperwork that accompanied his patent.
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"By September 9, 1877, the Bell shares had increased from $50 a share to $300. In October they had reached $500 and by December $700. Bell and his wife made themselves a fortune selling their shares in the Bell Telephone Company. Despite the success of the company, Bell was not in the best financial position.
"The trial came to an end on November 10, 1879, when Western Union settled out of court. The deal included that all telephone lines, switchboard, and telephony patents were to be handed over to the Bell Telephone Company on the proviso that Bell did not expand their operations into the telegraph industry. As telephones would render the telegraph largely redundant, this seemed hardly to matter. Bell Telephone had been in existence for just three years and now possessed a nationwide monopoly on the telephony market."
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"“I have been able to hear a shadow and I have even perceived by ear the passage of a cloud across the sun’s disk. I have heard articulate speech produced by sunlight!”
"—Alexander Graham Bell in a letter to his father on the subject of the photophone."
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"By the 1880s the Bells were living comfortably thanks to their selling of Bell Telephone shares at the right time. They relocated to Washington D.C. in 1879. Bell now had little to do with the telephone company other than appearing as a witness in a series of patent trials which were brought against them. At 32, Bell had reached a point in his life which most men never achieve. He had perfected a breakthrough invention that was revolutionizing society. He had founded a great company which was growing into a corporate colossus and had made his fortune. To achieve so much at such a young age is a remarkable achievement, made even more remarkable when considering that for the most of the time he was working part-time as an inventor and full time as a teacher.
"Now Bell’s mind turned to a further enhancement of his invention. He had proved it was possible to transmit a voice electronically over a wire. Could it be done wirelessly—perhaps using light as its medium? His inspiration was the work of an Atlantic telegraph engineer named Willoughby Smith who had used the element selenium for the cable due to its high resistance. He reported that the resistance seemed to vary depending on whether it was day or night. To Bell this seemed to suggest that it would be possible to hear the moment when sunlight fell across the wire. To this end he began to experiment, aided by Charles Sumner Tainter, a maker of optical instruments. They constructed an apparatus that used mirrors to reflect sunlight into the machine and a lens to focus it. A rubber mouthpiece directed the sound of the voice onto a transmitter.
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"Their idea was that sound waves striking a mirror on one side would affect the light waves being reflected from the other side. A dish collected the reflected light and directed into onto a cell of selenium which was connected to a circuit with a telephone. They began experimenting with different wavelengths of light and with polarized light as well as sunlight to see which had the biggest effect. Bell stockpiled selenium, a rare element, until he believed he had the world’s largest single supply. The selenium used was prepared as a delicate crystal with very low resistance, making it sensitive to the smallest degree of light.
"On February 22, 1880, he tested the machine, which he named the photophone, with his cousin, Charles. Charles Bell operated the transmitting photophone in one room while Bell listened in the basement. In his notes, Bell described hearing the words “hoy, hoy, hoy” with the vowels particularly distinct. He also made out the words to “God Save the Queen” and sentences “Do you hear me? Do you understand me?” It appeared that Bell’s photophone worked to transmit the human voice wirelessly using light; they even managed to stretch the distance from transmitter to receiver to over 200 meters.
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"Not long after this discovery, Bell became a father for the second time as Mabel gave birth to another girl, Marian. Bell’s wholehearted dedication to his discoveries and his work as an inventor can be seen in his wife’s words. She wrote of his regarding his new photophone as his second baby while their second daughter was his third. She also wrote of the time which Bell spent on his invention, feeling that his new daughter was being largely ignored in favor of time spent on his work. This gives an insight not just into Bell’s dedication and work ethic but also the single-minded enthusiasm which his work produced in him.
"After reading the book written by Hermann von Helmholtz, Bell had come to believe it was possible to reproduce the human voice electronically. He had not relented for a moment until he had achieved this, despite the urgings to put this work aside by his business partners who wanted him to concentrate on the more immediately commercial multiple telegraph. After hearing of the observations of Willoughby Smith, Bell had decided to find a way to transmit sound by light, and even fatherhood could not keep him from achieving his goal. He had gone from being a demonstrator of his father’s innovative system of teaching English to the deaf, to becoming an innovative teacher of the deaf in his own right, and then to being a full-time inventor—all by the age of 30.
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"He had developed and brought his telephone to market at a time when telegraph technology was well established. Though an innovative leap to go from transmission of signals to transmission of voices, it was within the technological capability of the age (as demonstrated by the fact that Thomas Edison and others were able to improve on Bell’s designs so quickly). The photophone was a proof of concept: light could be used as a medium for transmitting complex sounds. It was a long way beyond the technology of the nineteenth century to realize fully; his invention was only effective over a small range and required line of sight and a sunny day. But by the end of the twentieth century, his photophone would finally be developed as fiber optics.
"Bell couldn’t have predicted the technology of fiber optics or the concomitant technologies which would go with this development, but he had predicted the principle by which this advanced technology would operate. His vision first brought it into being. He presaged another technological development, though he didn’t realize it. A French scientist named Ernest Mercadier highlighted that Bell’s photophone made use of radiant energy, as it used invisible infrared energy. He pointed out that a more correct name for the invention would be radiophone. Bell had devised a means of transmitting speech by means of radiant energy, a path that would also be walked 20 years later by Marconi to develop the first wireless radio.
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"At the same time as he was working on his photophone Bell was also embarked on another enterprise in the world of publishing. Bell was a believer in what he called auto education—the principle of educating oneself. He was a subscriber to a number of scientific magazines and journals and saw the value in them as educational tools. Bell took over publication of Science magazine from Thomas Edison in 1881, though it would prove a financial burden which he subsequently handed on to others.
"In January 1888, Bell founded the National Geographic Society. This would be a non-profit organization existing to promote knowledge and learning to its members. It would achieve this through the publication of a journal which initially comprised the text of lectures given by its members, thus sharing those lectures with a much wider audience. By the early twentieth century, the National Geographic Society had a membership of over 10,000 people, and its magazine would establish itself as one of the country’s greatest ever. By the late twentieth century it had even expanded into TV, a medium Bell would doubtless have found fascinating, with the National Geographic channel."
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"“Poor Garfield has gone. How terrible it all is.”
"—Alexander Graham Bell in a letter to his wife on the subject of the passing of President James Garfield."
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"In 1881, circumstances arose that would prompt Bell to another invention which has become commonplace today and has given rise to a range of other technologies and developments.
"On July 2, 1881, while walking through Washington D.C.’s railroad station, President James Garfield was shot in the back by Charles Guiteau. The president was taken to the White House with the bullet lodged near his spine. For days, doctors tried to locate and remove the bullet by hand but could not. They feared that continued invasion of the wound would cause a problem because of the delicate soft tissue in which the bullet was lodged. Finally, Simon Newcombe telegraphed Bell to see if he could help. Newcombe asked if Bell, with his knowledge of induction coils, could invent a device that could locate the slug. Newcombe knew that an electric current that passed through a coil of wire creates a magnetic field around it, as did Bell who had used magnetism in his design for the telephone. Bell went to work immediately.
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"Bell was familiar with the work of a New York inventor who had discovered that when two magnetic fields were balanced against each other, the interposing of a metal object between unbalanced them. Bell reasoned that if a telephone was connected to one of the currents he would hear a sound when this unbalancing occurred, i.e. when the metal object was near.
"By July 17, Bell had devised a device that could detect a bullet held in a clenched hand to a depth of two inches. To increase the strength of the detector, Bell set about trying different lengths of wire and diameter of coil. His work was of great interest to the general public; telegrams from Bell to his wife were even being leaked to the press by Western Union telegraph workers. Bell eventually sent telegrams on his progress to his wife, knowing full well that they would be intercepted and shared with the press.
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"On July 26 Bell took his device to the White House, ordering the president to be put on a bed without metal springs. But his device didn’t work. He and Charles Sumner Tainter later discovered a component which had been wired into the overall construction incorrectly. A week later, they had corrected the error and had improved the machine to detect an object to a depth of six centimeters. They tested the device on a Civil War veteran with a bullet lodged in his body. The machine worked perfectly.
"On August 1, they tried again with Garfield but still couldn’t locate the bullet. However, back at the laboratory, the detector worked perfectly. Bell even shot a bullet into a carcass from a butcher’s shop, and his machine located it. Bell was confident that the machine worked. It was discovered that contrary to Bell’s instructions, the president was lying on a steel wire mattress. By now it was too late. The president was deemed too frail to be moved again. Bell was not treated favorably in the press. Mabel remarked in letters her dismay that her husband, during his experiments, was being derided and treated as a charlatan. The announcement that his invention had failed didn’t help this perception of Bell among the press. Garfield would eventually succumb to his wounds and died on September 19, 1881.
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"Bell took his invention no further, as he had done with the photophone. But from his groundwork would come the metal detector. Another man, Dr. John H. Girdner, would eventually bring the metal detector to market as a medical appliance which he called the telephone probe. It would find extensive use during the Boer War, the Sino-Japanese War, and the First World War before the development of the x-ray. Bell was aware of this use of his invention; he wrote of his satisfaction that it was being used to relieve suffering and save lives.
"Bell’s next invention would be inspired by a personal tragedy. Not long after the death of President Garfield, the Bells’ third child was born. Tragically, their son Edward was born prematurely and died just hours afterward. Mabel wrote that their child might have survived had the doctors been able to help him establish regular breathing. Bell’s way of dealing with his grief appears to have been to throw himself into his work. He set about trying to develop a device to assist with breathing.
"To Bell this must have been a very personal crusade. He had lost both of his brothers to tuberculosis, and now his newborn son had died as a result of the weakness of his lungs after a premature birth. Bell called his invention the vacuum jacket. In his notes, he described how the vacuum jacket squeezed the lungs to expel air and featured a rigid apparatus to cover the middle of the body. The diaphragm would be manipulated via a pump action to create a vacuum in the lungs into which external air would rush. Thus the full action of breathing would be created artificially.
