Alexander Graham Bell

Alexander Graham Bell
Portrait of Alexander Graham Bell c. 1910
Born	3 March 1847 Edinburgh, Scotland
Died	2 August 1922 (age 75) Beinn Bhreagh, Nova Scotia, Canada
Education	University of Edinburgh University of Toronto
Occupation(s)	Inventor, Scientist
Spouse	Mabel Hubbard
Children	Elsie May Bell (1878-1964), Marian Hubbard Bell (Daisy) (1880-1962), and two sons who died in infancy
Parent(s)	Alexander Melville Bell Eliza Grace Symonds Bell

Alexander Graham Bell (3 March 1847 – 2 August 1922) was a Scottish scientist, inventor, and innovator. Born and raised in Edinburgh, Scotland, he emigrated to Canada in 1870, and then to the United States in 1871, becoming a U.S. citizen in 1882.

Bell was awarded the U.S. patent for the invention of the telephone in 1876; although other inventors had claimed the honor, the Bell patent remained in effect.

Biography

Alexander Graham Bell was born in Scotland on 3 March 1847. He had three brothers - Melville Alexander Bell (born 1835), Melville James Bell (1845) and Edward Charles Bell (born 1848). Two of his brothers died of tuberculosis. His father was Professor Alexander Melville Bell, and his mother was Eliza Grace (nee Symonds). At age eleven, he adopted the middle name "Graham" out of admiration for Alexander Graham, a family friend. Many called Bell "the father of the deaf". However, Bell believed in eugenics as well as audism. With both his mother and wife deaf, he hoped to eliminate hereditary deafness. To family and friends he was known as "Alec" which is how he signed his name.

His family was associated with the teaching of elocution: his grandfather, Alexander Bell, in London, his uncle in Dublin, and his father, in Edinburgh, were all elocutionists. His father published a variety of works on the subject, several of which are still well known, especially his treatise on Visible Speech, which appeared in Edinburgh in 1868. In this treatise, he explains his methods of how to instruct deaf mutes (as they were then known) to articulate words and read other people's lip movements to decipher meaning.

Bell was educated at the Royal High School, Edinburgh, Scotland, from which he graduated at age 13. At age 16, he secured a position as a pupil-teacher of elocution and music, in Weston House Academy, at Elgin, Moray, Scotland. The following year, he attended the University of Edinburgh, but he graduated from the University of Toronto.

It is while he was in Scotland that he is thought to have first turned his attention to the science of acoustics, with a view to ameliorate the deafness of his mother.

He served as an instructor at Somerset College, Bath, Somerset, England.

In 1870, at age 23, he and his parents immigrated to Canada, where they settled at Brantford, Ontario.

In Canada, Alexander Bell continued an interest in the study of the human voice and ear (his father was an authority on speech disorders), and he also explored a method of communication with electricity. He designed a piano which, by means of electricity, could transmit its music at a distance. In 1871, he accompanied his father to Montreal, Quebec, Canada, where his father was offered a position to teach his System of Visible Speech. Subsequently, his father was invited to introduce the Visible Speech System into a large school for mutes at Boston, Massachusetts, United States, but he declined the post, in favor of his son. Thus, teaching his father's system, Alexander Bell became professor of Vocal Physiology and Elocution at the Boston University School of Oratory.

Bell speaking into prototype model of the telephone

At Boston University, he continued his research in the same field and endeavored to find a way to transmit musical notes and articulate speech.

In early 1875, Bell visited the famous scientist Joseph Henry, who was then director of the Smithsonian Institution, and asked Henry's advice on an electrical multi-reed apparatus which Bell hoped would transmit the human voice by telegraph. Henry replied that Bell had "the germ of a great invention". When Bell said that he did not have the necessary knowledge, Henry replied, "Get it!" That greatly encouraged Bell to keep trying.

On 11 July 1877, a few days after the Bell Telephone Company began, Bell married Mabel Hubbard, daughter of Boston lawyer Gardiner Hubbard who helped finance Bell's work and organize the new telephone company. Mabel was one of Bell's deaf pupils. They had four children: Elsie May Bell (1878-1964), Marian Hubbard Bell (Daisy) (1880-1962), and two sons who died in infancy.

