how did alexander graham bell invent the telephone

When we think of an inventor, we often think of someone with a singular passion for whatever it is that they're . Likewise, hashtags derive a kind of new road map of ideas and subjects, just like those early telegraph wires upon which the inventor of the telephone placed his first calls. Bell was later awarded the AIEE's Edison Medal in 1914 "For meritorious achievement in the invention of the telephone".[214]. One of Bells students was Mabel Hubbard, daughter of Gardiner Greene Hubbard, a founder of the Clarke School. The story of Alexander Graham Bell and Canada's greatest invention is told in one teen pop song. Bell's father taught him and his brothers not only to write Visible Speech but to identify any symbol and its accompanying sound. He did experimental work on aeronautics and hydrofoils. Alexander (Graham was not added until he was 11) was born to Alexander Melville Bell and Eliza Grace Symonds. [32] After he taught it to growl continuously, Bell would reach into its mouth and manipulate the dog's lips and vocal cords to produce a crude-sounding "Ow ah oo ga ma ma". In 1936, the US Patent Office declared Bell first on its list of the country's greatest inventors,[217] leading to the US Post Office issuing a commemorative stamp honoring Bell in 1940 as part of its 'Famous Americans Series'. His dedication and eagerness to create would eventually make him one of the defining inventors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1870 Bell and his family emigrated to Canada. The Bell Telephone Company quickly established a commercial infrastructure that could support the booming demand. At the age of 12, Bell built a homemade device that combined rotating paddles with sets of nail brushes, creating a simple dehusking machine that was put into operation at the mill and used steadily for a number of years. Alexander Graham Bell certainly invented other things besides the telephone. Encouraged by his father, young Bell attempted to make working models of ears and vocal cords, aiming to create a mechanical speech device. Although the trio briefly experimented with the concept, they could not develop a workable prototype. Baldwin described it as being as smooth as flying. [140], Bell was a British subject throughout his early life in Scotland and later in Canada until 1882 when he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Alexander Graham Bell was a Scottish-born scientist and inventor best known for inventing the first working telephone in 1876 and founding the Bell Telephone Company in 1877. Alexander Graham Bell Invented the Photophone - America's Library Alexander Graham Bell ( / re.m /, born Alexander Bell; March 3, 1847 - August 2, 1922) [4] was a Scottish-born [N 1] inventor, scientist and engineer who is credited with patenting the first practical telephone. [92], The question of priority for the variable resistance feature of the telephone was raised by the examiner before he approved Bell's patent application. The word "hello," it appears, came straight from the fertile brain of the wizard of Menlo Park, N.J., who . Alexander Graham Bell was born into a family that was preoccupied with sound. The dictionary says it was Thomas Edison who put hello into common usage. In 1867, Bell and his family moved to London so that he and his remaining brother could study at better schools. But the technology was limited in its capacity because it could transmit only one message at a time. [128][N 17]. In a magazine interview published shortly before his death, he reflected on the possibility of using solar panels to heat houses. This effect was of great importance to Alexander Graham Bells telephone idea. [163] 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. 1876 1876 [N 22][N 23] 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). Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone - HISTORY Mabel and Bell mobilized the community to help victims in Halifax. Two days later, Bell described what happened in his laboratory notebook: I then shouted into M [the mouthpiece] the following sentence: Mr Watson come here I want to see you. "To my delight he came and declared that he had heard and understood what I said. To help celebrate his life, his wife asked guests not to wear black (the traditional funeral color) while attending his service, during which soloist Jean MacDonald sang a verse of Robert Louis Stevenson's "Requiem":[191]. Despite having the patent, Bell did not have a fully functioning instrument. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. In his final, and some of his most productive years, Bell split his residency between Washington, D.C., where he and his family initially resided for most of the year, and Beinn Bhreagh, where they spent increasing amounts of time. [189][203][204][205][206][207] Among the luminaries who judged were Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas, fils. A top speed of 54 miles per hour (87km/h) was achieved, with the hydrofoil exhibiting rapid acceleration, good stability, and steering, along with the ability to take waves without difficulty. Bell's coffin was constructed of Beinn Bhreagh pine by his laboratory staff, lined with the same red silk fabric used in his tetrahedral kite experiments. The March 1906 Scientific American article by American pioneer William E. Meacham explained the basic principle of hydrofoils and hydroplanes. On March 10th, 1876, his invention worked: the first telephone! Why did Alexander Graham Bell invent the telephone? - Quora [146][193], Alexander Graham Bell was buried atop Beinn Bhreagh mountain, on his estate where he had resided increasingly for the last 35 years of his life, overlooking Bras d'Or Lake. Canada's first telephone company building, the "Henderson Home" of the late 1870s, a predecessor of the. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone during the industrial revolution in 1876 at the age of 29. [185] His last view of the land he had inhabited was by moonlight on his mountain estate at 2:00a.m.[N 25][188][N 26] While tending to him after his long illness, Mabel, his wife, whispered, "Don't leave me." In 1868 Joseph Stearns had invented the duplex, a system that transmitted two messages simultaneously over a single wire. Lewis Howard Latimer - Biography, Inventor, Draftsman Prior to perfecting the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell invented and demonstrated the harmonic telegraph at the Centennial Exposition of 1876, held in Philadelphia's Fairmount Park. Alexander Began to test out new ideas through a long life. [116][117] By the time that the trial wound its way through nine years of legal battles, the U.S. prosecuting attorney had died and the two Bell patents (No. [16][N 4] For his 11th birthday, his father acquiesced and allowed him to adopt the name "Graham", chosen out of respect for Alexander Graham, a Canadian being treated by his father who had become a family friend. [48][N 7], At the homestead, Bell set up his own workshop in the converted carriage house near to what he called his "dreaming place",[50] a large hollow nestled in trees at the back of the property above the river. While Bell is best known as one of the inventors of the telephone, he had a deep knowledge of the science of sound and made important contributions to the detection of hearing loss. [110], As is sometimes common in scientific discoveries, simultaneous developments can occur, as evidenced by a number of inventors who were at work on the telephone. In later years, Bell described the invention of the telephone and linked it to his "dreaming place". [183] A summary of the event notes that Bell was a "pioneering investigator in the field of human heredity". [173] On his estate in Nova Scotia, Bell conducted meticulously recorded breeding experiments with rams and ewes. While Italian innovator Antonio Meucci (pictured at left) is credited with inventing the first basic phone in 1849, and Frenchman Charles Bourseul devised a phone in 1854, Alexander Graham Bell won the first U.S. patent for the device in 1876. They had rides in the Forlanini hydrofoil boat over Lake Maggiore. Although his invention rendered him independently wealthy, he sold off most of his stock holdings in the company early and did not profit as much as he might have had he retained his shares. In 1915, he characterized his status as: "I am not one of those hyphenated Americans who claim allegiance to two countries. In inventing the phonautograph, Bell had essentially recreated the human ear. In the bedroom, his assistant Watson waited with a reed receiver pressed against his ear. Although Edison had invented the phonograph in 1877, he soon turned his attention to other technologies, especially electric power and lighting, and his machine, which recorded and reproduced sound on a rotating cylinder wrapped in tinfoil, remained an unreliable and cumbersome device. [23] Bell's preoccupation with his mother's deafness led him to study acoustics. Portrait of Alexander Graham Bell (1915)LIFE Photo Collection. Alexander Graham Bell plaque (1847)National Museums Scotland. But while Bell encountered failure in his long career, it did not stop him from exploring new ideas. SCIENTISTS (1847-1922); SCOTLAND For most people, the name Alexander Graham Bell conjures up the man who helped invent the telephone in 1876. The Influence of Alexander Graham Bell | Gallaudet University [94], On March 10, 1876, Bell used "the instrument" in Boston to call Thomas Watson who was in another room but out of earshot. He contributed most of his life to making hearing aids for people with hearing disabilities, for them to communicate better. [7], Bell's father, grandfather, and brother had all been associated with work on elocution and speech, and both his mother and wife were deaf; profoundly influencing Bell's life's work. The following year, Bell bought 50 acres of land near the village of Baddeck on Cape Breton Island and began constructing an estate he called Beinn Bhreagh, Scots Gaelic for Beautiful Mountain. The Scottish-born inventor had been an American citizen since 1882, but the Canadian estate became the familys summer retreat and later permanent home. 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. Meucci was not involved in the final trial. The illustrations on the reverse of the note include Bell's face in profile, his signature, and objects from Bell's life and career: users of the telephone over the ages; an audio wave signal; a diagram of a telephone receiver; geometric shapes from engineering structures; representations of sign language and the phonetic alphabet; the geese which helped him to understand flight; and the sheep which he studied to understand genetics. The next step would be to find investors. Wilber also claimed (after Bell arrived in Washington D.C. from Boston) that he showed Gray's caveat to Bell and that Bell paid him $100 (equivalent to $2,500 in 2021). [citation needed], Bell's own home used a primitive form of air conditioning, in which fans blew currents of air across great blocks of ice. Sure enough, the U.S. government decided to weigh in and brought fraud charges against Alexander Graham Bell. June 3, 1880. The invention of the telephone - Ericsson Dr. Bell, the veteran inventor of the telephone, was in New York, and Mr. Watson, his former associate, was on the other side of the continent. [84], Meanwhile, Elisha Gray was also experimenting with acoustic telegraphy and thought of a way to transmit speech using a water transmitter. Best of Philly. This was a method of transmitting sound in a beam of light using a light sensitive selenium cell to translate the light density into electric signals. Ahoy! Alexander Graham Bell and the first telephone call You probably learned in school that it was Alexander Graham Bell who invented the telephone. [172], Bell, along with many members of the scientific community at the time, took an interest in the popular science of heredity which grew out of the publication of Charles Darwin's book On the Origin of Species in 1859. [20] In return, Ben's father John Herdman gave both boys the run of a small workshop in which to "invent".