The Inventor

Alexander Graham Bell once summed up his approach to life and invention:
"Leave the beaten track occasionally and dive into the woods. Every time you do so you will be certain to find something that you have never seen before. Follow it up, explore all around it, and before you know it, you will have something worth thinking about to occupy your mind. All really big discoveries are the results of thought."

Telephone Introduction

Sunday, June 25, 1876, was the day of the Battle of the Little Big Horn, or Custer's Last Stand. Far away, in Philadephia, it was also the day when Bell demonstrated his new invention at the Centennial Exhibition. The Exhibition was organized to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The telephone was its star attraction.Having entered at the last moment, Bell failed to obtain a booth in the electrical section. Instead, he was located far away, in a corner of the educational exhibit. It was a hot day and the judges did not relish the long trip down the corridor and up a flight of stairs.
Their fatigue vanished with the first words that came crackling over the telephone wire. Pandemonium broke out as these distinguished scientists raced to see if Bell's voice in another room had indeed produced the sounds. Kings and ordinary citizens alike sat transfixed before this new wonder. Bell himself had no doubts about the importance of his new discovery. Shortly after the telephone's invention, he had written to his father, "The day is coming when telegraph wires will be laid on to houses just like water or gas -- and friends will converse with each other without leaving home."
For Alexander Graham Bell, it was the first of many glimpses into the world of the future.

Early Telephone

In retrospect, every step on the path of Bell's early life seemed a step closer to the telephone. Young Aleck Bell was born into a family of learning and scholastic achievement. The whole family was enthralled with the idea of sound and its possibilities. Aleck's grandfather, Alexander Bell, was an eminent elocutionist. His father Melville developed the first international phonetic alphabet. Not surprisingly, young Aleck's first memory was of sitting in a wheatfield, trying to hear the wheat grow.
Aleck's mother, Eliza Bell, was almost totally deaf. Aleck soon discovered that by pressing his lips against his mother's forehead, he could make the bones resonate to his voice. His mother became the first person to have her world expanded by the genius of Alexander Graham Bell.
Aleck was a gifted pianist, who learned early to descriminate pitch. As a teenager, he noticed that a chord struck on one piano would be echoed by a piano in another room. He realized that whole chords could be transmitted through the air, vibrating at the other end at exactly the same pitch. In the years to come, this simple observation would eventually lead him to the telephone.
Aleck also benefitted from his father's special qualities as a teacher . Melville Bell encouraged his sons Melly and Aleck to build a speaking machine. Thereafter, visitors to the Bell home were surprised to hear the sound "ma ma" emanating from the upper floors. There were no babies in the Bell household.

Telephone

Alexander Graham Bell never set out to invent the telephone. Initially, he wanted to develop a multiple telegraph. Only later did he realize that a far greater prize lay at the end of the road.
In telegraphy, a current is interrupted in the pattern known as Morse Code. Bell hoped to convey several messages simultaneously, each at a different pitch. However, he could not see a way to make-and-break the current at the precise pitch required. "How," he wondered, "could pitch be conveyed along a wire?
Bell knew that speech was composed of many complex sound vibrations. While on vacation in Brantford, Ontario, in 1874, he constructed an "ear phonoautograph" from a stalk of hay and a dead man's ear. When Bell spoke into the ear, the hay traced the sound waves on a piece of smoked glass.
Bell began to wonder whether this wave could be converted into an electrical transmission. Suddenly, all his work with pitch, electricity and speaking machines "fused" in one sudden flash of inspiration. The sound waves, he realized, could be reproduced in a continuous, but undulating, current. This current was the missing link to the telephone.
At this early point, Bell conceived the instrument as a series of reeds arranged over a long magnet. As each reed responded to the voice, it would vibrate alternately toward and away from the magnet, creating the undulating current.  
This "harp apparatus" (as Bell called it) was not the telephone. He did not yet realize that a single reed could convey all the elements of human speech. The breakthrough came one day in June, in 1875. Bell asked Thomas Watson to pluck a steel receiver reed with his finger to make sure it was not stuck. When Watson vibrated the reed, the receiver in Bell's room also vibrated, even though the current was turned off. Bell realized that the vibration had generated an undulating current, solely on the strength of a slight magnetic field. In that moment, the telephone was born.
The telephone patent was one of the most valuable ever issued. Bell received it on March 7, 1876, four days after his 29th birthday. Speech, however, had not yet been transmitted. That would occur five days later, on March 12, when Watson heard the famous words, "Mr. Watson -- Come here -- I want to see you."
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