Alexander Graham Bell

Alexander Graham Bell, (born March 3, 1847, Edinburgh, Scotland—died August 2, 1922, Beinn Bhreagh, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada), Scottish-born American inventor, scientist, and teacher of the deaf whose foremost accomplishments were the invention of the telephone (1876) and the refinement of the phonograph (1886).

Alexander (“Graham” was not added until he was 11) was born to Alexander Melville Bell and Eliza Grace Symonds. His mother was almost deaf, and his father taught elocution to the deaf, influencing Alexander’s later career choice as teacher of the deaf. At age 11 he entered the Royal High School at Edinburgh, but he did not enjoy the compulsory curriculum, and he left school at age 15 without graduating. In 1865 the family moved to London. Alexander passed the entrance examinations for University College London in June 1868 and matriculated there in the autumn. However, he did not complete his studies, because in 1870 the Bell family moved again, this time immigrating to Canada after the deaths of Bell’s younger brother Edward in 1867 and older brother Melville in 1870, both of tuberculosis. The family settled in Brantford, Ontario, but in April 1871 Alexander moved to Boston, where he taught at the Boston School for Deaf Mutes. He also taught at the Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton, Massachusetts, and at the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut.

One of Bell’s students was Mabel Hubbard, daughter of Gardiner Greene Hubbard, a founder of the Clarke School. Mabel had become deaf at age five as a result of a near-fatal bout of scarlet fever. Bell began working with her in 1873, when she was 15 years old. Despite a 10-year age difference, they fell in love and were married on July 11, 1877. They had four children, Elsie (1878–1964), Marian (1880–1962), and two sons who died in infancy.

While pursuing his teaching profession, Bell also began researching methods to transmit several telegraph messages simultaneously over a single wire—a major focus of telegraph innovation at the time and one that ultimately led to Bell’s invention of the telephone. In 1868 Joseph Stearns had invented the duplex, a system that transmitted two messages simultaneously over a single wire. Western Union Telegraph Company, the dominant firm in the industry, acquired the rights to Stearns’s duplex and hired the noted inventor Thomas Edison to devise as many multiple-transmission methods as possible in order to block competitors from using them. Edison’s work culminated in the quadruplex, a system for sending four simultaneous telegraph messages over a single wire. Inventors then sought methods that could send more than four; some, including Bell and his great rival Elisha Gray, developed designs capable of subdividing a telegraph line into 10 or more channels. These so-called harmonic telegraphs used reeds or tuning forks that responded to specific acoustic frequencies. They worked well in the laboratory but proved unreliable in service.

A group of investors led by Gardiner Hubbard wanted to establish a federally chartered telegraph company to compete with Western Union by contracting with the Post Office to send low-cost telegrams. Hubbard saw great promise in the harmonic telegraph and backed Bell’s experiments. Bell, however, was more interested in transmitting the human voice. Finally, he and Hubbard worked out an agreement that Bell would devote most of his time to the harmonic telegraph but would continue developing his telephone concept.

From harmonic telegraphs transmitting musical tones, it was a short conceptual step for both Bell and Gray to transmit the human voice. Bell filed a patent describing his method of transmitting sounds on February 14, 1876, just hours before Gray filed a caveat (a statement of concept) on a similar method. On March 7, 1876, the Patent Office awarded Bell what is said to be one of the most valuable patents in history. It is most likely that both Bell and Gray independently devised their telephone designs as an outgrowth of their work on harmonic telegraphy. However, the question of priority of invention between the two has been controversial from the very beginning.

Hall of Fame

monument, New York City, New York, United States
Hall of Fame, in full Hall of Fame for Great Americans, monument which honours U.S. citizens who have achieved distinction or fame, standing at the summit of University Heights on the campus of Bronx Community College (originally the uptown campus of New York University). A national shrine, the open-air colonnade looks down on the northern limits of New York City and stands high over the Hudson and Harlem river valleys, facing the New Jersey Palisades. The Greco-Roman colonnade, designed by the architect Stanford White, is a semicircular granite corridor, 630 feet (192 metres) long and a little over 10 feet (3 metres) wide. In its original design it was an architectural foreground for the three university buildings which it half encircles—the Hall of Philosophy, the Gould Memorial Library, and the Hall of Languages.

Bronze portrait busts of men and women who have left indelible marks on the history and culture of the United States are placed, facing each other, between the simple columns. Below each bust is a recessed tablet which commemorates the person honoured.

The founder of the Hall of Fame was Henry Mitchell MacCracken, chancellor of New York University when the uptown campus was being created in the 1890s. MacCracken enlisted the interest of Helen Miller Gould Shepard, who, in memory of her father, Jay Gould, had already provided funds for the erection of the Gould Memorial Library and a dormitory (Gould Hall). With her aid the Hall of Fame was established in 1900. It does not restrict its posthumous honour to any one class, and it includes persons of achievement in many fields.

