Personality - Alexander Graham Bell

How often do you use the telephone? Every day, two or three times a day or almost daylong? What would it be like if there was no phone? Thanks to Alexander Graham Bell, who invented one of the most significant domestic device of today – the Telephone. This Scottish – American scientist had an inventive mind and a great vision. An inventor and a teacher of deaf, he is more famous today for his invention of the telephone then his pioneering efforts for the deaf and the mutes. Both Graham’s mother and wife had serious hearing impairments, a challenge that directed him towards the path of inventions. He defined an inventor as someone "who looks around upon the world and is not contented with things as they are. He wants to improve whatever he sees; he wants to benefit the world; he is haunted by an idea."

Affected by tuberculosis in his youth, he never recovered fully and often suffered from severe headaches; yet never let his problems hold him back from being creative. Despite devoting his entire life in search of new inventions, he never accepted that he had reached the top.

In the great man’s words: "I never really completed my revisions on telegraphy. I do believe that the concept of telephony has greatly impacted our society. I hope that this invention will be remembered."

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the invention-fever was in full swing. That period was the most important in modern history of technology, particularly in the western world. It was a period when Thomas Alva Edison invented the first light-bulb, record player and movie camera; George Eastman created the first camera, the Wright Brothers flew their plane, and a German scientist Max Planck opened the new vistas in science by his quantum theory of physics. It was also a time when the barriers amongst continents, countries and communities were broken by none other than Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of Telephone.

BIRTH AND FAMILY BACKGROUND

Alexander Graham Bell was born on March 3, 1847, in a Scottish family with a passion for communication. His father Alexander Melville Bell was a well-known Scottish educator of Edinburgh. He developed a system called "visible speech". His mother Eliza Bell, daughter of a surgeon in the Royal Navy, was a portrait painter and accomplished musician.

His grandfather, also Alexander Bell, had forged for himself a reputation as an impressive, though under employed, actor and orator. Gifted with a commanding speech and considerable physical bearing, he sought to unleash in others the full potential of the spoken word. His attention was especially drawn to those for whom the act of speaking frightened challenges. His experience with such persons led him to publish some writings The Practical Elocutionist, Stammering and Other Impediments of Speech. By 1838, before Graham’s birth, he acquired the reputation and was referred to in the London press as "the celebrated professor of Elocution". Graham’s keen interest in communication was rooted in his heredity.

His father Melville had the similar interest in the mechanics and methods of vocal communication. Melville enthusiastically joined his father in his elocutionary endeavors. And his keen interest in speech pathologies was sharpened when he fell in love with a deaf woman, who was ten years elder to him. He married her and they had three sons. Graham was the second; and his siblings were Melville and Edward.

Graham’s mother was a sweet tempered and refined intelligent woman. Despite being held captive in a world of virtual silence, she developed her talent and became a pianist, whose tenacity and determination to "hear" might have inspired Graham.

EARLY YEARS

His family knew young Graham as Aleck. He took to reading and writing at a very young age. Bell family lore told of his insistence upon mailing a letter to a family friend, before Graham had grasped any understanding of the alphabet. As he matured, Aleck displayed an expressive, flexible, and resonant voice – that came to be known as Bell family trademark.

Young Aleck forged a unique bond with his deaf mother through usage of this impressive vocal instrument. While others spoke to his mother through an ear tube, little Aleck used to communicate with her by speaking soft, sonorous tones very close to her forehead. He assumed that his mother, Eliza, would be able to ‘hear’ him through the vibrations of his vocal chords. This early insight proved to be significant factor for Alexander Graham Bell to develop more elaborate theories regarding the characteristics of sound waves.

At 14, Graham conceived of a device designed to remove the husks from wheat. That device combined a nailbrush and paddle into a rotary brushing wheel. While visiting London with his father, Aleck was fascinated by a demonstration of Sir Charles Wheatston’s ‘speaking machine’. When they returned home, Melville Sr., challenged Aleck and his brother to make their own model. The boys accepted the challenge and created an apparatus consisting of a facsimile mouth, throat, nose, movable tongue, and bellow lungs. The apparatus actually produced human-like sounds. Inspired by this success, Aleck tried further and succeeded in manipulating the mouth and vocal chords of his pet Skye terrier so that the dog’s growls were audible as words.

