Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell (
March 3,
1847 –
August 2,
1922) was a
Scottish-born,
Canadian scientist and
inventor. Today, Bell is still widely considered to be the foremost inventor of the
telephone, although this matter has become
controversial, with a number of people claiming that
Antonio Meucci was the "real" inventor (in June 2002, the
United States House of Representatives passed a symbolic bill officially recognizing Meucci for his contributions to the invention of the telephone). Others advance
Elisha Gray, the founder of the
Western Electric Manufacturing Company. (It is reasonably clear that each of these men independently invented a telephone.) In addition to Bell's work in
telecommunications technology, he was responsible for important advances in
aviation and
hydrofoil technology.
Born Alexander Bell in
Edinburgh on
March 3,
1847, he later adopted the middle name 'Graham' out of admiration for Alexander Graham, a family friend. Many called Bell "the father of the Deaf." This title may be regarded as somewhat ironic due to his belief in the practice of
eugenics. While both his mother and his wife were deaf, he hoped to one day eliminate hereditary deafness from the population.
His family was associated with the teaching of
elocution: his grandfather in
London, his uncle in
Dublin, and his father,
Alexander Melville Bell, in Edinburgh, were all professed elocutionists. The latter has published a variety of works on the subject, several of which are well known, especially his treatise on
Visible Speech, which appeared in Edinburgh in 1868. In this he explains his method of instructing
deaf mutes, by means of their eyesight, how to articulate words, and also how to read what other persons are saying by the motions of their lips.
Alexander Graham Bell was educated at the
Royal High School of Edinburgh, from which he graduated at the age of 13. At the age of 16 he secured a position as a pupil-teacher of elocution and music in
Weston House Academy, at
Elgin,
Moray, Scotland. The next year he spent at the
University of Edinburgh. He was graduated from
University College London.
From 1867 to 1868, he was an instructor at
Somersetshire College at
Bath,
Somerset,
England.
While still in Scotland he is said to have turned his attention to the science of
acoustics, with a view to ameliorate the deafness of his mother.
In 1870, at the age of 23, he
emigrated with his family to
Canada where they settled at
Brantford. Before he left Scotland, Bell had turned his attention to
telephony, and in Canada he continued an interest in communication machines. He designed a piano which could transmit its music to a distance by means of electricity. In 1873, he accompanied his father to
Montreal, Canada, where he was employed in teaching the system of visible speech. The elder Bell was invited to introduce the system into a large day-school for mutes at
Boston, but he declined the post in favor of his son, who became Professor of Vocal Physiology and Elocution at
Boston University's 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 produce a telephone which would not only send musical notes, but articulate speech. With financing from his American father-in-law, on
March 7,
1876, the
U.S. Patent Office granted him
Patent Number 174,465 covering "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", the
telephone.
After obtaining the patent for the telephone, Bell continued his many experiments in communication, which culminated in the invention of the photophone-transmission of sound on a beam of
light — a precursor of today's
optical fiber systems. He also worked in medical research and invented techniques for teaching speech to the deaf. The range of Bell's inventive genius is represented only in part by the eighteen
patents granted in his name alone and the twelve he shared with his collaborators. These included fourteen for the telephone and
telegraph, four for the
photophone, one for the
phonograph, five for aerial vehicles, four for hydroairplanes, and two for a
selenium cell.
Bell had many ideas that were later realized in inventions. 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
Beinn Bhreagh, 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.
In 1882, he became a
naturalized citizen of the United States. In 1888, he was one of the founding members of the
National Geographic Society and became its second president. 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."
Bell married Mabel Hubbard, who was one of his pupils at Boston University and also a deaf-mute, on
July 11,
1877. His invention of the telephone resulted from his attempts to create a device that would allow him to communicate with his wife and his deaf mother. He died at Beinn Bhreagh, located on
Nova Scotia's
Cape Breton Island near the village of
Baddeck, in 1922 was buried atop Beinn Bhreagh mountain overlooking
Bras d'Or Lake. He was survived by his wife and two of their four children.
The photophone
Another of Bell's inventions was the
photophone, a device enabling the transmission of sound over a beam of light, which he developed together with
Charles Sumner Tainter. The device employed light-sensitive cells of crystalline
selenium, which has the property that its
electrical resistance varies inversely with the illumination (i.e., the resistance is higher when the material is in the dark, and lower when it is lighted). The basic principle was to modulate a beam of light directed at a receiver made of crystalline selenium, to which a telephone was attached. The modulation was done either by means of a vibrating mirror, or a rotating disk periodically obscuring the light beam.