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"The device was presented at scientific conferences in both America and Britain but wouldn’t find widespread use immediately. Many years later Bell would adapt his vacuum jacket to create a device to help victims of drowning. It was tested on an unconscious sheep which had been thrown into the sea. Bell’s modified vacuum jacket was able to evacuate the water from the animal’s lungs and restart its respiration. He had invented a machine to perform what we would recognize as CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation). At the time, however, the farm workers who witnessed the sheep being brought back to life claimed that Bell was the devil.
"In the autumn of 1882, the Bells had moved to Rhode Island, and Bell was looking for a new project to occupy his mind. The answer was the phonograph. This was an invention which had been developed by Thomas Edison and subsequently discarded as impractical. Bell decided he could improve upon the invention. Edison had been engaged in the development of a machine for transcribing Morse code onto paper as indentations. He realized that a cylinder containing the indentations spinning at sufficient speed produced a sound. By attaching a diaphragm connected to a stylus, the vibrations of the sounds caused vibrations in the diaphragm which in turn moved the stylus to inscribe the Morse code as indentations.
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"Bell’s version of the phonograph used a wax cylinder with a needle that zig-zagged sideways in grooved tracks. This seemed to produce a much more faithful recording of the sound. Bell’s version recorded by actually cutting into the cylinder instead of merely making an indentation. The design proved such an improvement on the model which Edison had discarded, that he purchased the patent for the Bell machine in order to market the machine commercially. Tainter and Chichester Bell adapted the device using sewing machine parts and founded the Dictaphone Company. This company would become one of the world’s leading manufacturers of dictaphones and related telephonic recording systems. Their success was born from Bell’s vision of a practical, working dictation recording system.
"These inventions are a testament to Bell’s inventive mind and scientific genius. Bell had no formal scientific background, but he had an enquiring mind and was clearly very intelligent. He had made himself an expert in telegraphic technology, and the invention of the telephone was an offshoot of this. In developing the first iron lung so rapidly after his son’s death demonstrates a mind capable to turning itself to other areas of invention, a long way from the field he had become expert in over the last decade. Bell was, by this point, an inventor first and foremost.
"It should be remembered that Bell lived in an age of invention. But not every invention was destined to survive for long. That Bell’s principal inventions proved long-standing successes into the next century demonstrates his vision."
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"“What a man my husband is . . . I am perfectly bewildered at the number and size of the ideas in which his head is crammed . . . Flying machines to which telephones and torpedoes are to be attached.”
"—Mabel Bell"
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"By the summer of 1885, Bell had faced further patent trials aimed at wresting control of the telephone out of the hands of the Bell Telephone Company before the allotted 17-year-protection time was up. In one particular trial, Bell faced a personal attack by the accusation that he had bribed the patent examiner, Zenas Wilber, to get a look at Elisha Gray’s patent caveat and subsequently steal the design for the telephone. Bell was able to defend himself against the accusation, but it left him feeling depressed and seeking escape from his fame.
"Melville Bell suggested Newfoundland where he had spent time as a young man; he also wished to join Bell and his family on the trip. They journeyed to Nova Scotia and then on to Newfoundland. The journey would result in the Bells relocating from Boston permanently. After visiting Newfoundland, they made their way back to Nova Scotia and the town of Baddeck. It was there that Bell met and befriended a man named Arthur McCurdy. Bell repaired McCurdy’s phone, and McCurdy subsequently became Bell’s agent and assistant. When Bell discovered a picturesque peninsula on the Bras d’Or lakes, McCurdy arranged for the purchase of the land. The Bells would call the spot, Beinn Bhreagh, or “Beautiful Mountain” in Gaelic. The house itself would be called the Lodge and was designed by Bell and McCurdy. The Lodge would provide a welcome getaway for the Bells from the stresses of the celebrity life.
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"In 1893, a journalist interviewing Bell asked for his views on inventions which he saw as having the greatest impact on the world yet to come. Bell told the reporter that it was in the arena of powered flight that the greatest revolution would unfold and that it would completely change both transportation and war. The first successful powered flight (by the Wright brothers) would not be made for almost ten years, and yet Bell predicted the flight revolution. His prescience was eerily accurate, especially considering that few scientists regarded powered flight as being anything but a far-fetched fantasy.
"Serious experiments in flight had been undertaken by Samuel Langley of the Smithsonian Institute since 1886. He made experiments on aerodynamics and had experimented with different models, powered by twisted bands of rubber and with various wing configurations. Bell discovered these experiments when Langley announced his work in the Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge. Bell began his own work from his new Nova Scotia hideaway by experimenting with propellers, while Langley focused on wings.
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"Bell focused his attention on helicopter models. In 1891 he established that a two-bladed propeller appeared most effective at generating lift. Bell’s helicopter design incorporated cloth propellers powered with steam jets at their tips. On January 6, 1892, he had a small eight-and-a-half-inch boiler designed, weighing less than a pound. The blades would be attached to this, and the steam generated by the boiler would turn the propellers via the jets at the end, in turn lifting the entire assembly. He used a combination of alcohol and water in the boiler but couldn’t get the boiler pressure high enough. One experiment was made using pure alcohol but resulted in an explosion.
"Undeterred, Bell tried brass propellers instead. A design with three paddle-like propellers reached a height of over a hundred feet on June 10. He made notes and diagrams of how the finished machine might look. His design incorporated a large propeller as the primary means of elevation with a smaller rotor and wings to control direction and prevent the machine from whirling around in circles. His prototype design was very similar to a modern helicopter.
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"Bell was becoming more and more obsessed with the idea of powered flight. The more he experimented, the more he became convinced that it was possible. He requested every book on aviation available from a Boston bookstore and entered into correspondence with Octave Chanute, an American aviation pioneer who would go on to mentor the Wright brothers.
"In 1893, the Lodge was finally completed. Samuel Langley was one of the first guests. He was another aspiring aviation pioneer, although his interest was in achieving horizontal flight rather than the vertical flight of a helicopter. Arthur McCurdy would later help Langley buy himself a plot of land not far from the Bells’ home.
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"By 1895 Bell was experimenting with the angle of his propeller blades and studying the arrangement of wings. Mabel wrote that she felt her husband was ahead of Langley and others in the aviation field and that he was gaining an understanding of the mechanics of flight. However, on May 9, 1895, it was Langley who achieved the first ever powered flight by a heavier-than-air machine. Bell was excited to witness the event in Washington.
"Bell didn’t see Langley as a competitor as he had Elisha Gray and Thomas Edison. Instead, he funded Langley’s work and encouraged him. Langley had been ridiculed by the established scientific community and the press in the pursuit of his goals, but Bell supported him. On May 12, 1896, Bell was one of a few witnesses of a further development of Langley’s work. It was called the aerodrome. This machine achieved a height of a hundred feet and a distance of half a mile before its steam ran out, and the construct glided to the ground again without a crash. Bell was convinced that he had witnessed the practicality of powered flight.
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"In 1898 the outbreak of the Spanish-American War further fueled Bell’s enthusiasm for flight. He reasoned that flying machines would be inordinately useful in the gathering of intelligence. So convinced was he of the usefulness and life-saving potential of powered flight that he refused to travel with this family to Europe; he stayed to continue his research.
"In September 1901 Bell invited the astronomer and flight skeptic Simon Newcomb to the Lodge. Langley was also present. The group ended up debating how a cat manages to fall on its feet. Newcomb refused to accept that this was possible, and so an experiment was set up whereby cats were dropped from the house’s veranda to a pile of mattresses and cushions beneath. Each time the cat turned in the air and landed on its feet. No-one could explain how the animal achieved this.
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"Another principle expounded by Newcomb was that powered flight was impossible because the larger a flying machine is, its weight is cubed while its lifting surfaces are only squared. This meant that an aircraft large enough to carry a person could not possibly fly. Bell disagreed and formulated his rebuttal in terms of kites. He reasoned that a kite loaded with a man flies well in a breeze; it should continue to fly well if provided with an engine. Kites became Bell’s newest obsession, and he experimented with a wide variety, focusing on the most complex constructions that he could find.
"By December 1903, Langley believed he had perfected a powered flying machine. Its unveiling would end in complete disaster, however, and he suffered a stroke shortly afterward, dying a few months later. Samuel Langley and Bell had devoted 16 years to the pursuit of aviation, and at that moment it must have seemed to Bell to be as far away as ever.
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"But the work which Bell and Langley had done proved worthwhile. The Wright brothers had been working on their own design in secret. In December 1903 they would make their historic manned, powered flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Though Bell hadn’t been the inventor, he had produced some prescient work in the field of vertical takeoff helicopter-type machines. He and Langley had been part of a movement, much ridiculed in the press, which must have influenced the Wright brothers. They could not help but be aware of Langley’s work, as the head of the Smithsonian, and through him of Bell’s work. Their decision to work in secrecy demonstrates an awareness of how much scorn and derision Langley and Bell had been targeted with.
"Undeterred by the success of the Wright brothers, Bell continued to work on his own flying machines. Just as he had been driven by his pursuit of the multiple telegraph and then the telephone, now he was determined that his kite design would be superior to what the Wright brothers were producing. In December 1905 he finished the “Frost King” which was made up of 1,500 tetrahedral cells to provide 440 square feet of lifting surface. He was able to photograph Lucien McCurdy, son of his erstwhile agent and assistant, being carried off the ground by the machine. This was proof that his design could lift a man.
