FREE ESSAY ON THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE MAN WHO INVENTED THE TELEPHONE

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE MAN WHO INVENTED THE TELEPHONE

Alexander Graham Bell
(1847-1922)
Alexander Graham Bell is remembered today as the inventor of the telephone, but he was
also an outstanding teacher of the deaf and a prolific inventor of other devices. Bell
was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, to a family of speech educators. His father, Melville
Bell, had invented Visible Speech, a code of symbols for all spoken sounds that was used
in teaching deaf people to speak. Aleck Bell studied at Edinburgh University in 1864 and
assisted his father at University College, London, from 1868-70. During these years he
became deeply interested in the study of sound and the mechanics of speech, inspired in
part by the acoustic experiments of German physicist Hermann Von Helmholtz (1821-1894),
which gave Bell the idea of telegraphing speech.
When young Bell's two brothers died of tuberculosis, Melville Bell took his remaining
family to the healthier climate of Canada in 1870. From there, Aleck Bell journeyed to
Boston, Massachusetts, in 1871 and joined the staff of the Boston School for the Deaf.
The following year, Bell opened his own school in Boston for training teachers of the
deaf; in 1873 he became a professor of vocal physiology at Boston University, and he also
tutored private pupils. Bell's interest in speech and communication led him to
investigate the transmission of sound over wires. In particular, he experimented with
development of the harmonic telegraph --a device that could send multiple messages at the
same time over a single wire. Bell also worked with the possibility of transmitting the
human voice, experimenting with vibrating membranes and an actual human ear. Gardiner
Hubbard (1822-1897) and Thomas Sanders, fathers of two of his deaf pupils backed Bell
financially in his investigations.
Early in 1874, Bell met Thomas A. Watson (1854-1934), a young machinist at a Boston
electrical shop. Watson became Bell's indispensable assistant, bringing to Bell's
experiments the crucial ingredient that had been lacking--his technical expertise in
electrical engineering. Together the two men spent endless hours experimenting. Although
Bell formed the basic concept of the telephone--using a varying but unbroken electric
current to transmit the varying sound waves of human speech--in the summer of 1874,
Hubbard insisted that the young inventor focus his efforts on the harmonic telegraph
instead. Bell complied, but when he patented one of his telegraph designs in February
1875, he found that Elisha Gray had patented a multiple telegraph two days earlier.
Greatly discouraged, Bell consulted in Washington with the elderly Joseph Henry, who
urged Bell to pursue his germ of a great invention --speech transmission.
Back in Boston, Bell and Watson continued to work on the harmonic telegraph, but still
with the telephone in mind. By accident on a June day in 1875, an intermittent
transmitter produced a steady current and transmitted sound. Bell had proof of his 1874
idea; he quickly sketched a design for an electric telephone, and Watson built it. The
partners experimented all summer, but failed actually to transmit voice sounds. That
fall, Bell began to write the patent specifications, but delayed application; Hubbard
finally filed for the patent on February 14, 1876, just hours before Gray appeared at the
same patent office to file an intent to patent his telephone design. Bell's patent was
granted on March 7, 1876, and on March 10, the first message transmitted by telephone
passed from Bell to Watson in their workshop: Mr. Watson, come here, I want you! 
After a year of refining the new device, Watson and Bell, along with Hubbard and Sanders,
formed the Bell Telephone Company in 1877. Bell immediately married Mabel Hubbard,
daughter of his new partner, and sailed to England to promote his telephone. The phone
company grew rapidly, and Bell became a wealthy man. He turned to other interests on his
return to the United States in 1879, while also defending his patents (which were upheld
in 1888) against numerous lawsuits.
With money from the Volta Prize, awarded to him in 1880 by the French government, Bell
established the Volta Laboratory. Among the new devices he invented there were the
graphophone for recording sound on wax cylinders or disks; the photophone, for
transmitting speech on a beam of light; an audiometer; a telephone probe, used in surgery
until the discovery of the X-ray; and an induction balance for detecting metal within the
human body. Bell founded several organizations to support teaching of the deaf. He helped
to establish Science magazine and the National Geographic Society. He also worked on air
conditioning, an improved strain of sheep (to bear multiple lambs), an early iron lung,
solar distillation of water, and sonar detection of icebergs. The possibility of flight
fascinated Bell. He built tetrahedral kites capable of carrying a human being. He
supported Samuel Langley's pioneering experiments in aviation, and helped found the
Aerial Experiment Association in 1907. He also designed a hydrofoil boat that set the
world water-speed record in 1918.