Graham’s family had a great influence on his future. He didn’t go to school much. He spent a year at a private school, two years at Edinburgh’s Royal High School. Graham was mainly family trained child, and he was also used to self-teaching. Little Graham was a gifted musician; he played piano pieces by ear!

With growing age, Graham’s intellectual horizons diversified. The 16-year-old boy was teaching music and elocution at a boy’s boarding school.

He and his brothers traveled throughout Scotland and impressed audiences with demonstration of their father’s ‘visible speech’ techniques. Combining such ventures, Graham helped his father at the University College in London along with his study there.

German physicist Hermann Von Helmholtz’s thesis On The Sensations of Tone excited Graham. In this thesis, Von Helmholtz declared that vowel sounds could be produced by a combination of electrical tuning forks and resonators. Though Graham was unable to read German, it did not restrain him from hungrily consuming this information. It did lead to his making what he later described as a very valuable blunder’. At that time, he interpreted Von Helmholtz’s findings as stating that vowel sounds could be transmitted ‘over a wire’. Later, he said, "It gave me confidence. If I had been able to read German, I might never have begun my experiments in electricity".

MIDDLE YEARS

In 1870, the midst of his early academic and professional career, Graham had to face a series of personal tragedies. His two brothers died from tuberculosis, within the span of four months. Tuberculosis, the scourge of the late 19th century, also threatened 23 year old Graham during the voyage with his parents to Canada. At a spacious farmhouse in Brantford, Ontario – what he called ‘my dreaming place’. – Graham was able to recover and enriched his mind with a great enthusiasm to dwell in his ever-expanding ambitions.

A year later, Graham went to Boston, U.S.A., becoming professor of vocal physiology at the University of Boston. His work in vocal physiology was a continuation of a system devised by his father to teach deaf mutes to speak with ‘visible speech’ or lip reading. His work with the deaf students proved to be a heart touching event in his life. One of his deaf students, Mabel Hubbard, occupied a unique place in Graham’s heart. Mabel Hubbard was ten years younger than him. Her father Gardinier Guillard Hubbard, was one of the co–founders of the Bell Telephone Company along with Thomas Sanders.

Mabel’s parents were worried by Graham’s obvious interest in their daughter. She was only 17, while they mistakenly believed him to be about 35. In the end, they permitted him and he got engaged with Mabel. ‘Graham’ had a habit of working late in the night and sleeping through the morning. Once, Mabel drew a painting of ‘Graham’. The painting turned out to be the image of a great white owl!

Because of ‘Graham’s tendency to jump from one subject to another, Mabel and her family were distressed. Mabel’s father persuaded her to give Graham an ultimatum – no marriage until the completion of multiple telegraph. ‘Graham’ became furious at that decision. Moreover his mother, deaf herself, was not happy with his engagement. When she wrote to ask if Mabel’s deafness was inherited, ‘Graham’ found it hard to forgive his mother. Eventually, love conquered all obstacles. At the wedding ceremony, the bridegroom presented all, but ten of his shares in the newly formed Bell Telephone Company, to the bride. Mabel played a vital role in Graham’s life and his innovative efforts.

CREATING HISTORY: INVENTION OF TELEPHONE

Graham had keen interest in sound and electricity. He devoted much of his time to electrical experiments. While experimenting, he felt sure that speech could be sent by electricity. He found he could not cope with all the work these experiments entailed, and enlisted the help of an electrician, Thomas Watson. Both tried countless methods to transmit the speech. When Bell obtained his patent, he still did not have a working device. The line of experiments that led to the first successful transmission of speech is depicted here.

The box that is lower and to the right is connected by a minus and a plus sign with devices next to each. This is a short-hand way of indicating that to get from one box to the other, Bell removes an electromagnet and substitutes a dish of water. The box called 'spark arrester" above it is connected by an arrow, to indicate that Bell had previous experience using water as a medium of resistance in a device that prevented sparks in a telegraph rely. The liquid experiments eventually, led to the famous "Watson--come here--I want you" result obtained on March 10th, 1876. The secret of their success was a carbon microphone. When Graham was experimenting on his circuit, he said to his assistant who was in another room – the historical words – ‘Watson, come here. I want you.’ Immediately Watson appeared and confirmed that these were the first words ever to be transmitted by the ‘dream device’ – the Telephone.