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"At this point Bell gathered a group around him to support him in his work, he was nearing 60 after all. The first was Douglas McCurdy, an engineering student at Toronto. When Douglas McCurdy left university for the Bells, he brought with him Casey Baldwin, another recently graduated engineer and aviation enthusiast. Baldwin would be set to work using tetrahedral materials for construction, building an observation tower. This method of ultra-light, ultra-strong construction would go on to be used for space-frame architecture designed to cover large areas with few interior supports. This would be yet another example of a Bell invention that would go on to have a profound impact on later generations and technologies.
"Because of his wish to add an engine to the Frost King, Bell started working with Glenn Curtiss who made engines for dirigibles. Bell would purchase a 16-horsepower motor from Curtiss. The final member of the aviation team was a young Naval Lieutenant named Thomas Selfridge. They formed a group called the Aerial Experiment Association to build airplanes and share the proceeds of all patents. With the exception of Bell and Curtiss, they were predominantly young men.
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"They successfully tested the Cygnet, their largest construction ever, on December 6, 1907, with Selfridge as the pilot. From this point on the group became dedicated to the construction of planes instead of kites. The first design constructed was the Red Wing, powered by a 40-horsepower motor and a propeller at the rear of the aircraft. It became the first plane ever publicly flown in North America when it was successfully tested on March 17, 1908. The plane eventually crashed and was damaged beyond repair.
"Bell reasoned that the weakness of the plane was its inability to bank for turns and to cope with changes in wind direction. Using observations of birds as his inspiration, he suggested movable wing segments controlled by the pilot via wires. These segments, called ailerons, proved crucial to the success of powered flight. This was an innovation that the Wright brothers had not thought of but would make use of, as would all planes subsequently constructed.
"The AEA continued to design and test aircraft with their final and most successful plane being the Silver Dart, which was launched on January 9, 1909. On March 31, 1909, the AEA was wound up. It had achieved what it had set out to do, namely to prove that manned aviation was not just possible but would change the world. As he had done to develop the telephone, Bell demonstrated how well he could work with others and how inspirational a leader he could be, motivating and driving the young group to their success. Once again, Bell had stepped into a new field with unshakable conviction."
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"“In scientific research there are no unsuccessful experiments.”
"—Alexander Graham Bell"
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"In the later years of his life, Bell continued to create, discover, invent, and innovate across an array of fields and industries. He embraced the Italian Montessori school of education, rejecting the rote learning approach adopted by Western educators in favor of a more child-led approach put forward by Dr. Maria Montessori.
"In 1912 Bell began to teach children important principles of science by letting them experiment and come up with their own answers. Bell and his wife founded the Montessori Education Association, with Mabel as its president. They gained support from the Washington elite in this enterprise and were able to open a school. The movement which the Bells were spearheading to bring the Montessori method into the mainstream of American education would, however, be doomed to failure. Opposition from the educational mainstream as well as Montessori’s refusal to allow her name to be used in establishments beyond her control meant that the method didn’t take off in America. The fledgling MEA closed its school in 1919.
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"The First World War prompted another Bell innovation that would go onto to have a far-reaching effect. With the advent of submarine warfare, Bell came to believe that the Allies needed a large hydrofoil to pursue and destroy submarines. He had speculated on the subject of a boat that would be able to travel over instead of through the water as early as 1901, and by 1912 he had built scale models as part of a design to lift aircraft off the surface of water. Bell worked on the design of a full-scale hydrodrome with Casey Baldwin, who had been a member of the AEA. By 1915 they had a model that was capable of 50 miles per hour, the HD-4. With America joining the war in Europe in 1917, Bell and Baldwin were given new engines to make their hydrodrome even faster. Equipped with 350-horsepower engines supplied by the U.S. government, the HD-4 would eventually achieve speeds of 70-80 miles an hour, a world record.
"Bell remained active to the very end of his life, involving himself in projects through his sixties and seventies too numerous to list. His mind sparked and fired relentlessly. He wrote about the possibility of utilizing rooftop space in cities for the capture of solar radiation for energy. He was an environmental pioneer in his work on the subject of home insulation and theorized about the effect of greenhouse gases on the environment. He was a husband, father, and grand-father with a large extended family and had the pleasure of seeing his children and grand-children succeeding in their own endeavors. His greatest invention, the telephone, had produced a corporate megalith in American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) which would shape the telecoms industry for the next century.
"On August 2, 1922, Bell was rapidly weakened and immobilized by an attack of anemia. He died with Mabel by his side. Her last words to him were “Don’t leave me.” to which he replied “No.” Unable to talk, Bell’s last words were signed into his wife’s hand."
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"Alexander Graham Bell is remembered today as the inventor of the telephone. But this was just one invention from a man who could not stop innovating and creating. A true pioneer, he did not limit himself to any single field of expertise but instead followed the paths that his mind led him down. From teacher of the deaf to telephonic innovator and scientific pioneer in the field of communication with light. His life was one of constant motion, driven by a mind that did not rest until his last moments.
"Many of his inventions were generations or even centuries ahead of their time. His photophone could not be realized until the invention of fiber optics. His apparatus for helping with breathing would become the iron lung, his device for locating metal objects, the metal detector. All would be conceived of by him but would be brought into being by others. But it was in Bell’s mind that those ideas first emerged.
"He developed the world’s first system for air conditioning, put to use to cool his Washington home. He theorized on the greenhouse effect and its impact on global environments. Ever the innovator, he recognized the value of the Montessori method of education. Bell and his wife’s attempts to bring this into America were short lived, but today these methods are the cornerstone of educational systems across western Europe."
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Table of Contents
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Introduction
Childhood
Bell’s Early Teaching Endeavors
Emigration to North America
Innovations in Telegraphy
The Bell Telephone Company
The Race Against Western Union
The Photophone & The National Geographic
The Race to Save the President
A Rival to the Wright Brothers
Later Years and Death
Conclusion
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REVIEW
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Introduction
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"Alexander Graham Bell could have lived a life pursuing the career which he appears to have been born to follow. His grandfather was a celebrated teacher of elocution (pronunciation and articulation). His father devised a new means of written language designed to educate the deaf. His older brother had followed in the footsteps of both father and grandfather. Bell himself was a gifted teacher and found a vocation in teaching English to deaf children.
"Had he limited himself to this endeavor there is no doubt he would have taught a great many deaf children to speak. But Bell was not a man to settle into a role that he already excelled at. He liked to push his intellect and boundaries. He began work on a multiple telegraph system as a hobby and ended up in a frantic race to bring to market the first telephone, a race he would win against one of the foremost inventors in history, Thomas Edison.
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"Bell foresaw the possibilities of using light as a medium for communication and invented the principles by which future fiber optics would work. His desire to save the life of a popular president would lead to the invention of the metal detector and the iron lung, which would help prematurely born children. A decade before the Wright brothers showed the world that manned, powered flight was not science-fiction, Bell was on record as stating that the development of flight would transform the world. He then set about designing aircraft that would help pioneer the new aeronautics industry.
"Finally, he would be the founder of an institution that would educate the world from the 1880s to the present day and beyond: The National Geographic Society.
"Alexander Graham Bell was a gifted and remarkable man with a once-in-a-generation mind capable of being turned to any field. His discovery of the telephone alone would transform the way societies communicate."
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November 14, 2022 - November 14, 2022.
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Chapter 1. Childhood
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"“I saw Sir Charles manipulate the machine and heard it speak . . . it made a great impression upon my mind.” .
"—Alexander Graham Bell on the subject of Sir Charles Wheatstone’s machine for producing artificial speech"
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"Alexander Graham Bell was born on March 3, 1847. He was the middle child, with his brother Melville being two years older and Edward one year younger. Bell’s father, Alexander Melville Bell, was a renowned teacher of speech and elocution.
"Bell was born at 16 South Charlotte Street, in Edinburgh, Scotland. The family then moved to 13 Hope Street when he was nine months old. His first education was received at home courtesy of his mother. From an early age, Bell showed a curiosity for the world around him. At the age of three or four, while on an outing outside Edinburgh, the young Aleck (as his family called him) decided to explore a nearby wheat field. He sat amidst the crop, which would have been tall enough to surpass his height, and sat in silence trying to determine if he could hear the wheat growing. Too late he realized he was lost, though ultimately found his way back to the sound of his father’s voice. This was one of Bell’s earliest memories and shows his intrepid and curious spirit.
"This was not the only sign of things to come. One day, Bell would be challenged by the father of his friend Ben Herdman to find a way to remove husks from wheat. Mr. Herdman was the owner of a flour mill at which Aleck and Ben were constantly getting into mischief. When he issued the challenge for the two boys to do something useful, Aleck came up with the idea of paddling the wheat. They found an old vat and gave it rough edges on the inside; then they put a rotating paddle wheel inside. When the wheel turned, the wheat was forced against the rough interior of the vat, removing the husks.
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"Bell was also a talented musician, displaying a good ear for music at an early age. He received private music lessons from a famous pianist, Auguste Benoit Bertini, leading to Bell becoming an accomplished improvisational piano player.
"In 1860, at the age of 13, Bell moved to London to be with his grandfather, Alexander Bell. Alexander Bell was a former actor and now earned his living teaching elocution. One year later, Aleck witnessed something that would make an indelible impression on his young mind. He, his grandfather, and father went to see a talk by the well-known scientist Sir Charles Wheatstone. There they were witness to a display of a machine which Sir Charles had invented that could reproduce human speech. Bell wrote of the experience that though he found the results crude, it made an impression on his mind.
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"Back in Edinburgh, Bell’s father challenged him and his older brother to make their own machine for recreating human speech. The two boys became immersed in their project, learning how different parts of the body affected the production of speech and attempting to artificially recreate it. The end result was a machine which could replicate with reasonable accuracy the wails of a baby. More important than the results they achieved, Bell learned from this exercise lessons in perseverance, research, and the functions of the vocal cords. It would prove another pivotal moment in his life.