Alexander Graham Bell was a man of warmth and human frailty, loved by his wife, children,
and grandchildren. His life did seem to demonstrate the oneness of the world. He was
lionized in society, cheered at exhibitions, applauded at scientific meetings, and sought
out by reporters. He and his wife united two numerous and close-knit families. Children,
especially those of his own extended family, loved him. His marriage was a model of
devotion throughout its forty-five years. He was nominally a member of more clubs and
other organizations than he could recall at any given moment, and he was active in a
number of them. In addition, for many years he presided over brilliant salon of
Washington scientist and men affairs. Yet his son-in-law David Fairchild said of him,
"Mr. Bell led a particularly isolated life; I have never known anyone who spent so much
of his time alone." Fairchild meant that literally. Bell worked through most of the night
and slept through most of the morning. He purposefully limited social activity during his
summers in Nova Scotia. For more than a quarter century he spent weekends in the total
seclusion of his household. From his boyhood, he had tended to be aloof and solitary. He
himself wrote in 1984, "I somehow or other appear to be more interested in things than
people-in people wholesale, rather than in persons individual." He not only recognized
"the tendency to retire into myself and be alone with my thoughts," but he also struggled
against it, with the help of his wife. Perhaps that lifelong struggle explains in part
the intensity of his dedication to bringing "he human family in closer touch." As for his
own family, what else could he say other that he loved it. Since childhood, he and his
family always were together through happy and hard times. His love for his family showed
when he decided to move them to a much healthier climate in Canada after his brother had
died. 
The times Bell lived in could be highlighted as the Industrial Revolution (1830-1914),
American Civil War (1861-1865), and World War I (1914-1918). 
At the time of Bell's birth James K. Polk was president of the United States; More than
200,000 emigres left Ireland; most headed for United States; The American Medical
Association was founded; and the first U.S. postage stamps were sold to the public. At
the time of Bell's death Warren G. Harding was president of the United States; the
Abraham Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. was dedicated; the Harlem Renaissance began;
Reader's Digest began publication; and Russian airline Aeroflot began operations.
Throughout his life the first transatlantic cable exchanged between Britain and the
United States (1858); Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation (1863); San
Francisco's cable streetcar system began service (1873); Kentucky Derby was run for first
time (1875); the first telephone switchboard installed in Boston (1877); Boston Pops were
founded (1885); George Eastman introduced Kodak camera (1888); Sitting Bull killed for
performing outlawed Ghost Dance ritual (1890); Edward Kleinschmidt invented teletype
machine (1914).
This is an excellent book for anyone wanting to learn about the life of the man who
invented the telephone. The author of this book covers everything from his most glorious
moments to the sad and melancholy ones. I believe the book can not be a better summary of
his life, but than the man himself talking, and without doubt tells his life and times
exactly has they really were. To me Alexander Graham Bell worked his whole life on things
that interested him, things that brought attention to him. He was always willing to try
out an idea no matter how farfetched. He didn't do as well as we might think in school,
because of the fact that he literally did what he wanted to do. This upheld throughout
his life. I believe that it was his pursuit to the ideas he liked which led him
unconsciously to his utter absorption in it to the exclusion of all else, and to the
extraordinary inventions he conceived. Moreover, in fact, for all the seeming disparity
of his interests, there was a basic unity in their tendency: that of furthering
communication and human togetherness. 
Bell's most famous invention, the telephone, transformed the culture, social fabric, and
economy of the United States and, eventually, the world. The importance of what he
conceived and brought to birth is visible, or rather audible, every day and everywhere.
His simple device for transmuting sound into electrical impulses, sending those impulses
almost simultaneously over great distances, and transforming them back into the original
sound, has given speech and music limitless range, encompassing not only the world but
also the solar system. The story of Alexander Graham Bell therefore deserves the
attention of anyone who wants to understand the making of the world we now live in.
Bell's telephone and photophone, his improvements in the phonograph, and the lifelong
campaign to teach the deaf lip-reading and speech extended the ease and scope of
communication. His work in aeronautics and hydrofoil boats expedited travel. His role in
promoting the Montessori educational system, the National Geographic Magazine, and the
journal Science helped to spread knowledge. On the occasion of Bell's death, his rival
and later friend Thomas Edison praised him for having "brought the human family closer in
touch." Though Edison had only the telephone in mind, the thought characterized Bell's
whole range of achievements. Bell's humane nature was manifest in his opposition to
racism and xenophobia, his contributions to the medical technology, and most of all his
dedication to helping the deaf. In addition, the gallantry of his long battle against
disappointments to make his life after the telephone something more than a long
anticlimax enlists our sympathy and admiration.
"Bell, Alexander Graham." Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia. 1995 ed.
Burlingame, Roger. Out of Silence, the Life of Alexander Graham Bell. 1964 The Macmillan
Company, New York, New York.
Davidson, Margaret. The Story of Alexander Graham Bell, Inventor of the Telephone.
October 1989 Parachute Press, Inc., New York, New
York.
Grosvenor, Edwin S. and Wesson, Morgan. Alexander Graham Bell, the Life and Times of the
Man Who Invented the Telephone. 1997 Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, New York.
Lewis, Cynthia Copeland. Hello, Alexander Graham Bell Speaking. 1991 Dillon Press, Inc.,
Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Montgomery, Elizabeth Rider. Alexander Graham Bell. 1963 Garrard Publishing Company,
Champaign, Illinois.
Pasachoff, Naomi. Alexander Graham Bell, Making Connections. 1996 Oxford University
Press, Inc., New York, New York.
Pelta, Kathy. Alexander Graham Bell. 1989 Silver Burdett Press, Inc., Englewood Cliffs,
New Jersey.
St. George, Judith. Dear Dr. Bell...Your Friend Helen Keller. 1992 The Putnam & Grosset
Group, New York, New York.
Tames, Richard. Alexander Graham Bell. 1990 Franklin Watts, Inc., New York, New York.