In the same year the telephone was demonstrated at Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, introducing the wonderful device to the world and led to the foundation of the Bell Telephone Company in 1877. Three years later, Bell was awarded 50,000 Franc Volta Prize for his invention. With this money, Graham founded a laboratory in Washington, DC. There with his associates, he invented a photophone, a device that transmitted speech by light waves. In the following years, he invented the audiometer, a valuable instrument used to compare the hearing abilities of different people.

In 1882, Graham was granted American citizenship. But the very next year had a shock for him, as his son Edward, died.

Throughout the rest of his life Graham continued to experiment. Among the many other things he invented was a method for making gramophone records. He devised the first wax-recording cylinder for phonographs. It was an improved version of the device invented by Thomas Alva Edison.

LATER YEARS

In the later years, Graham became interested in aeronautics and in 1907; he helped to organize the Aerial Experiment Association [AEA]. His wife financed the AEA. He discovered movable sections for the wings of aeronautical principles to boats, devised a full-sized prototype of the hydrofoil, the HD-4, which reached the record-breaking speed of 114 kph. His other experiments include the field of eugenics, the science of improving offspring, which he applied to sheep breeding. Apart from this, he served as the president of the National Geographic Society of U.S., from 1896 to 1903. He was one of the founders of the society.

In the twilight of his career, Graham became less interested in his company matters. He always tried to infuse love towards science and nature in the minds of the people. To increase such interest, he lent considerable financial and editorial support to the magazines – Science and National Geographic. He continued the studies on the causes and heredity of deafness, and published the books Duration of life and Conditions Associated with Longevity, in 1918. He breathe his last at the age of 75, at Baddeck in Canada, where a museum containing many of his original inventions are still maintained by the Canadian Government. On the day of his death, August 2, 1922, that nation’s telephones remained silent for a minute as a tribute to this great man’s contribution that spurred a new era of communication.

THE TELEPHONE

Telephone, the device, that played a vital role in turning the world in a 'global village' is not just an instrument, but a revolution in itself. The invention of telephone makes an interesting reading. It enables people to talk to each other over great distances by means of electricity. It was mankind’s dream realized by Alexander Graham Bell.

It was Robert Hooke who first suggested the model of string telephone in 1667. Two persons connected by a light piece of string having a tin at each end, and were able to send verbal messages over it. However, it was not a very practical device and didn’t work over long distances. The device, suggested by Robert Hooke, was working on this principle – When you speak, the vocal chords in your throat vibrate. This causes tiny changes in the air pressure, and sound waves radiate from your mouth. When you listen to someone, the sound waves coming from the person’s mouth enter your ear. The small pressure changes are converted into nerve signals, which are sent to your brain. But air does not transmit sound waves very well over a distance. So some other alternative was needed.

In order to find out such alternative, two Americans working independently of each other, invented telephones at the same time. We know Alexander Graham Bell as the inventor of the telephone because he got to the Patent Office a few hours before Elisha Gray, the other inventor, on February 14, 1876.

Bell brought together the work of several scientists to invent the telephone. His telephone was based on electromagnets. He used two of them joined together by two wires. This worked, but not efficiently. However, it was the discovery of the carbon microphone that ensured the early success of the telephone. Bell’s telephone was working on this principle - When you speak into the microphone of the telephone, the sound waves from your mouth make the diaphragm vibrate. The diaphragm presses on to carbon granules and this affects the electric current that flows through them. The microphone converts the sound waves into the electric current. This electric current is fed down a pair of wires to the receiving telephone. Here, the fluctuating current passes through the coil of wire and makes the diaphragm vibrate. This reproduces the sound waves, which entered the microphone. Thus, enabling the messenger and the recipient to communicate through this device.

The first telephone systems had no telephone exchange. Like some small internal office telephone systems today, wires to every other telephone connected each telephone in the system. For example, in a network of 50 telephones, each one had to have 49 pairs of wires connected to it, each with a switch. A much simpler arrangement was to link each telephone by a single pair of wires to a central exchange where all the switching took place. In most early telephone exchanges, operators made the connections by plugging wires into numbered sockets in a switchboard.