This idea was by no means new. Selenium had been discovered by
Jöns Jakob Berzelius in 1817, and the peculiar properties of crystalline or granulate selenium were discovered by
Willoughby Smith in 1873. In 1878, one writer with the initials J.F.W. from
Kew described such an arrangement in
Nature in a column appearing on
June 13, asking the readers whether any experiments in that direction had already been done. In his paper on the photophone, Bell credited one
A. C. Browne of London with the independent discovery in 1878—the same year Bell became aware of the idea. Bell and Tainter, however, were apparently the first to perform a successful experiment, by no means any easy task, as they even had to produce the selenium cells with the desired resistance characteristics themselves.
In one experiment in
Washington, D.C. the sender and the receiver were placed on different buildings some 700
feet (213
metres) apart. The sender consisted of a mirror directing sunlight onto the mouthpiece, where the light beam was modulated by a vibrating mirror, focused by a
lens and directed at the receiver, which was simply a
parabolic reflector with the selenium cells in the
focus and the telephone attached. With this setup, Bell and Tainter succeeded to communicate clearly.
The photophone was
patented on
December 18 1880, but the quality of communication remained poor and the research was not pursued by Bell. Later on this helped in the discovery of fiber optics and laser communication systems.
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 didn't find the bullet because the metal bedframe 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. Though unsuccessful in its first incarnation, this achievement would eventually change the nature of physical security.
The 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 Italy. They had rides in the Forlanini hydrofoil boat over
Lake Maggiore. Baldwin described it as being as smooth as flying. On returning to Baddeck a number of designs were tried culminating in the HD-4, using Renault engines. A top speed of 54 miles per hour 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 however soon WWI intervened. After WWI 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
September 9 1919 the HD-4 set a world's marine speed record of 70.86 miles per hour. This record stood for ten years.
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 the inventor himself. The founding members were four young men, American
Glenn H. Curtiss, a motorcycle manufacturer who would later be awarded the Scientific American Trophy for the first official one-kilometre flight in the Western hemisphere and later be world-renowned as an 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.
Other Inventions
Bell had made many other inventions in his life. They include the Metal vacuum 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 also worked on finding alternative fuels.
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 US had eugenics laws, the
California laws being used as a model for eugenics laws in
Nazi Germany.
His ideas about people he considered defective centered on the deaf because of his long contact with them in his work 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
manualism. His avowed goal was to eradicate the language and culture of the deaf so as to force them to integrate 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. See also:
audism.
Although he supported what many would consider harsh and inhumane policies today, he was not unkind to deaf individuals who proved his theories of oralism. He was a personal and longtime friend of
Helen Keller (although she hated being deaf), and his wife Mabel was deaf, though none of their children were. Bell was known as a kindly father and loving family man who took great pleasure in playing with his many grandchildren.
His son-in-law was
National Geographic Editor
Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor.
In the early 1970s, 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 world-wide.
Another musical tribute to Bell was written by the British songwriter and guitarist
Richard Thompson. The chorus of
Thompson's songreminds the listener that "of course there was the telephone, he'd be famous for that alone, but there's fifty other things as well from Alexander Graham Bell". The song mentions Bell's work with discs rather than cylinders, the hydrofoil, Bell's work with the deaf, his invention of the respirator and several other of Bell's achievements.
Bell was honored on the television programmes the
100 Greatest Britons (2002),
the 100 Greatest Americans (2005), and in the top ten
Greatest Canadians (2004). 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.
*
Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online*
Alexander Graham Bell Institute*
Bell Homestead, National Historic Site*
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 failures.
*
Bell's path to the invention of the telephone
*
Bell's speech before the American Association for the Advancement of Science in
Boston on
August 27,
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, pp. 305 - 324; and as "Selenium and the Photophone" in
Nature, September 1880.
*
AlexanderBell.com - Telecom pioneer*
Alexander Graham Bell gravesitePatents
*
Complete list of Bell patents
US patent images in TIFF format*
Improvement in Transmitters and Receivers for Electric Telegraphs, filed March 1875, issued April 1875 (multiplexing signals on a single wire)
*
Improvement in Telegraphy, filed
February 14,
1876, issued
March 7,
1876 (Bell's first telephone patent)
*
Improvement in Telephonic Telegraph Receivers, filed April 1876, issued June 1876
*
Improvement in Generating Electric Currents (using rotating permanent magnets), filed August 1876, issued August 1876
*
Apparatus for Signalling and Communicating, called Photophone, filed August 1880, issued December 1880
*
Aerial Vehicle, filed June 1903, issued April 1904