"During Bell’s teenage years, his father was occupied with the development of a visible language; a series of symbols that reproduced the position and action of the tongue and lips as they made sounds. To accomplish this, he researched extensively almost every sound the human mouth could make. The purpose of the project was to create a written system that could be employed by deaf people to learn speech. The Bell boys became experts in visible speech and aided their father in his demonstrations of it. Bell’s mother was deaf, and this gave him sympathy for the condition which he would keep throughout his life.
"Between 1860 and 1865 Bell and his brother took turns attending courses at Edinburgh University and teaching courses at a boy’s school in Elgin, Weston House. One would teach elocution at Weston in exchange for instruction in more advanced courses, while the other attended the university; then they would switch. Bell would eventually become a full-time teacher of music and elocution at Weston."
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November 14, 2022 - November 14, 2022.
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Chapter 2. Bell’s Early Teaching Endeavors
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"“. . . a talent for communicating his knowledge in such a way as to secure and sustain the interest of his pupils. I have never seen English reading taught with greater success.”
"—Headteacher of a school where Alexander Graham Bell taught"
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"In 1865, following the death of Bell’s grandfather, the family moved to London. At this time Bell taught the family dog to “speak.” He achieved this through training it to growl on demand and then manipulating different parts of the dog’s mouth. He was eventually able to produce the sounds “How are you grandmama” from the animal. There was more to this exercise than simply a precocious adolescent diversion. This demonstrates the interest Bell had in the mechanism of sound production and how that could be manipulated.
"During the same time, he and his brother were debating speech theory with their father, as he neared completion of his visible speech system. One of the questions which arose from these debates concerned the nature of the vowel sounds produced by the human mouth: were these sounds modifications of a single pitch or made from resonances in different vocal cavities simultaneously? Bell wished to answer the question in a scientific way and began experimenting using tuning forks to measure the pitch of sounds produced using the tongue. He also created an instrument which used a stretched membrane to measure the vibrations in the air caused by human speech.
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"Bell’s experiments concluded that vowel sounds are compounds, made up of different simultaneously produced tones. He compiled his results into a report in which he noted that different vowels are produced using similar means but with differing volumes of air in the mouth. In March 1866, Bell’s father encouraged him to share his report with the foremost phonetics authority of the day, Alexander John Ellis, who was so impressed that he nominated Bell for membership of the London Philological Society.
"Ellis also encouraged Bell to continue his studies and gave him a book by a German researcher named Hermann von Helmholtz. Helmholtz had used tuning forks to determine the tones of vowels just as Bell had done. In the book, Helmholtz describes how electromagnetic streams are produced by the vibrations of a tuning fork which can be communicated to other forks and produce vowel sounds artificially. Bell read this and took it to mean that Helmholtz was working on producing human vowel sounds through electrical means. It gave him the idea of transmitting speech through a telegraph wire. One of Bell’s life’s works was now set; the other would emerge as he embarked on his career as a teacher.
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"In 1867 Bell accepted a teaching position in Bath. He, like all of the Bell children, had struggled with ill health due to the polluted atmosphere of their home cities of Edinburgh and London. The move to the west of England seemed to help with Bell’s symptoms, but his younger brother was not so fortunate. Edward died of tuberculosis later in the year.
"Bell taught in Bath for a year before returning to London in 1868. He had established himself at Bath as having a natural gift for the teaching of English, and Bell’s former headteacher regretted his departure. In a London school run by a Susanne Hull (one of his father’s former elocution pupils), Bell taught a class of deaf children using the visible speech system. This was his first introduction to what would be the other half of his life’s work: teaching speech to the deaf."
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November 14, 2022 - November 14, 2022.
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Chapter 3. Emigration to North America
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"“A man’s judgement should be the final appeal in all that relates to himself.”
"—Alexander Graham Bell"
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"In 1869 Melville Bell was visiting the United States to promote the visible speech system. He had found little money in the development in the UK but had received sufficiently strong response in the United States that he was now giving serious consideration to emigrating. At this time, Bell was continuing to teach at the Hull school. This career seemed to be a promising avenue as the British government prepared to invest more money in the speech education of the deaf.
"But in 1870, Bell’s older brother Melville also succumbed to tuberculosis. Until then, Bell had been resistant to the idea of emigration due to the progress he was making in teaching the deaf in United Kingdom. The death of his last brother, however, appears to have decided Bell in favor of a new start overseas. The Bells landed in Canada on August 1, 1870. Bell’s parents had purchased a property in Brantford, Ontario.
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"Bell’s time was taken up with teaching jobs arranged by his father across Boston and New England. On April 6, 1871, he secured a term’s employment at the Boston School for the Deaf. He impressed the school’s principal, Sarah Fuller, so much that he was offered further employment in the fall term.
"On October 1, 1872, he took on a private student, five-year-old George Sanders, the son of a Massachusetts leather merchant. George had been born deaf and had never spoken a word or attended school. Bell was living at a rooming house at 35 West Newton Street, and his new pupil moved next door with his nurse. He made immediate progress with young George, but despite his success, Bell’s enthusiasm for inventing was growing.
................................................................................................
"Boston was a hotbed of emerging technology, and in the late nineteenth century one invention that was the subject of great speculation was the telegraph. The Great Eastern steamship laid the first successful transatlantic telegraph cable in 1865. One of America’s first national corporations, Western Union, had a virtual monopoly of coast-to-coast telegraph services. Telegraph communication was in demand and used by businesses and rich individuals. The technology was still in its infancy though. Western Union messages took days to travel across the continent and required rekeying at least once as the signal strength waned. This meant high costs per message. There was a huge appetite for further developments of the telegraph system, and this inspired Bell.
"In November 1872 Bell began to work on a system that would allow for more than one message to be transmitted on the same wire. It didn’t take him long to replicate a device which had been patented by Joseph B. Stearns and purchased by Western Union—the duplex telegraph for transmitting multiple signals on one wire. This demonstrates Bell’s inherent understanding of the mechanics of telegraphy. His understanding stemmed not just from work in the field but also from his expertise in elocution and speech therapy. He had learned from his grandfather and father the mechanisms by which the human body produces sounds and had already experimented with artificial means of reproducing these sounds. Bell was coming into the telegraphy market from an angle that would enable him to leap ahead of other inventors who had been working in the field for far longer.
................................................................................................
"Throughout 1872, Bell worked on two things. By day he taught George Sanders, and by night he worked on his telegraphy experiments. Both missions proved successful. With his young charge, he began by assigning labels to the child’s favorite toys. Each label was reproduced in a card file. George was used to requesting a toy by making gestures. When a toy was presented to George, his attention was drawn to the label. He then matched the label to the corresponding card. Subsequently, George would ask for the toy by picking out the card from the file. Bell then made use of a glove inscribed with the alphabet to break down the word on the card into its constituent parts. Using the glove, he was able to carry out conversations with George in public.
"He continued tutoring George, and within three years the child was able to write letters home to his parents. This demonstrated a mastery of writing and vocabulary; his letters describing traveling home to Salem also showed an awareness of abstract concepts such as time. This is an incredible achievement considering George’s complete lack of previous education and his deafness from birth.
"Bell’s skills and inventiveness as a teacher are demonstrated by the rapid progress that George Sanders was able to make. Such was the success that he was invited to give lectures on his father’s visible speech system and the education of the deaf around Boston and at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology."
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November 14, 2022 - November 14, 2022.
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Chapter 4. Innovations in Telegraphy
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"“I came to believe firmly in the feasibility of the telegraphic transmission of speech, and I used to tell my friends that someday we should talk by telegraph.”
"—Alexander Graham Bell"
................................................................................................
"Bell’s experiments in telegraphy were intended to achieve the transmission of the human voice across a wire. In this work, he was building on experimental work undertaken by others before him. The concept of transmitting words through ringing different bells, using an electrically charged wire had been suggested anonymously in a letter to The Scots Magazine in 1753. In 1814, Ralph Wedgwood proposed a working telegraph system in England, but it was not taken up commercially. Subsequently there were many more technological developments in the telegraphy field, with Samuel Morse being one of the principal pioneers.
"French inventor Charles Bourseul developed a theory of transmitting human speech electronically using a diaphragm to capture the vibrations of speech and a system of electrical contacts whose connection to a battery was triggered by the vibrations of the diaphragm. It remained a theory not put into practice but inspired a German inventor, Philipp Reis. In 1861, Reis developed a means of transmitting electronic tones across long distances through a wire. His invention was not capable of transmitting speech, but he named it the telephone.
................................................................................................
"So, Bell was not operating in a vacuum. He was building on the learning of men who had gone before and was experimenting alongside others who were engaged in similar quests. In May 1874 Elisha Gray developed a machine that could transmit eight musical tones electrically to a receiver. He was backed by Western Union. Thomas Edison was also occupied with the same work.
"Bell’s work, meanwhile, was halted when he attempted to file for pending patents for his harmonic telegraph. He was informed that he could not file for a pending patent in the United States as he was a foreigner; foreigners could only apply for completed patents. Similarly, he couldn’t apply for a patent in the United Kingdom due to his absence during the application process.
................................................................................................
"This discouraged Bell enough to discard his research into the telegraph as a device for sending multiple signals at once. He decided to focus on applications related to his teaching work instead, namely the reproduction of sound waves, and ultimately, the human voice. Again, he was inspired by the work of others. A Frenchman, Leon Scott, had developed a phonautograph device which drew the shape of sounds, and Rudolph Koenig had developed a manometric flame, a gas flame that could be controlled by the human voice.
"Bell’s parents had disapproved of his obsession with telegraph technology, preferring him to focus on his work as an educator. His letters show how his mind was moving in that direction, describing these inventions to his parents and how they could be adapted to educate the deaf by allowing them to see the sounds they were making.
