Speaking of Alexander Bell, I believe everyone will not be unfamiliar.
As the “father of telephone”, he has made great contributions to the cause of human communication. His invention has affected the direction of history and changed the lives of each of us.
However, you may not know that besides the telephone, this great inventor has many outstanding achievements.
such as:
- He is a widely acclaimed expert in education for the deaf;
- He is one of the founders of National Geographic and Science;
- He is a close friend of the famous writer Helen Keller and once provided important help to him;
- He invented probes for medical treatment and early “artificial respirators”;
- He has participated in major improvements to the phonograph;
- He is the founder of the famous Volta Lab;
- He is the founder of AT&T, one of the greatest technology companies in the 20th century;
- He is a fan of spaceflight and navigation, and invented a hydrofoil with a speed of 114 kilometers per hour;
…
These achievements were concealed by the light of the telephone, so that they were ignored by future generations.
Today, Mr. Xiaozao uses this article to lead everyone to re-recognize this legend in the scientific world-Alexander Graham Bell (Alexander Graham Bell).
Alexander Bell
▉ Part.1 Growth stage
On March 3, 1847, Alexander Bell was born in an educated family in Edinburgh, Scotland.
His grandfather’s name is also Alexander Bell. In the early days, he loved theatrical performances and performed everywhere, but he was not famous. Later, with his performance experience, his grandfather began to work in language and eloquence education, including education for the deaf and dumb.
Bell’s father was named Alexander Melville Bell (Alexander Melville Bell), who inherited Bell’s grandfather’s business and became an expert in the field of education for the deaf.
Bell’s mother was Eliza Grace Symonds (Eliza Grace Symonds), an accomplished painter and pianist, but she was almost deaf.
Bell is the second son in the family. He also has an older brother and a younger brother named Melville and Edward. The early education of the three brothers was completed by their parents, including reading, arithmetic, painting and piano performance.
When Bell was born, his name was only Alexander Bell. At the age of 10, the middle name Graham was added. The name comes from a student of his father and a young tenant of their family.
As a teenager, Bell has shown his talent for invention. He once invented a very practical and improved water mill, which impressed the people around him.
At the age of 11, Bell entered the Royal High School in Edinburgh. However, he didn’t like the courses inside and left school at the age of 15.
In August 1863, at the age of 16, Bell began teaching at the Weston Boarding School in Elgin, Scotland. Three years later, Bell served as a teacher at Somerset County College.
Young Bell
In 1867, Bell moved to London.
During this period, Bell and his brother invented a mechanical sounding device similar to an “artificial throat”. When blowing, it can make a small amount of sound similar to a real person.
Bell’s father was even more accomplished. Through scientific analysis of human voice, he developed a complete and universal phonetic system, which he called “visible voice”, which made a sensation in the entire academic world.
In June 1868, Bell passed the University College London entrance examination to study anatomy and physiology.
However, he failed to finish his studies here. His younger brother Edward and elder brother Melville died of tuberculosis in 1867 and 1870, respectively, so the doctor advised his parents to move their home to a place with better air.
Thus, in 1870, the Bell family moved to the distant Brantford, Ontario, Canada.
Just before leaving the UK, Bell had dinner with his friend Alexander Ellis. At dinner, Ellis introduced Bell’s work on electricity by German scientist Hermann von Helmholtz, which aroused Bell’s keen interest. Bell believes that the future must be the world of electricity.
▉ Part.2 Starting a career
After moving to Canada, Bell’s father, as a prestigious education expert, was appointed as a lecturer by Queen’s University in Canada. At the same time, Boston in the United States also offered an invitation to Bell’s father. So, his father recommended Bell.
In 1871, Bell moved to Boston, Massachusetts, and taught at a local school for the deaf.
In the spring of 1872, Bell taught at the Deaf Education and Guidance Sanctuary in Hartford, USA, and the Clark Deaf Society (later Clark School for the Deaf) in Northampton.
During this period, he met Gardiner Greene Hubbard, the founder of the Clark Society for the Deaf.
Gardiner Green Hubbard (1822-1897)
Gardiner has a daughter named Mabel Hubbard (Mabel Hubbard), who is 10 years younger than Bell. She almost died of scarlet fever at the age of five and became deaf. Entrusted by Gardiner, Bell coached Mabel. Over time, the two became emotional.
In 1873, at the age of 26, Bell became a professor of vocal physiology at Boston University.
Bell
▉ Part.3 Invention of the telephone
While Bell was teaching deaf-mute people, he still did not give up his invention.
In the beginning, Bell’s research direction was harmonic telegraphy.
