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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."
Bell's
willingness to search out the path less taken resulted in some of
the world's most important inventions. It has been said that Bell
invented the telephone by searching for it in places where other
inventors would never think to look. Bell's ability to believe in
the impossible has served the world well. |
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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. |
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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.
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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." http://www.digitaloutrider.com
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