................................................................................................
"In the summer of 1874 back home in Brantford, Bell assembled a device that used the ear of a dead man to draw sound waves (utilizing the delicate bones of the inner ear). During these experiments, Bell realized that an undulating electrical current could be made to replicate the changing frequencies that make up human speech. This would be a pivotal concept behind the telephone. He received financial backing from George Sanders' father and sought out further backing from the father of another pupil, Gardiner Greene Hubbard. Hubbard would be an important patron, a man who understood the technology and shared Bell’s vision. He was a patent attorney so he also understood the highly competitive nature of the race to develop the technology which Bell was theorizing.
"A three-way partnership was agreed on between Bell, Sanders, and Hubbard to bring to market a telegraph system for the sending of multiple signals simultaneously. Thomas Edison had already done this in March 1874, but his system could only transmit four signals. Bell was confident his harmonic telegraph could at least double that output. At the beginning of 1875 Bell acquired an assistant in Thomas A. Watson, a machinist. Watson and Bell worked out of Salem, Massachusetts, and in February 1875 they developed a machine that could transmit and reproduce writing. The machine was the telautograph, and it was the first patent which Bell would achieve. The patent was granted on April 6, 1875.
................................................................................................
"Hubbard explained to Bell that he was now engaged in a race. Their main competitor was the Western Union-backed Elisha Gray. Though Bell’s mind continued to move back to the means of transmitting the voice by wire, Hubbard’s thoughts were focused exclusively on the invention that would make the biggest financial impact: the multiple signal telegraph. Hubbard would continue to steer his protege in this direction. It was at Hubbard’s urging, and from his experience as a patent attorney, that Bell began keeping all documentation related to his inventions including letters describing his theories to his parents. These documents and notes would be crucial in a patent dispute.
"On June 2, 1875, Bell and Watson succeeded in developing a machine that transmitted a tone to a metal reed in the receiver. When the corresponding reed at the other end was twanged, Bell heard a tone at his end. This was achieved without any external electrical power source such as a battery. What Bell and Watson had created was a telegraphic transmitter where the vibrations of sound itself were able to induce an electrical current; they proved the basic principle of inducing current through sound vibrations which would be reproduced at the other end.
................................................................................................
"On June 30, 1875, Watson built an apparatus designed by Bell for the transmission of speech. This was the first ever Alexander Graham Bell telephone. It worked as a result of air pressure from speech acting against a membrane which in turn caused a steel armature to vibrate which induced movement in a magnet and a continuous, undulating electrical current which flowed to a receiver. At the other end, the current caused a vibration in a reed in the receiver which reproduced the voice. The first test took place on July 1, 1875, and while Bell shouted, spoke, and sang into one end, Watson heard his muffled voice at the other, transmitted along the wire.
"The year of 1875 was pivotal in Bell’s life, as the first prototype telephone was brought into existence. Bell was only 28 at this point and was already pioneering a new technology despite no formal knowledge of or training in electrical engineering. But there was another aspect of his life that he had neglected—the finding of a wife. Before emigrating to North America, he had proposed and been rejected by one woman, and had then begun courting another. Now he found himself in love again, this time with Mabel Hubbard. Mabel was one of his pupils, deaf since an attack of scarlet fever in her childhood. She was also the 18-year-old daughter of Bell’s business partner, Gardiner Greene Hubbard. Mabel agreed to the proposal on November 25, 1875.
................................................................................................
"Bell’s parents had been against the match, citing his lack of financial means with which to keep a wife. Bell was also under pressure from Hubbard to choose his inventing work over his teaching of the deaf. It may have been the need to provide for Mabel that tipped Bell towards making a financial success of his invention.
"From 1876 onwards he would become completely fixated on the development of the telephone. Bell arranged for a Canadian businessman, Thomas Brown, to take a copy of his patent application to England to be filed before Bell filed his American patent. If filed in England first, Bell alone would have the rights to the invention outside of America. This appears to be some astute thinking from Bell with regards to securing the future of his matrimony and family from any souring of his business partnership. But, on reaching England, Brown didn’t file the patent.
................................................................................................
"This was fortuitous, however, as Bell added to his American patent a note on the use of variable resistance transmission which would not have been in the English one. This was an important clause as his eventual invention would make use of it. Hubbard had his lawyers file the patent while Bell waited for word of the English patent, which would never come. The patent from Bell was filed on February 14, 1876—the same day as one from Elisha Gray for a caveat patent, i.e. a patent for a device not yet completed. This was the same sort of patent which Bell had been denied as he was a foreigner in the United States.
"It was now that Bell’s notes, letters, and other papers proved to be the difference. He had kept any document which contained descriptions of or conversations about his telephone. He had even asked his parents to carefully file any letter in which he made mention of it. He had taken up the habit of dating each document in the event he had to prove when certain ideas had been discovered. So when Elisha Gray’s patent request made mention of an undulating current, Bell was able to show an 1875 document that mentioned the same principle. The patent examiner highlighted another area of similarity between Gray and Bell. Gray had made mention of a variable-resistance transmitter. Bell had documented this a year earlier but hadn’t actively pursued it in his work. He had added it, almost as an afterthought, to the parent application from those earlier notes. It would seem that when the patent examiner, Zenas F. Wilber, pointed this out it struck a chord in Bell. When he returned to his experiments, it was with this concept very much in mind.
................................................................................................
"There was nothing underhand or unethical about this. Bell wasn’t shown the actual caveat which Gray had applied for. But as his patent had, fortunately, been submitted earlier in the day than Gray’s he had the right to review areas of similarity. Of course, if Bell had waited for news of his English patent being granted then Gray’s would have taken precedence. Bell undoubtedly had the documentary evidence to prove the origins of all aspects of his invention. And as he was applying for a full patent, not a caveat, he would have been given precedence. But Hubbard’s impatience, resulting in the patent submission behind Bell’s back, may well have made the difference in Alexander Graham Bell being credited with the invention which would make his fortune and change the world forever.
"The patent was granted on March 7, 1876. On March 10, Watson and Bell had constructed an apparatus at 5 Exeter Place, Salem. It used a liquid variable-resistance transmitter, and through it, Watson became the first man in the world to hear a voice through a telephone. Bell said, “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.” Bell then heard Watson say “Mr. Bell, do you understand what I say?” In a letter written to his father the same day, Bell described his vision of homes connected to each other by telegraph wires enabling people to communicate with each other without leaving home. From his teenage years, he had been thinking about the idea of reproducing human speech via artificial means. He had believed it possible to transmit the sounds of speech via electrical means and having brought his invention to life, he could see how it had the potential to change the world."
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November 14, 2022 - November 14, 2022.
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Chapter 5. The Bell Telephone Company
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"“Mr. Watson, come here I want to see you.”
"—Alexander Graham Bell, first words transmitted via telephone."
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"Bell worked on two versions of the telephone: the liquid variable resistance and the magneto telephone. By May 1876 he was beginning to show his new inventions. He started with a group of Harvard professors and then performed a public display at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on May 25. Bell’s backers wished him to display on a much larger scale to show the world his inventions—not just the telephone but his multiple telegraph as well. For this purpose, the greatest stage in the world was available to Bell in the shape of the International Centennial Exhibition.
"President Ulysses S. Grant and the emperor of Brazil attended the opening ceremony on May 10, 1876, and saw the exhibits covering art and technology from 37 countries. Bell was persuaded to travel to Philadelphia for his inventions to be included in the judging for the prize of best electrical invention. Also there was his rival for the development of the multiple telegraph, Elisha Gray. Bell appears not to have been the best at marketing his inventions, however, and took some persuading to make the trip. It seems likely he was overawed by the occasion. Having arrived and set up his exhibit on June 25, Bell was helped in gaining the attention of the judges by Dom Pedro, the emperor of Brazil, who had visited the Boston School for the Deaf and had taken an interest in Melville Bell’s books on visible speech.
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"He and the other judges had been receiving a demonstration of Elisha Gray’s multiple harmonic telegraph, backed by an impressive display provided by the Western Union. Dom Pedro then saw Bell at the other end of the huge hall in which the electrical inventions were being judged. His breaking off to talk to Bell attracted attention, and soon the judges were gathered at Bell’s exhibit. He explained the multiple telegraph, and Sir William Thomson (head of the judging panel) and Dom Pedro were both able to use it to send simultaneous signals. Then Sir William was given a demonstration of the telephone. Hearing Bell’s voice on the other end, he became very excited. Dom Pedro and Elisha Gray also received a demonstration; they were able to hear some or all of Bell’s words from another room through the telephone wire.
"Bell continued to test the limits of his new invention. When visiting his parents in Brantford, Ontario, he ran wire around the house, then from the house to the Brantford telegraph office. He then went further, running a line from the Bell house to the town of Paris, eight miles away. For this experiment, he used a three-way receiver and was able to verify that multiple voices could be carried on the line at the same time. In October 1876, Bell and Watson had their first two-way conversation between rooms at 5 Exeter Place, followed by a conversation two miles apart on October 9. By December they had established the limit of the technology currently, with Bell’s voice hardly intelligible over the 143 miles from Boston to North Conway, New Hampshire.
................................................................................................
"By the end of 1876 William Orton, head of Western Union, was expressing an interest in the technology. He was offered the rights to the invention for $100,000 by Hubbard but refused it. Instead Orton contacted Thomas Edison and instructed him to begin work on his own version. Edison had success in producing a version which produced a clearer, louder voice than Bell’s. Orton founded the American Speaking Telephone Company with Edison and Elisha Gray.