[20]. On the day of his funeral the telephone systems in the US and Canada were silenced for one minute. Birth Country: United States. 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. [222] Bell's name is still widely known and used as part of the names of dozens of educational institutes, corporate namesakes, street and place names around the world. Thus, by the mid-1880s his role in the telephone industry was marginal. Alexander Graham Bells telephone invention amazed visitors at The Centennial International Exhibition of 1876. Bell decided that a promising approach was to use an induction balance, a by-product of his research on canceling out electrical interference on telephone wires. On June 2, 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. The vibrations were then converted into an electric current which traveled along the wire to the receiver. He wanted to use this to help teach deaf people, who had never heard spoken words, to speak. During this period, he alternated between Boston and Brantford, spending summers in his Canadian home. His mother and his wife were both deaf, and he was devoted to the cause of helping the deaf community. 1 2 The first telephone had two parts: a transmitter and a receiver. Bell was fascinated by the machine and after he obtained a copy of von Kempelen's book, published in German, and had laboriously translated it, he and his older brother Melville built their own automaton head. In 1892, he made the ceremonial call to open long distance telephone service between New York and Chicago, and in 1915 the call to open service between New York and San Francisco. Bell's success was due to his sound experiments, as well as his family's desire to assist the deaf in communicating. How did Alexander Graham Bell's telephone impact society? On March 3, 1847, Alexander Graham Bell was born, the man who is credited in popular culture with the invention of the first working telephone. Thomas Edison invented the carbon microphone which produced a strong telephone signal. In September 1885 the Bell family vacationed in Nova Scotia, Canada, and immediately fell in love with the climate and landscape. Devoted to the Deaf, Did Alexander Graham Bell Do More Harm Than Good A copy of a draft of the patent application is shown, described as "probably the most valuable patent ever.". Each pupil would play an important role in the next developments. His best friend was Ben Herdman, a neighbour whose family operated a flour mill. Bell continued to work with his invention after he formed Bell Telephone Co on July 9, 1877. After the First World War, work began again on the HD-4. Bell Company engineers made numerous other improvements to the telephone, which emerged as one of the most successful products ever. Bell understood that if sound could be transmitted as an electrical current, it would be possible for a receiver to interpret those vibrations. [211] The laboratory was also the site where he and his associate invented his "proudest achievement", "the photophone", the "optical telephone" which presaged fibre optical telecommunications while the Volta Bureau would later evolve into the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (the AG Bell), a leading center for the research and pedagogy of deafness. Yesterday afternoon [on January 25, 1915], the same two men talked by telephone to each other over a 3,400-mile wire between New York and San Francisco. On 10 March 1876, the first intelligible telephone communication was made. However, there was no way to transmit a person's voice through a telegram. 2 However, a chance meeting in 1874 between Bell and Thomas A. Watson, an experienced electrical designer and mechanic at the electrical machine shop of Charles Williams, changed all that. [106] She later asked to buy the equipment that was used, but Bell offered to make "a set of telephones" specifically for her. Alexander Graham Bell 's Telephone Invention In 1876, Watson plucked a spring in one room, and the sound came through on a receiver in the other. "[141][pageneeded][142] Despite this declaration, Bell has been proudly claimed as a "native son" by all three countries he resided in: the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. On 14 February 1876, sensing the danger of rival developments for this valuable invention, Bells future father-in-law, Gardiner Hubbard, filed a patent application for Improvements in Telegraphy. History Through Deaf Eyes - The Influence of Alexander Graham Bell. His wedding present to his bride was to turn over 1,487 of his 1,497 shares in the newly formed Bell Telephone Company. (Photos by AP) Article. 4041 (image 22)", "Alexander Graham Bell 18471922 Inventor of the Bell System", "Invention of the Telephone National Historic Event", "Inventing the TelephoneAnd Triggering All-Out Patent War", "Bell's centennial telephone transmitter, 1876", "140 Years Since the First Telephone Call to Queen Victoria on the Isle of Wight", "Alexander Graham Bell demonstrates the newly invented telephone", "pdf, Letter from Alexander Graham Bell to Sir Thomas Biddulph, February 1, 1878", "United States V. American Bell Telephone Co., 128 U.S. 315 (1888)", Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, "Antonio Meucci Questions and Answers: What did Meucci to bring his invention to the public?