Writing at the time of the dedication ceremonies in 1901, MacCracken said, “The Hall of Fame will teach youth that leaders in science and scholarship may be as great as military and naval heroes.” He said he had in mind a monument that “would overrule sectional and partisan outcry.” Among the persons honoured in this distinguished group are George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson, and other U.S. presidents; Susan B. Anthony; Jane Addams; Harriet Beecher Stowe; and Booker T. Washington. The busts of Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant stood side by side in the colonnade until 2017, when the sculptures of Lee and Stonewall Jackson were removed in response to a growing movement to take down Confederate statues. Anyone who was a citizen of the United States, who resided in the United States, and who has been deceased 25 years or more is eligible for election.

Sculptors represented by original works in the colonnade include Daniel Chester French (Nathaniel Hawthorne), James Earle Fraser (Augustus Saint-Gaudens), Chester Beach (Walt Whitman), Richmond Barthé (Booker T. Washington) and Malvina Hoffman (Thomas Paine). There is no mortuary suggestion either in the architecture of the Hall or in its operation. It serves many who seek primarily to familiarize themselves with the great men and women of the country. To guard against any melancholy thought, a former director, Robert Underwood Johnson, placed over the wrought iron gates at the northern entrance of the colonnade the words “Enter with joy that those within have lived” and over the gates at the southern entrance “Take counsel here of beauty, wisdom, power.”

Alexander Graham Bell’s Achievements

Fact
Born March 3, 1847 • Edinburgh • Scotland

Died August 2, 1922 (aged 75) • Canada

Founder AT&T Corporation

Awards And Honors Hall of Fame (1950)

Inventions Graphophone • telephone

Subjects Of Study deafness • phonograph • special education

Later Years

In the 1890s Bell turned his attention to experiments in aviation. He continued his experiments even after the Wright brothers made the first successful powered controlled flight in 1903. Bell’s particular interest was in developing more aerodynamic wings and propeller blades.

Many of his last years were given over to this pursuit. In 1907 he founded the Aerial Experiment Association to further innovation in aviation. Always a supporter of science and technology in addition to being an active force within them, Bell was a founding member of the National Geographic Society and a dedicated supporter of the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He died at his estate in Nova Scotia, Canada, on August 2, 1922.

The Graphophone

Graphophone

The vertical “hill-and-dale” groove, as played by a Columbia Graphophone, c. 1902. Patented by Charles Sumner Tainter, Chichester A. Bell, and Alexander Graham Bell in 1886, this vertically undulating groove, cut into a wax surface, was the most successful method employed in cylinder sound recording.

In 1885 Bell and colleagues (his cousin Chichester A. Bell and inventor Charles Sumner Tainter) greatly improved the phonograph in part by employing a removable wax-coated cylinder in their design. They called their device the Graphophone, and it led to the formation of the Volta Graphophone Company. Later Bell and his colleagues sold their patents to the American Graphophone Company, which evolved into the Columbia Phonograph Company. Bell continued research into sound recording and playback technology at his Volta Laboratory in Washington, D.C.

Electrical Bullet Probe

In 1881 Bell developed an electrical bullet probe in response to the attempted assassination of President James A. Garfield. Garfield had been shot in the back, and doctors were unable to locate the bullet through physical probing. Bell felt compelled to lend a hand to the effort. He used his knowledge of electromagnetic induction to develop the bullet probe, which was capable of detecting metal. The probe was used on Garfield, but to no avail. In September 1881 Garfield died. However, Bell’s electrical bullet probe went on to be used by surgeons and was credited with saving lives in the Boer War and World War I. Bell’s device became the basis for the modern metal detector.

The Telephone

Thomas A. Watson describing the invention of the telephone
Thomas A. Watson, assistant to Alexander Graham Bell, discusses the birth of the telephone, including the first words spoken.
U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Edison National Historical Site
On March 7, 1876, Bell gets a patent to develop the telephone. Another inventor, Elisha Gray, nearly patented a rival instrument himself. But it was Bell who filed for the patent first, mere hours ahead of Gray. At the time Bell received his patent, his instrument didn’t completely work. So Bell, along with his assistant, Thomas A. Watson, continued to develop it. Bell first produced intelligible speech on the telephone on March 10. In his lab notes, Bell transcribed these historic words as “Mr. Watson —come here —I want to see you.” The following August Bell received the first one-way long-distance call on his new instrument. At the Centennial Exhibition of 1876 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the demonstrations of Bell’s telephone made a great sensation on the general public. Bell became wealthy from his invention. Although the Bell Telephone Company was establishment in 1877, Bell soon sold most of his stakes in the company and moved on to other projects and interests.

Overview

telephone

Overview of the invention of the telephone, with focus on the work of Alexander Graham Bell.
Contunico © ZDF Enterprises GmbH, Mainz
Alexander Graham Bell is most famous for his invention of the telephone, which revolutionized the field of communications almost immediately. However, Bell had research interests in many areas and made a number of other noteworthy inventions and innovations. Among them were an early practical phonograph and a medical device known as an electrical bullet probe that was the first metal detector. In later life he also made contributions to the field of aviation. Bell never lingered on one project. His inventive genius shone through in numerous domains, enabling him to leave an indelible mark on the world.