In 1880, Bell received the Volta Prize which he used to fund the Volta Laboratory in Washington, D.C. In 1882, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. In 1883, Bell and Gardiner Hubbard established the publication Science. In 1886, Bell started building a mansion overlooking Bras d'Or Lake across from the village of Baddeck on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, Canada, which he left in the care of a friend, writer David Narbaitz.

In 1888, Bell was one of the founding members of the National Geographic Society and became its second president (1898-1903). He was the recipient of many honors. The French government conferred on him the decoration of the Légion d'honneur (Legion of Honor); the Académie française bestowed on him the Volta Prize of 50,000 francs; the Royal Society of Arts in London awarded him the Albert Medal in 1902; and the University of Würzburg, Bavaria, granted him a Ph.D. He was awarded the AIEE's Edison Medal in 1914 for "For meritorious achievement in the invention of the telephone."

In 1891, Bell began experiments to develop motor-powered heavier-than-air aircraft. In 1898, he began experiments with tetrahedral kites, and he became the president of the National Geographic Society and regent of the Smithsonian Institution (1898-1922). In 1907, Bell founded the Aerial Experiment Association, and in 1908, he began development of the hydrodrome (hydrofoil).

In 25 January 1915, he sent the first transcontinental telephone call, at 15 Day Street in New York City, which was received by Thomas Watson at 333 Grant Avenue in San Francisco.

Bell died of Pernicious anemia on 2 August 1922, age 75, at his private estate, Beinn Bhreagh, located on Nova Scotia's Cape Breton Island near the village of Baddeck. He was buried atop Beinn Bhreagh mountain overlooking Bras d'Or Lake. He was survived by his wife and two of their four children.

Upon Bell's death, the nation's phones stilled their ringing for a silent minute in tribute to the man whose yearning to communicate made them possible.

Bell's last word was "No" traced out to his wife

Telephone

Main article: Invention of the telephone

In 1874, telegraph message traffic was rapidly expanding and had become "the nervous system of commerce" in the words of Western Union President William Orton. Orton had contracted with inventors Thomas Edison and Elisha Gray to find a way to send multiple telegraph messages on each telegraph line to avoid the great cost of constructing new lines. When Bell mentioned to Gardiner Hubbard and Thomas Sanders (parents of two of Bell's students) that he was working on a method of sending multiple tones on a telegraph wire using a multi-reed device, Hubbard and Sanders began to financially support Bell's experiments. Patent matters would be handled by Hubbard's patent attorney Anthony Pollok.

Bell was able to hire an assistant Thomas A. Watson who was an experienced electrical designer and mechanic. Bell and Watson experimented with acoustic telegraphy in 1874 and 1875. On 2 June 1875, Watson accidentally plucked one of the reeds and Bell at the receiving end of the wire heard the overtones of the reed, overtones that would be necessary for transmitting speech. This led to the "gallows" sound-powered telephone, which was able to transmit indistinct voice-like sounds but not clear speech.

Meanwhile, Elisha Gray was also experimenting with acoustic telegraphy and thought of a way to transmit speech using a water transmitter. On 14 February 1876, Gray filed a caveat with the U.S. patent office for a telephone design that used a water transmitter. That same morning, Bell's lawyer filed an application with the patent office for the telephone. There is a debate about who arrived first.

On 14 February 1876, Bell was in Boston. Hubbard, the lawyer who was paying for the costs of Bell's patents, told his patent lawyer Anthony Pollok to file Bell's application in the U.S. Patent Office. This was done without Bell's knowledge. This patent 174,465 was issued to Bell on 7 March 1876 by the U.S. Patent Office which covered "the method of, and apparatus for, transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically … by causing electrical undulations, similar in form to the vibrations of the air accompanying the said vocal or other sound."

Three days after his patent was issued, Bell experimented with a water transmitter, using an acid-water mixture. Vibration of the diaphragm caused a needle to vibrate in the water which varied the electrical resistance in the circuit. When Bell spoke the famous sentence "Mr Watson—Come here—I want to see you" into the liquid transmitter, Watson, listening at the receiving end, heard the words clearly.