"Bell was almost broke, spending increasing amounts of time lecturing on the subject of the telephone to promote it, while his business partners tried to create a company from scratch in a technological field that was brand new. In competition they now faced two talented electrical inventors backed by the wealthiest corporation in America.
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"The Bell telephone reached the market in 1877. Hubbard had decided to lease the telephone to homes and businesses, maintaining control of both device and system. The idea of line rental from a telecoms company is one that is familiar to us. It proved a farsighted decision by Hubbard, though one that meant profits built much more slowly. On July 4, 1877, a year after the demonstration at the International Centennial Exhibition, some 200 telephones were in use. Within a month this had increased to 778 and by the end of August to 1100. Hubbard expanded the business by allowing other companies to use the technology under license. On August 27, 1877, this enabled the New York Telephone Company to construct the first phone line in New York City.
"In Canada, the telephone patent was put into the name of Bell’s father. He would connect three homes in Brantford and then the Canadian prime minister’s house to the home of the governor-general, renting them a telephone each. By the end of August, after significantly less than a year on the market, the telephone was in use in New York, Canada, Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco. It was the invention of the age and even in its technological infancy was transforming the way people did business and communicated with each other."
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November 14, 2022 - November 14, 2022.
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Chapter 6. The Race Against Western Union
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"“Telephones for the transmission of articulate speech through instruments not more than twenty miles apart. Conversation can easily be carried on after slight practice and with occasional repetition of a word or sentence.”
"—Flyer issued as part of marketing of the Bell Telephone in 1877"
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"On July 11, 1877, Bell married Mabel Hubbard. He was 30 and she 19. They traveled to England for a honeymoon where Bell found that his fame had preceded him. The couple was wined and dined by the elite of English society including Queen Victoria. By this time, Mabel was pregnant and was advised against making an Atlantic crossing. Their daughter, Elsie May Bell, was born on May 10, 1878 while in England.
"Back in the United States, the Western Union Company were winning the fight to dominate the telephone market. They had the advantage of their existing wire networks to connect their telephones, meaning they could be up and running in new towns and cities much faster than the Bell operation. They also had the advantage of Thomas Edison’s developments on the receiver. Edison’s telephone was providing a much higher quality of voice than Bell’s. Towards the end of 1877, while Bell was still in England, stock speculators were downplaying the value of Bell, and their stock remained low. Meanwhile, Western Union was buying Bell stock, trying to obtain control of the company and eliminate their rival.
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"Hubbard decided to fight back by launching a patent infringement lawsuit, using a Western Union agent, Peter A. Dowd, as his fall guy. A new general manager was hired for the Bell Telephone Company, Theodore N. Vail. Fresh investment was also brought in along with a new president, Colonel William H. Forbes. Forbes and Vail would lead the market battle against Western Union. Watson had improved the product they were selling after discovering two inventors, Emile Berliner and Francis Blake, who had improved on Edison’s design. Watson bought the rights to their design and brought them both into the Bell Telephone Company. The quality gap at least was closed.
"The copyright infringement trial took place amid a storm of publicity from Western Union claiming that Bell had stolen his invention from Elisha Gray. The first depositions were taken on March 5, 1877. Bell shares were worth $50 at the time. As the trial wore on it became clear that Western Union had little hope of proving that their man was the real inventor of the telephone. When Bell himself took the stand he was helped by his considerable presence and ability of oratory. His near photographic memory was also a huge help. Bell explained his thought processes in developing the telephone and talked through the extensive notes and paperwork that accompanied his patent.
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"By September 9, 1877, the Bell shares had increased from $50 a share to $300. In October they had reached $500 and by December $700. Bell and his wife made themselves a fortune selling their shares in the Bell Telephone Company. Despite the success of the company, Bell was not in the best financial position.
"The trial came to an end on November 10, 1879, when Western Union settled out of court. The deal included that all telephone lines, switchboard, and telephony patents were to be handed over to the Bell Telephone Company on the proviso that Bell did not expand their operations into the telegraph industry. As telephones would render the telegraph largely redundant, this seemed hardly to matter. Bell Telephone had been in existence for just three years and now possessed a nationwide monopoly on the telephony market."
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November 14, 2022 - November 14, 2022.
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Chapter 7. The Photophone & The National Geographic
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"“I have been able to hear a shadow and I have even perceived by ear the passage of a cloud across the sun’s disk. I have heard articulate speech produced by sunlight!”
"—Alexander Graham Bell in a letter to his father on the subject of the photophone."
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"By the 1880s the Bells were living comfortably thanks to their selling of Bell Telephone shares at the right time. They relocated to Washington D.C. in 1879. Bell now had little to do with the telephone company other than appearing as a witness in a series of patent trials which were brought against them. At 32, Bell had reached a point in his life which most men never achieve. He had perfected a breakthrough invention that was revolutionizing society. He had founded a great company which was growing into a corporate colossus and had made his fortune. To achieve so much at such a young age is a remarkable achievement, made even more remarkable when considering that for the most of the time he was working part-time as an inventor and full time as a teacher.
"Now Bell’s mind turned to a further enhancement of his invention. He had proved it was possible to transmit a voice electronically over a wire. Could it be done wirelessly—perhaps using light as its medium? His inspiration was the work of an Atlantic telegraph engineer named Willoughby Smith who had used the element selenium for the cable due to its high resistance. He reported that the resistance seemed to vary depending on whether it was day or night. To Bell this seemed to suggest that it would be possible to hear the moment when sunlight fell across the wire. To this end he began to experiment, aided by Charles Sumner Tainter, a maker of optical instruments. They constructed an apparatus that used mirrors to reflect sunlight into the machine and a lens to focus it. A rubber mouthpiece directed the sound of the voice onto a transmitter.
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"Their idea was that sound waves striking a mirror on one side would affect the light waves being reflected from the other side. A dish collected the reflected light and directed into onto a cell of selenium which was connected to a circuit with a telephone. They began experimenting with different wavelengths of light and with polarized light as well as sunlight to see which had the biggest effect. Bell stockpiled selenium, a rare element, until he believed he had the world’s largest single supply. The selenium used was prepared as a delicate crystal with very low resistance, making it sensitive to the smallest degree of light.
"On February 22, 1880, he tested the machine, which he named the photophone, with his cousin, Charles. Charles Bell operated the transmitting photophone in one room while Bell listened in the basement. In his notes, Bell described hearing the words “hoy, hoy, hoy” with the vowels particularly distinct. He also made out the words to “God Save the Queen” and sentences “Do you hear me? Do you understand me?” It appeared that Bell’s photophone worked to transmit the human voice wirelessly using light; they even managed to stretch the distance from transmitter to receiver to over 200 meters.
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"Not long after this discovery, Bell became a father for the second time as Mabel gave birth to another girl, Marian. Bell’s wholehearted dedication to his discoveries and his work as an inventor can be seen in his wife’s words. She wrote of his regarding his new photophone as his second baby while their second daughter was his third. She also wrote of the time which Bell spent on his invention, feeling that his new daughter was being largely ignored in favor of time spent on his work. This gives an insight not just into Bell’s dedication and work ethic but also the single-minded enthusiasm which his work produced in him.
"After reading the book written by Hermann von Helmholtz, Bell had come to believe it was possible to reproduce the human voice electronically. He had not relented for a moment until he had achieved this, despite the urgings to put this work aside by his business partners who wanted him to concentrate on the more immediately commercial multiple telegraph. After hearing of the observations of Willoughby Smith, Bell had decided to find a way to transmit sound by light, and even fatherhood could not keep him from achieving his goal. He had gone from being a demonstrator of his father’s innovative system of teaching English to the deaf, to becoming an innovative teacher of the deaf in his own right, and then to being a full-time inventor—all by the age of 30.
................................................................................................
"He had developed and brought his telephone to market at a time when telegraph technology was well established. Though an innovative leap to go from transmission of signals to transmission of voices, it was within the technological capability of the age (as demonstrated by the fact that Thomas Edison and others were able to improve on Bell’s designs so quickly). The photophone was a proof of concept: light could be used as a medium for transmitting complex sounds. It was a long way beyond the technology of the nineteenth century to realize fully; his invention was only effective over a small range and required line of sight and a sunny day. But by the end of the twentieth century, his photophone would finally be developed as fiber optics.
"Bell couldn’t have predicted the technology of fiber optics or the concomitant technologies which would go with this development, but he had predicted the principle by which this advanced technology would operate. His vision first brought it into being. He presaged another technological development, though he didn’t realize it. A French scientist named Ernest Mercadier highlighted that Bell’s photophone made use of radiant energy, as it used invisible infrared energy. He pointed out that a more correct name for the invention would be radiophone. Bell had devised a means of transmitting speech by means of radiant energy, a path that would also be walked 20 years later by Marconi to develop the first wireless radio.
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"At the same time as he was working on his photophone Bell was also embarked on another enterprise in the world of publishing. Bell was a believer in what he called auto education—the principle of educating oneself. He was a subscriber to a number of scientific magazines and journals and saw the value in them as educational tools. Bell took over publication of Science magazine from Thomas Edison in 1881, though it would prove a financial burden which he subsequently handed on to others.
"In January 1888, Bell founded the National Geographic Society. This would be a non-profit organization existing to promote knowledge and learning to its members. It would achieve this through the publication of a journal which initially comprised the text of lectures given by its members, thus sharing those lectures with a much wider audience. By the early twentieth century, the National Geographic Society had a membership of over 10,000 people, and its magazine would establish itself as one of the country’s greatest ever. By the late twentieth century it had even expanded into TV, a medium Bell would doubtless have found fascinating, with the National Geographic channel."
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November 14, 2022 - November 14, 2022.
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Chapter 8. The Race to Save the President
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"“Poor Garfield has gone. How terrible it all is.”
"—Alexander Graham Bell in a letter to his wife on the subject of the passing of President James Garfield."
