The Greatest Individual

To most the name Alexander Graham Bell brings about thoughts of the telephone. What most don’t realize is that he did much more than just invent the telephone. Alexander Graham Bell was a inventor, scientist, tinkerer, engineer, and honorary chief of a Mohawk tribe.

Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on March 1847 to Professor Alexander Melville Bell and Eliza Grace. He had two brothers, Melville James Bell and Edward Charles Bell, who both died of Tuberculosis. He was educated at Edinburgh high school and Edinburgh University. He also received special training in removing speech impediments from his father who was an Elocutionist. Even as a child, Bell had a nack for tinkering and inventing. His first invention was a simple dehusking machine to help a childhood friend, which he made at the age of 12.

When Bell was 16, he began his first experiments with sound. Bell’s father encouraged his boy’s interest in speech and took them to see a “mechanical man” which could simulate a human voice. The boys were intrigued by the idea, so they obtained a copy of developer’s book and set out to build their own. Once finished, after adjusting the so called lips and blowing air through the windpipe, they could make the figure say ‘mama.’ This first experiment led him to take up his first serious work on the transmission of sound using tuning forks. He wrote a report on his work and sent it to a colleague of his father, only to find out that the work has already been done by a German. Bell quickly found his book and after translating it, came to the conclusion that, “Without knowing much about the subject, it seemed to me that if vowel sounds could be produced by electrical means so could consonants, so could articulate speech.” Bell moved to the United States with his father to introduce his father’s system of deaf mute instruction and became professor of vocal physiology at Boston University. In between teaching classes and tutoring pupils, he found very little time to continue his experiments and generally ended up staying all night experimenting. Deciding to concentrate on his experiments, he quit his job. After beginning experiments with the “phonautograph,” Bell met up with two wealthy patrons, who after learning that Bell was working on a way of sending multiple tones on a telegraph wire, they decided to finance his experiments. His patrons also had an attorney that would take care of any pattent matters. After realizing how close he was to a great invention, he discovered that he did not have the necessary knowledge to complete it. With the financial support of his patrons, Bell was able to hire Thomas Watson as his assistant. With his newfound assistant Bell was able to experiment with acoustic telegraphy, soon being able to pluck a reed on one end and being able to hear the overtone on the other. This little discovery led Bell to believe that only one reed was necessary for acoustic transmission, leading to the “gallows sound powered telephone.” A year later, Bell was able to get his telephone to work using a liquid transmitter. 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, in the other room heard the words clearly. Bell continued his experiments to test how distances would effect transmission of sounds, to prove that even with a make shift wire, it could be done. Bell began to demonstrate his invention, and only one day after a demonstration of an early prototype, it made a worldwide headline. In 1877, the Bell Telephone Company was created and by 1886, 150,000 people in the US had a telephone.

Bell’s interest in experimentation did not vanish with the invention of the telephone. He continued to experiment in any and every field. The range of his later experiments can be guaged by the patents he received for his inventions which included 5 for aerial vehicles, 4 for hydroairplanes and 2 for selenium cells, just to name a few. Two of his greatest later inventions were the metal detector and hydrofoils. Some say Bell was the inventor of the metal detector in that he created a crude one to find the bullet in body of President Garfield.

Telephones and metal detectors. What would we do without Alexander Bell? Without his invention, we wouldn’t have our ever so precious cellphones that most say they cannot live without. Also there would be no stereotypical creepy old man on the beach with a metal detector, and what would the beach be without that guy? All in all, when it comes down to it, I think that the telephone beats great music or theories or any of that, and I think you should too.

Places where I obtained information about the greatest individual EVER:

http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bltelephone2.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Graham_Bell

http://www.alexandergrahambell.org/

I obtained the pictures from wikipedia and alexandergrahambell.org

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 7th, 2009 at 9:11 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.