Bell and his partners Hubbard and Sanders offered to sell the patent outright to Western Union for $100,000. The president of Western Union balked, countering that the telephone was nothing but a toy. Two years later, he told colleagues that if he could get the patent for $25 million he would consider it a bargain. By then the Bell company no longer wanted to sell the patent.

In 1879, the Bell company acquired Edison's patents for the carbon microphone from Western Union. This made the telephone practical for long distances, unlike Bell's voice-powered transmitter that required users to shout into it to be heard at the receiving telephone, even at short distances.

The Bell company lawyers successfully fought off several lawsuits. On 13 January 1887 the United States Government moved to annul the patent issued to Alexander Graham Bell on the grounds of fraud and misrepresentation. The prosecuting attorney was the Hon. George M. Stearns under the direction of the Solicitor General George A. Jenks The Bell company won the case.

The Bell Telephone Company was created in 1877, and by 1886 over 150,000 people in the U.S. owned telephones. Bell and his investors became millionaires. Bell company engineers made numerous other improvements to the telephone which developed into one of the most successful products.

Competitors

In 1834, long before Bell applied for his own patent, the Italian inventor Antonio Meucci created the first working model of a telephone in Italy, and in 1849 he tested electric transmission of the human voice in Cuba. The next year, 1850, Meucci demonstrated his electric telephone in New York. By 1871, Meucci had paid for a patent caveat for his telephone, and in the summer of 1872, asked Edward B. Grant (vice president of American District Telegraph Co. of New York) for permission to test his telephone apparatus on the company's telegraph lines, providing Grant with a working prototype, a full written description of the invention, and copy of his caveat. By 1874, Meucci still could not raise the $250 for a full patent, having only enough money to renew his caveat while looking for further funding. After waiting two years without receiving an answer, Meucci asked Grant for his documents and prototype, but Grant claimed they were lost. That same year, Meucci's caveat expired because and he lacked the money to renew it.

After Bell received his patent in 1876, Meucci took Bell to court in order to establish his priority. Meucci lost his case due to lack of material evidence of his inventions. The best he could manage was to reconstruct them during the trial and call in witnesses to testify that he had invented the "Talking Telegraph," as he called it, years before. Bell Telephone Company also won in the trial The U.S. Government Versus Antonio Meucci by a decision on 19 July 1887, by Judge William J. Wallace (Circuit Court, S.D. New York.) "The experiments and invention of one Antonio Meucci, relating to the transmission of speech by an electrical apparatus [...] do not contain any such elements of an electric speaking telephone as would give the same priority over or interfere with the said Bell patent".

More than 100 years later, documents would surface which theorized a conspiracy between Bell Company and American District Telegraph Co. of New York. In their agreement, Bell had agreed to pay them 20 percent of the profits from commercialization of "his invention" for a period of 17 years. As a result, Grant conveniently "lost" all trace of Meucci's working prototype and documentation, contracting with Bell shortly thereafter.

Due to the efforts of Italian American Congressman Vito Fossella, Resolution 269 the U.S. House of Representatives on 11 June 2002 finally recognized the work previously done by Antonio Meucci, granting him posthumous recognition for his work on the telephone.

Over a period of 18 years, the Bell Telephone Company faced over 600 litigations from inventors claiming to have invented the telephone, never once losing a case. .

Later inventions

Metal detector

Bell is also credited with the invention of the metal detector in 1881. The device was hurriedly put together in an attempt to find the bullet in the body of U.S. President James Garfield. The metal detector worked but did not find the bullet because the metal bed frame the President was lying on confused the instrument. Bell gave a full account of his experiments in a paper read before the American Association for the Advancement of Science in August 1882

Hydrofoil

The March 1906 Scientific American article by American hydrofoil pioneer William E. Meacham explained the basic principle of hydrofoils. Bell considered the invention of the hydroplane as a very significant achievement. Based on information gained from that article he began to sketch concepts of what is now called a hydrofoil boat.