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"In 1881, circumstances arose that would prompt Bell to another invention which has become commonplace today and has given rise to a range of other technologies and developments.
"On July 2, 1881, while walking through Washington D.C.’s railroad station, President James Garfield was shot in the back by Charles Guiteau. The president was taken to the White House with the bullet lodged near his spine. For days, doctors tried to locate and remove the bullet by hand but could not. They feared that continued invasion of the wound would cause a problem because of the delicate soft tissue in which the bullet was lodged. Finally, Simon Newcombe telegraphed Bell to see if he could help. Newcombe asked if Bell, with his knowledge of induction coils, could invent a device that could locate the slug. Newcombe knew that an electric current that passed through a coil of wire creates a magnetic field around it, as did Bell who had used magnetism in his design for the telephone. Bell went to work immediately.
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"Bell was familiar with the work of a New York inventor who had discovered that when two magnetic fields were balanced against each other, the interposing of a metal object between unbalanced them. Bell reasoned that if a telephone was connected to one of the currents he would hear a sound when this unbalancing occurred, i.e. when the metal object was near.
"By July 17, Bell had devised a device that could detect a bullet held in a clenched hand to a depth of two inches. To increase the strength of the detector, Bell set about trying different lengths of wire and diameter of coil. His work was of great interest to the general public; telegrams from Bell to his wife were even being leaked to the press by Western Union telegraph workers. Bell eventually sent telegrams on his progress to his wife, knowing full well that they would be intercepted and shared with the press.
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"On July 26 Bell took his device to the White House, ordering the president to be put on a bed without metal springs. But his device didn’t work. He and Charles Sumner Tainter later discovered a component which had been wired into the overall construction incorrectly. A week later, they had corrected the error and had improved the machine to detect an object to a depth of six centimeters. They tested the device on a Civil War veteran with a bullet lodged in his body. The machine worked perfectly.
"On August 1, they tried again with Garfield but still couldn’t locate the bullet. However, back at the laboratory, the detector worked perfectly. Bell even shot a bullet into a carcass from a butcher’s shop, and his machine located it. Bell was confident that the machine worked. It was discovered that contrary to Bell’s instructions, the president was lying on a steel wire mattress. By now it was too late. The president was deemed too frail to be moved again. Bell was not treated favorably in the press. Mabel remarked in letters her dismay that her husband, during his experiments, was being derided and treated as a charlatan. The announcement that his invention had failed didn’t help this perception of Bell among the press. Garfield would eventually succumb to his wounds and died on September 19, 1881.
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"Bell took his invention no further, as he had done with the photophone. But from his groundwork would come the metal detector. Another man, Dr. John H. Girdner, would eventually bring the metal detector to market as a medical appliance which he called the telephone probe. It would find extensive use during the Boer War, the Sino-Japanese War, and the First World War before the development of the x-ray. Bell was aware of this use of his invention; he wrote of his satisfaction that it was being used to relieve suffering and save lives.
"Bell’s next invention would be inspired by a personal tragedy. Not long after the death of President Garfield, the Bells’ third child was born. Tragically, their son Edward was born prematurely and died just hours afterward. Mabel wrote that their child might have survived had the doctors been able to help him establish regular breathing. Bell’s way of dealing with his grief appears to have been to throw himself into his work. He set about trying to develop a device to assist with breathing.
"To Bell this must have been a very personal crusade. He had lost both of his brothers to tuberculosis, and now his newborn son had died as a result of the weakness of his lungs after a premature birth. Bell called his invention the vacuum jacket. In his notes, he described how the vacuum jacket squeezed the lungs to expel air and featured a rigid apparatus to cover the middle of the body. The diaphragm would be manipulated via a pump action to create a vacuum in the lungs into which external air would rush. Thus the full action of breathing would be created artificially.
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"The device was presented at scientific conferences in both America and Britain but wouldn’t find widespread use immediately. Many years later Bell would adapt his vacuum jacket to create a device to help victims of drowning. It was tested on an unconscious sheep which had been thrown into the sea. Bell’s modified vacuum jacket was able to evacuate the water from the animal’s lungs and restart its respiration. He had invented a machine to perform what we would recognize as CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation). At the time, however, the farm workers who witnessed the sheep being brought back to life claimed that Bell was the devil.
"In the autumn of 1882, the Bells had moved to Rhode Island, and Bell was looking for a new project to occupy his mind. The answer was the phonograph. This was an invention which had been developed by Thomas Edison and subsequently discarded as impractical. Bell decided he could improve upon the invention. Edison had been engaged in the development of a machine for transcribing Morse code onto paper as indentations. He realized that a cylinder containing the indentations spinning at sufficient speed produced a sound. By attaching a diaphragm connected to a stylus, the vibrations of the sounds caused vibrations in the diaphragm which in turn moved the stylus to inscribe the Morse code as indentations.
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"Bell’s version of the phonograph used a wax cylinder with a needle that zig-zagged sideways in grooved tracks. This seemed to produce a much more faithful recording of the sound. Bell’s version recorded by actually cutting into the cylinder instead of merely making an indentation. The design proved such an improvement on the model which Edison had discarded, that he purchased the patent for the Bell machine in order to market the machine commercially. Tainter and Chichester Bell adapted the device using sewing machine parts and founded the Dictaphone Company. This company would become one of the world’s leading manufacturers of dictaphones and related telephonic recording systems. Their success was born from Bell’s vision of a practical, working dictation recording system.
"These inventions are a testament to Bell’s inventive mind and scientific genius. Bell had no formal scientific background, but he had an enquiring mind and was clearly very intelligent. He had made himself an expert in telegraphic technology, and the invention of the telephone was an offshoot of this. In developing the first iron lung so rapidly after his son’s death demonstrates a mind capable to turning itself to other areas of invention, a long way from the field he had become expert in over the last decade. Bell was, by this point, an inventor first and foremost.
"It should be remembered that Bell lived in an age of invention. But not every invention was destined to survive for long. That Bell’s principal inventions proved long-standing successes into the next century demonstrates his vision."
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November 14, 2022 - November 14, 2022.
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Chapter 9. A Rival to the Wright Brothers
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"“What a man my husband is . . . I am perfectly bewildered at the number and size of the ideas in which his head is crammed . . . Flying machines to which telephones and torpedoes are to be attached.”
"—Mabel Bell"
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"By the summer of 1885, Bell had faced further patent trials aimed at wresting control of the telephone out of the hands of the Bell Telephone Company before the allotted 17-year-protection time was up. In one particular trial, Bell faced a personal attack by the accusation that he had bribed the patent examiner, Zenas Wilber, to get a look at Elisha Gray’s patent caveat and subsequently steal the design for the telephone. Bell was able to defend himself against the accusation, but it left him feeling depressed and seeking escape from his fame.
"Melville Bell suggested Newfoundland where he had spent time as a young man; he also wished to join Bell and his family on the trip. They journeyed to Nova Scotia and then on to Newfoundland. The journey would result in the Bells relocating from Boston permanently. After visiting Newfoundland, they made their way back to Nova Scotia and the town of Baddeck. It was there that Bell met and befriended a man named Arthur McCurdy. Bell repaired McCurdy’s phone, and McCurdy subsequently became Bell’s agent and assistant. When Bell discovered a picturesque peninsula on the Bras d’Or lakes, McCurdy arranged for the purchase of the land. The Bells would call the spot, Beinn Bhreagh, or “Beautiful Mountain” in Gaelic. The house itself would be called the Lodge and was designed by Bell and McCurdy. The Lodge would provide a welcome getaway for the Bells from the stresses of the celebrity life.
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"In 1893, a journalist interviewing Bell asked for his views on inventions which he saw as having the greatest impact on the world yet to come. Bell told the reporter that it was in the arena of powered flight that the greatest revolution would unfold and that it would completely change both transportation and war. The first successful powered flight (by the Wright brothers) would not be made for almost ten years, and yet Bell predicted the flight revolution. His prescience was eerily accurate, especially considering that few scientists regarded powered flight as being anything but a far-fetched fantasy.
"Serious experiments in flight had been undertaken by Samuel Langley of the Smithsonian Institute since 1886. He made experiments on aerodynamics and had experimented with different models, powered by twisted bands of rubber and with various wing configurations. Bell discovered these experiments when Langley announced his work in the Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge. Bell began his own work from his new Nova Scotia hideaway by experimenting with propellers, while Langley focused on wings.
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"Bell focused his attention on helicopter models. In 1891 he established that a two-bladed propeller appeared most effective at generating lift. Bell’s helicopter design incorporated cloth propellers powered with steam jets at their tips. On January 6, 1892, he had a small eight-and-a-half-inch boiler designed, weighing less than a pound. The blades would be attached to this, and the steam generated by the boiler would turn the propellers via the jets at the end, in turn lifting the entire assembly. He used a combination of alcohol and water in the boiler but couldn’t get the boiler pressure high enough. One experiment was made using pure alcohol but resulted in an explosion.
"Undeterred, Bell tried brass propellers instead. A design with three paddle-like propellers reached a height of over a hundred feet on June 10. He made notes and diagrams of how the finished machine might look. His design incorporated a large propeller as the primary means of elevation with a smaller rotor and wings to control direction and prevent the machine from whirling around in circles. His prototype design was very similar to a modern helicopter.
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"Bell was becoming more and more obsessed with the idea of powered flight. The more he experimented, the more he became convinced that it was possible. He requested every book on aviation available from a Boston bookstore and entered into correspondence with Octave Chanute, an American aviation pioneer who would go on to mentor the Wright brothers.
"In 1893, the Lodge was finally completed. Samuel Langley was one of the first guests. He was another aspiring aviation pioneer, although his interest was in achieving horizontal flight rather than the vertical flight of a helicopter. Arthur McCurdy would later help Langley buy himself a plot of land not far from the Bells’ home.