Bell promoted his telephone very enthusiastically. He demonstrated his wonderful device all over America and also in England. Due to Bell’s efforts, the development of the telephone was rapid in America. However, in those days, in the countries like England and France, people were not so enthusiastic about the telephone. They preferred usage of messenger boys. One of the reasons being sound quality of the early telephone being poor and it failed working over long distances. Another factor was that it was very expensive. In 1878, the cost of connecting two offices with telephones was more than a year’s wages for a servant. At that time, a lot of money had been invested in the Telegraph system. So the investors did not want to encourage something, which would affect their business. Since the telephone was to carry speech, it had to be of a higher quality than telegraph lines. Telephones had to be connected by pairs of copper wires. These wires were carried overhead from pole to pole. But there was a possible danger of natural factors like gales, thunderstorm and freezing of wires due to snow. The best solution was underground wiring (cabling), but it was very expensive. This problem was solved gradually with the development of modern communication technology.

Another limitation of the system was that the telephone just linked two houses or offices, together. There was no alternative of connecting one pair of telephones to the other pair. Obviously, this was inconvenient. So very quickly, exchanges were built and installed to enable this to happen. The first exchanges were called Manual Exchanges that were operated by the people called Operators. The first Automatic Exchange was patented in 1891, following Manual Exchanges. It was called ‘Strowger Exchange’ and was named after its inventor Almon B. Strowger.

Today, there are over two hundred million telephones in use throughout the world. Anybody can talk to anyone, whether he is in the next street, the next city, next country or half–way round the globe. In some cases, a user may have to ask a telephone operator in his local telephone exchange to connect the call for him. But more and more calls can now be connected automatically. The caller signaling the telephone number he wants to get in touch through his telephone dialed is the required telephone number. Some of the latest telephones called videophones have a small display screen so that the callers can see each other as they talk. Now a days, the advanced technology Cellular Telephones have transformed the living standards of the world.

PASSION FOR DEAF

With Alexander Graham Bell, the humanitarian came before the inventor. His most experiments were undertaken with the aim of providing employment in a hard world. Behind his efforts to improve the communication field, there was Graham’s warm desire to decrease the distances among the world communities. It is perhaps as an advocate for the deaf that Graham made his most profound impact. Every deaf child who appealed to him found an open heart and a supporting hand. He was a child of a deaf mother. In his youth he found the same physical disability in Mabel, one of his pupils, yet he accepted her as his wife and remained loyal to her throughout his life. He considered himself above all a ‘Teacher of the deaf’ to the end of his life. One of his most famous students was Helen Keller, who came to him as a child unable to see, hear and speak. She later said, "You have always shown a father’s joy in my success and a father’s tenderness when things have not gone right." Admiring Graham, she said that he dedicated his life to the penetration of that inhuman silence that separates and estranges. In early 1887, Helen Keller's father brought her to the attention of Alexander Graham Bell who apart from being an inventor of the telephone was a teacher and advocate of the deaf. Bell recommended Keller to the Perkins Institute, stating that she was certainly capable of being taught. There she began a lifelong association with teacher Annie Sullivan (1866-1936), who, in less than three weeks, used finger spelling to communicate with Keller by manually pressing the alphabet onto the child's palm. This enabled Keller to make her famous breakthrough in understanding, realizing the simple but profound notion that people and things had names. Keller called this awakening her "soul's birthday," and attributed its occurrence to Bell, whom she later described as "the door through which I should pass from darkness into light."

Significantly, it was also Bell who encouraged Keller to attend a regular school, thus permitting her eventually to graduate cum laude from Radcliffe College in 1904. All her life she remained a grateful, close friend of Bell, visiting his home and family, and in one case even dedicating an intensely descriptive poem to her kind and loving mentor. Bell also had taken early note of Keller's "marvelous knowledge of language" and believed she had a future in literature. Many called Keller's achievements a miracle, but Bell, ever the scientist, insisted that Sullivan's success with the child was not supernatural but rather a brilliantly successful experiment.