Bell and Casey Baldwin began hydrofoil experimentation in the summer of 1908 as a possible aid to airplane takeoff from water. Baldwin studied the work of the Italian inventor Enrico Forlanini and began testing models. This led him and Bell to the development of practical hydrofoil watercraft.

During his world tour of 1910–1911, Bell and Baldwin met with Forlanini in France. They had rides in the Forlanini hydrofoil boat over Lake Maggiore. Baldwin described it as being as smooth as flying. On returning to Baddeck, several designs were tried culminating in the HD-4, using Renault engines. A top speed of 54 miles per hour (87 km/h) was achieved, with rapid acceleration, good stability and steering, and the ability to take waves without difficulty. In 1913, Dr. Bell hired Walter Pinaud, a Sydney yacht designer and builder as well as the proprietor of Pinaud's Yacht Yard in Westmount, Nova Scotia to work on the pontoons of the HD-4. Pinaud soon took over the boatyard at Bell Laboratories on Beinn Bhreagh, Bell's estate near Baddeck, Nova Scotia. Pinaud's experience in boatbuilding enabled him to make useful design changes to the HD-4. After the First World War, work began again on the HD-4. Bell's report to the navy permitted him to obtain two 350 horsepower (260 kW) engines in July 1919. On 9 September 1919, the HD-4 set a world's marine speed record of 70.86 miles per hour (114.04 km/h).

Aeronautics

Bell was a supporter of aerospace engineering research through the Aerial Experiment Association, officially formed at Baddeck, Nova Scotia, in October 1907 at the suggestion of Mrs. Mabel Bell and with her financial support. It was headed by Bell. The founding members were four young men: American Glenn H. Curtiss, a motorcycle manufacturer who later was awarded the Scientific American Trophy for the first official one-kilometre flight in the Western hemisphere and became a world-renowned airplane manufacturer; Frederick W. "Casey" Baldwin, the first Canadian and first British subject to pilot a public flight in Hammondsport, New York; J.A.D. McCurdy; and Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge, an official observer from the U.S. government. One of the project's inventions, the aileron, is a standard component of aircraft today. (The aileron was also invented independently by Robert Esnault-Pelterie.)

Bell experimented with box kites and wings constructed of multiple compound tetrahedral kites covered in silk. The tetrahedral wings were named Cygnet I, II and III, and were flown both unmanned and manned (Cygnet I crashed during a flight carrying Selfridge) in the period from 1907-1912. Some of Bell's kites are on display at the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site.

The AEA's work progressed to heavier-than-air machines, applying their knowledge of kites to gliders. Moving to Hammondsport, the group then designed and built the Red Wing, framed in bamboo and covered in red silk and powered by a small air-cooled engine. On 12 March 1908, the biplane lifted off on the first public flight in North America. The innovations that were incorporated into this design included a cockpit enclosure and tail rudder (later variations on the original design would add ailerons as a means of control). The White Wing and June Bug were to follow and by the end of 1908, over 150 flights without mishap had been accomplished. However, the AEA had depleted its initial reserves and only a $10,000 grant from Mrs. Bell allowed it to continue with experiments.

Their final aircraft design, the Silver Dart embodied all of the advancements found in the earlier machines. On 23 February 1909, Bell was present as the Silver Dart flown by J.A.D. McCurdy from the frozen ice of Lake Baddeck, made the first aircraft flight in Canada (and the British Empire). Bell had worried that the flight was too dangerous and had arranged for a doctor to be on hand. With the successful flight, the AEA disbanded and the Silver Dart would revert to Baldwin and McCurdy who began the Canadian Aerodrome Company and would later demonstrate the aircraft to the Canadian Army.

Other inventions

The range of Bell's inventive genius is represented only in part by the 18 patents granted in his name alone and the 12 he shared with his collaborators. These included 14 for the telephone and telegraph, four for the photophone, one for the phonograph, five for aerial vehicles, four for "hydroairplanes," and two for [selenium] cells.