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"By 1895 Bell was experimenting with the angle of his propeller blades and studying the arrangement of wings. Mabel wrote that she felt her husband was ahead of Langley and others in the aviation field and that he was gaining an understanding of the mechanics of flight. However, on May 9, 1895, it was Langley who achieved the first ever powered flight by a heavier-than-air machine. Bell was excited to witness the event in Washington.
"Bell didn’t see Langley as a competitor as he had Elisha Gray and Thomas Edison. Instead, he funded Langley’s work and encouraged him. Langley had been ridiculed by the established scientific community and the press in the pursuit of his goals, but Bell supported him. On May 12, 1896, Bell was one of a few witnesses of a further development of Langley’s work. It was called the aerodrome. This machine achieved a height of a hundred feet and a distance of half a mile before its steam ran out, and the construct glided to the ground again without a crash. Bell was convinced that he had witnessed the practicality of powered flight.
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"In 1898 the outbreak of the Spanish-American War further fueled Bell’s enthusiasm for flight. He reasoned that flying machines would be inordinately useful in the gathering of intelligence. So convinced was he of the usefulness and life-saving potential of powered flight that he refused to travel with this family to Europe; he stayed to continue his research.
"In September 1901 Bell invited the astronomer and flight skeptic Simon Newcomb to the Lodge. Langley was also present. The group ended up debating how a cat manages to fall on its feet. Newcomb refused to accept that this was possible, and so an experiment was set up whereby cats were dropped from the house’s veranda to a pile of mattresses and cushions beneath. Each time the cat turned in the air and landed on its feet. No-one could explain how the animal achieved this.
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"Another principle expounded by Newcomb was that powered flight was impossible because the larger a flying machine is, its weight is cubed while its lifting surfaces are only squared. This meant that an aircraft large enough to carry a person could not possibly fly. Bell disagreed and formulated his rebuttal in terms of kites. He reasoned that a kite loaded with a man flies well in a breeze; it should continue to fly well if provided with an engine. Kites became Bell’s newest obsession, and he experimented with a wide variety, focusing on the most complex constructions that he could find.
"By December 1903, Langley believed he had perfected a powered flying machine. Its unveiling would end in complete disaster, however, and he suffered a stroke shortly afterward, dying a few months later. Samuel Langley and Bell had devoted 16 years to the pursuit of aviation, and at that moment it must have seemed to Bell to be as far away as ever.
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"But the work which Bell and Langley had done proved worthwhile. The Wright brothers had been working on their own design in secret. In December 1903 they would make their historic manned, powered flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Though Bell hadn’t been the inventor, he had produced some prescient work in the field of vertical takeoff helicopter-type machines. He and Langley had been part of a movement, much ridiculed in the press, which must have influenced the Wright brothers. They could not help but be aware of Langley’s work, as the head of the Smithsonian, and through him of Bell’s work. Their decision to work in secrecy demonstrates an awareness of how much scorn and derision Langley and Bell had been targeted with.
"Undeterred by the success of the Wright brothers, Bell continued to work on his own flying machines. Just as he had been driven by his pursuit of the multiple telegraph and then the telephone, now he was determined that his kite design would be superior to what the Wright brothers were producing. In December 1905 he finished the “Frost King” which was made up of 1,500 tetrahedral cells to provide 440 square feet of lifting surface. He was able to photograph Lucien McCurdy, son of his erstwhile agent and assistant, being carried off the ground by the machine. This was proof that his design could lift a man.
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"At this point Bell gathered a group around him to support him in his work, he was nearing 60 after all. The first was Douglas McCurdy, an engineering student at Toronto. When Douglas McCurdy left university for the Bells, he brought with him Casey Baldwin, another recently graduated engineer and aviation enthusiast. Baldwin would be set to work using tetrahedral materials for construction, building an observation tower. This method of ultra-light, ultra-strong construction would go on to be used for space-frame architecture designed to cover large areas with few interior supports. This would be yet another example of a Bell invention that would go on to have a profound impact on later generations and technologies.
"Because of his wish to add an engine to the Frost King, Bell started working with Glenn Curtiss who made engines for dirigibles. Bell would purchase a 16-horsepower motor from Curtiss. The final member of the aviation team was a young Naval Lieutenant named Thomas Selfridge. They formed a group called the Aerial Experiment Association to build airplanes and share the proceeds of all patents. With the exception of Bell and Curtiss, they were predominantly young men.
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"They successfully tested the Cygnet, their largest construction ever, on December 6, 1907, with Selfridge as the pilot. From this point on the group became dedicated to the construction of planes instead of kites. The first design constructed was the Red Wing, powered by a 40-horsepower motor and a propeller at the rear of the aircraft. It became the first plane ever publicly flown in North America when it was successfully tested on March 17, 1908. The plane eventually crashed and was damaged beyond repair.
"Bell reasoned that the weakness of the plane was its inability to bank for turns and to cope with changes in wind direction. Using observations of birds as his inspiration, he suggested movable wing segments controlled by the pilot via wires. These segments, called ailerons, proved crucial to the success of powered flight. This was an innovation that the Wright brothers had not thought of but would make use of, as would all planes subsequently constructed.
"The AEA continued to design and test aircraft with their final and most successful plane being the Silver Dart, which was launched on January 9, 1909. On March 31, 1909, the AEA was wound up. It had achieved what it had set out to do, namely to prove that manned aviation was not just possible but would change the world. As he had done to develop the telephone, Bell demonstrated how well he could work with others and how inspirational a leader he could be, motivating and driving the young group to their success. Once again, Bell had stepped into a new field with unshakable conviction."
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November 14, 2022 - November 14, 2022.
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Chapter 10. Later Years and Death
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"“In scientific research there are no unsuccessful experiments.”
"—Alexander Graham Bell"
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"In the later years of his life, Bell continued to create, discover, invent, and innovate across an array of fields and industries. He embraced the Italian Montessori school of education, rejecting the rote learning approach adopted by Western educators in favor of a more child-led approach put forward by Dr. Maria Montessori.
"In 1912 Bell began to teach children important principles of science by letting them experiment and come up with their own answers. Bell and his wife founded the Montessori Education Association, with Mabel as its president. They gained support from the Washington elite in this enterprise and were able to open a school. The movement which the Bells were spearheading to bring the Montessori method into the mainstream of American education would, however, be doomed to failure. Opposition from the educational mainstream as well as Montessori’s refusal to allow her name to be used in establishments beyond her control meant that the method didn’t take off in America. The fledgling MEA closed its school in 1919.
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"The First World War prompted another Bell innovation that would go onto to have a far-reaching effect. With the advent of submarine warfare, Bell came to believe that the Allies needed a large hydrofoil to pursue and destroy submarines. He had speculated on the subject of a boat that would be able to travel over instead of through the water as early as 1901, and by 1912 he had built scale models as part of a design to lift aircraft off the surface of water. Bell worked on the design of a full-scale hydrodrome with Casey Baldwin, who had been a member of the AEA. By 1915 they had a model that was capable of 50 miles per hour, the HD-4. With America joining the war in Europe in 1917, Bell and Baldwin were given new engines to make their hydrodrome even faster. Equipped with 350-horsepower engines supplied by the U.S. government, the HD-4 would eventually achieve speeds of 70-80 miles an hour, a world record.
"Bell remained active to the very end of his life, involving himself in projects through his sixties and seventies too numerous to list. His mind sparked and fired relentlessly. He wrote about the possibility of utilizing rooftop space in cities for the capture of solar radiation for energy. He was an environmental pioneer in his work on the subject of home insulation and theorized about the effect of greenhouse gases on the environment. He was a husband, father, and grand-father with a large extended family and had the pleasure of seeing his children and grand-children succeeding in their own endeavors. His greatest invention, the telephone, had produced a corporate megalith in American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) which would shape the telecoms industry for the next century.
"On August 2, 1922, Bell was rapidly weakened and immobilized by an attack of anemia. He died with Mabel by his side. Her last words to him were “Don’t leave me.” to which he replied “No.” Unable to talk, Bell’s last words were signed into his wife’s hand."
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November 14, 2022 - November 14, 2022.
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Conclusion
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"Alexander Graham Bell is remembered today as the inventor of the telephone. But this was just one invention from a man who could not stop innovating and creating. A true pioneer, he did not limit himself to any single field of expertise but instead followed the paths that his mind led him down. From teacher of the deaf to telephonic innovator and scientific pioneer in the field of communication with light. His life was one of constant motion, driven by a mind that did not rest until his last moments.
"Many of his inventions were generations or even centuries ahead of their time. His photophone could not be realized until the invention of fiber optics. His apparatus for helping with breathing would become the iron lung, his device for locating metal objects, the metal detector. All would be conceived of by him but would be brought into being by others. But it was in Bell’s mind that those ideas first emerged.
"He developed the world’s first system for air conditioning, put to use to cool his Washington home. He theorized on the greenhouse effect and its impact on global environments. Ever the innovator, he recognized the value of the Montessori method of education. Bell and his wife’s attempts to bring this into America were short lived, but today these methods are the cornerstone of educational systems across western Europe."
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November 14, 2022 - November 14, 2022.
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Alexander Graham Bell: A Life
From Beginning to End
(Biographies of Inventors),
by Hourly History.
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November 12, 2022 -
November 14, 2022 - November 14, 2022. .
Purchased November 13, 2022.
ASIN:- B078XDVRMS
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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5100010551
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................................................................................................
Alexander Graham Bell: A Life
From Beginning to End
(Biographies of Inventors),
by Hourly History.
November 12, 2022 - November 13, 2022.
Purchased November 13, 2022.
ASIN:- B078XDVRMS