Bell made many other inventions in his life. They include the metal jacket that assists in breathing, the audiometer to detect minor hearing problems, a device that locates icebergs, investigated on how to separate salt from seawater, and he also worked on finding alternative fuels. He worked in medical research and invented techniques for teaching speech to the deaf.

During his Volta Laboratory period, Bell and his associates considered impressing a magnetic field on a record as a means of reproducing sound. Although the trio briefly experimented with the concept, they were unable to develop a workable prototype. They abandoned the idea, never realizing they had glimpsed a basic principle which would one day find its application in the tape recorder, the hard disc and floppy disc drive, and other magnetic media.

Bell's own home used a primitive form of air conditioning, in which fans blew currents of air across great blocks of ice. He also anticipated modern concerns with fuel shortages and industrial pollution. Methane gas, he reasoned, could be produced from the waste of farms and factories. At his Canadian estate in Nova Scotia, he experimented with composting toilets and devices to capture water from the atmosphere. In a magazine interview published shortly before his death, he reflected on the possibility of using solar panels to heat houses.

Eugenics

Along with many very prominent thinkers and scientists of the time, Bell was connected with the eugenics movement in the United States. From 1912 until 1918 he was the chairman of the board of scientific advisors to the Eugenics Record Office associated with Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, and regularly attended meetings. In 1921, he was the honorary president of the Second International Congress of Eugenics held under the auspices of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Organizations such as these advocated passing laws (with success in some states) that established the compulsory sterilization of people deemed to be, as Bell called them, a "defective variety of the human race". By the late 1930s, about half the states in the U.S. had eugenics laws, and the California laws were used as a model for eugenics laws in Nazi Germany.

His ideas about people he considered defective centered on the deaf. This was because of his feelings for his deaf family and his contact with deaf education. In addition to advocating sterilization of the deaf, Bell wished to prohibit deaf teachers from being allowed to teach in schools for the deaf. He worked to outlaw the marriage of deaf individuals to one another, and he was an ardent supporter of oralism over the use of sign language to educate deaf students. His avowed goal was to eradicate the language and culture of the deaf so as to encourage them to assimilate into the hearing culture, for their own long-term benefit and for the benefit of society at large. Although this attitude is widely seen as paternalistic and arrogant today, it was mainstream in that era.

Although he supported what some consider harsh and inhumane policies today, he was not unkind to deaf individuals who supported his theories of oralism. He was a personal and longtime friend of Helen Keller, and his wife Mabel was deaf (none of their children were).

Tributes

In the early 1970s, the UK rock group The Sweet recorded a tribute to Bell and the telephone, suitably titled "Alexander Graham Bell". The song gives a fictional account of the invention, in which Bell devises the telephone so he can talk to his girlfriend who lives on the other side of the United States. The song reached the top 40 in the UK and went on to sell over one million recordings worldwide.

Eric Walters' The Hydrofoil Mystery (1999) sets a novel in Alexander Graham Bell's workshops, casting the hydrofoil as a new weapon of war being readied for use against German U-boats in the First World War.

Bell was honoured on the television programs the 100 Greatest Britons (2002), the top-ten Greatest Canadians (2004), and the 100 Greatest Americans (2005). The nominees and rankings for these programs were determined by popular vote. Bell was the only person to be on more than one of the programs.

Another musical tribute to Bell, Alexander Graham Bell (2006) was written by the British songwriter and guitarist Richard Thompson. The chorus reminds the listener that "of course there was the telephone, he'd be famous for that alone, but there's 50 other things as well from Alexander Graham Bell".

One of the residence halls at Rochester Institute of Technology adjacent to the National Technical Institute for the Deaf building is Alexander Graham Bell Hall.

See also

• Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing
• Invention of the telephone
• Emile Berliner
• Charles Bourseul
• Thomas Edison
• Elisha Gray
• Elisha Gray and Alexander Bell Controversy
• Innocenzo Manzetti
• Antonio Meucci
• Philipp Reis
• Oriental Telephone Company

References

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• Groundwater, Jennifer. Alexander Graham Bell: The Spirit of Invention. Calgary: Altitude Publishing, 2005. ISBN 1-55439-006-0.
• Gray, Charlotte. Reluctant Genius: Alexander Graham Bell and the Passion for Invention. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2006. ISBN 1-55970-809-3.
• Evenson, A. Edward. The Telephone Patent Conspiracy of 1876: The Elisha Gray - Alexander Bell Controversy. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland Publishing, 2000. ISBN 0-7864-0883.
• Phillips, Allan. Into the 20th Century: 1900/1910 (Canada's Illustrated Heritage). Toronto: Natural Science of Canada Limited, 1977. ISBN 0-9196-4422-8.
• Walters, Eric. The Hydrofoil Mystery. Toronto: Puffin Books, 1999. ISBN 0-14-130220-8.

Further reading

• Bruce, Robert V. Bell: Alexander Bell and the Conquest of Solitude. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1990. ISBN 0-80149691-8.
• Coe, Lewis. The Telephone and Its Several Inventors: A History. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland Publishing, 1995. ISBN 0-7864-0138-9.

External links

• Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online
• Alexander Graham Bell Institute
• (Italian) Timeline for Antonio Meucci
• Bell Homestead, National Historic Site
• Appleton's Biography edited by Stanley L. Klos
• Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site Museum located in Baddeck, Nova Scotia containing many of Bell's experiments and models
• Alexander Graham Bell family papers Online version at the Library of Congress comprises a selection of 4,695 items (totaling about 51,500 images) containing correspondence, scientific notebooks, journals, blueprints, articles, and photographs documenting Bell invention of the telephone and his involvement in the first telephone company, his family life, his interest in the education of the deaf, and his aeronautical and other scientific work
• Bell's path to the invention of the telephone
• Bell's speech before the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston on 27 August 1880, presenting the photophone, very clear description; published as "On the Production and Reproduction of Sound by Light" in the American Journal of Sciences, Third Series, vol. XX, #118, October 1880, p. 305 - 324 and as "Selenium and the Photophone" in Nature, September 1880
• AlexanderBell.com - Telecom pioneer
• Alexander Graham Bell Biographical information, science resources and information on 1912 Franklin Award for 'electrical transmission of articulate speech' at The Franklin Institute's Case Files online exhibit
• Alexander Graham Bell gravesite
• Alexander Graham Bell: Biography and Much More from Answers.com Excellent summary of Alexander Graham Bell's life, has many useful dates for important parts of his life
• Basilio Catania, 2003 The United States Government vs. Alexander Graham Bell. An important acknowledgment for Antonio Meucci
• Bell family tree
• American Treasures of the Library of Congress, Alexander Graham Bell - Lab notebook I, p. 40-41 (image 22)
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• Biography and photos at the Canada's Telecommunications Hall of Fame website
• Biographical video footage at the Canada's Telecommunications Hall of Fame website

Patents

• Complete list of Bell patents

US patent images in TIFF format

• U.S. patent 161,739 Improvement in Transmitters and Receivers for Electric Telegraphs, filed March 1875, issued April 1875 (multiplexing signals on a single wire)
• U.S. patent 174,465 Improvement in Telegraphy, filed February 14 1876, issued March 7, 1876 (Bell's first telephone patent)
• U.S. patent 178,399 Improvement in Telephonic Telegraph Receivers, filed April 1876, issued June 1876
• U.S. patent 181,553 Improvement in Generating Electric Currents (using rotating permanent magnets), filed August 1876, issued August 1876
• U.S. patent 186,787 Electric Telegraphy (permanent magnet receiver), filed January 15 1877, issued January 30 1877
• U.S. patent 235,199 Apparatus for Signalling and Communicating, called Photophone, filed August 1880, issued December 1880
• U.S. patent 757,012 Aerial Vehicle, filed June 1903, issued April 1904

Movie biographies

• Animated Hero Classics: Alexander Graham Bell (1995) at IMDb
• The Story of Alexander Graham Bell, 1939 film reformatted for VCR tape, Don Ameche playing Bell, (1966) ISBN 0-7939-1251-2
• Biography - Alexander Graham Bell, A&E DVD biography based on historical footage and still pictures of Bell, (2005) ASIN B0009K7RUW

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