The telegraph at that time, although widely used, was very inefficient, and could only receive and send one message at a time. As a result, many inventors (including Edison) are studying a telegraph that can send multiple messages at the same time. This is the so-called harmonic telegraph system.
The research on harmonic telegraphy has received strong support from Bell’s future father-in-law Gardiner Hubbard.
Gardiner Hubbard wanted to establish a federally chartered telegraph company to compete with the then monopoly Western Union. Harmonic telegraph will obviously help him win this competition.
At the same time joining this project, there is another wealthy businessman Thomas Sanders (Thomas Sanders). Thomas Sanders is also the parent of Bell’s students. His son George is a deaf child and has been counseled by Bell for a long time.
During Bell’s research on harmonic telegraphy, a new idea emerged in his mind, that is, “borrowing wires to conduct sound.”
In order to verify his own ideas, Bell specifically consulted several telegraph technicians, but was mercilessly mocked by the other party. One of the technicians said:
“As long as you read more books like “General Knowledge on Electricity”, you won’t have this kind of illusion.”
Bell did not give up when he was hit. He made a special trip to Washington, DC to ask Joseph Henry, a respected physicist at the time.
Joseph Henry (1797-1878)
Joseph Henry’s attitude is simple and straightforward, telling Bell directly:
“You have a vision for a great invention, do it!”
When Bell said that he lacked expertise and might not be able to complete the research, Joseph Henry added:
“Learn it! And learn from the experience of others.”
The encouragement of Joseph Henry gave Bell a lot of confidence and support.
However, Bell’s change of research direction made his investors very unhappy. In January 1875, Thomas Sanders hired a young electrical technician named Thomas A. Watson as Bell’s assistant, hoping to refocus Bell’s attention on the harmonic telegraph .
Thomas Watson (1854-1934)
Unexpectedly, Watson quickly became obsessed with Bell’s voice transmission concept and joined Bell’s new project.
On June 2, 1875, Bell and Watson accidentally discovered a key link in telephone transmission in their apartment at 109 Curt Avenue in Boston. Subsequently, they quickly produced an early phone model.
On February 14, 1876, Bell filed a telephone patent application with the US government. In fact, Bell’s call was not completely completed at the time.
On March 7, 1876 (it is also said that it was the 3rd), his patent application was approved by the US government, and the patent number was 174465.
patent certificate
On March 10, 1876, still in his apartment at No. 109 Curt Avenue, Bell said to the telephone he invented and said the words that would go down in history:
“Mr. Watson — come here — I want to see you.” (Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.)
At this point, Bell’s telephone was officially invented. (It was circulated on the Internet that the first sentence Bell said over the phone was the call when he accidentally knocked over the sulfuric acid. No basis was found in historical materials.)
Bell and his phone
After that, Bell and Watson continued to improve their telephone invention. In June, they participated in the Centennial Exhibition of the Founding of the United States in Philadelphia.
At that time, the Brazilian Emperor Dom Pedro participated in the exhibition. Bell showed him his invention, which aroused his great interest. Also participating in the exhibition was the British scientist Sir William Thompson, who later made a great contribution to the popularization of telephones in Europe.
In August 1876, Bell used two telegraph offices five miles apart to conduct a telephone demonstration, which caused a great social shock.
Since then, Bell and Watson advertised their invention everywhere and installed phones for hundreds of users.
On July 9, 1877, Bell and his partners jointly established the Bell Telephone Company, dedicated to the full promotion of the telephone.
Two days later, on July 11, Bell and Mabel Hubbard officially married.
That is the year, in 1877, in order to maintain the contact between the General Administration and Jinliyuan Wharf, the Shanghai Merchants Bureau set up a telephone line from the Bund to Shiliupu Wharf. This is the first phone to appear in China. People call it “Telephone” (transliteration of telephone).
In 1878, Bell conducted the first long-distance telephone experiment (300 kilometers apart) between Boston and New York, which was successful. After that, the telephone quickly became popular in major cities in North America.
In 1882, Bell officially became American citizenship.
In 1886, Bell bought land and built a villa near Baddeck, Nova Scotia, Canada. After that, he lived there for a long time.
At the beginning of this period, Bell’s hair and beard became gray, his weight increased rapidly, and he was totally different from before.
On October 18, 1892, the 1,520 km telephone line between New York and Chicago was officially opened. Bell conducted a call demonstration on the spot. This is also the origin of the following famous photo:
(Many articles on the Internet say that this is because Bell invented the telephone or demonstrated it to the Queen of England, which is wrong)
▉ Part.4 Who is the real inventor of the telephone
As everyone knows, there has always been a lot of controversy surrounding the true inventor of the telephone.
In summary, in addition to Bell, there are a total of 3 people involved in this dispute.
The first person was Elisha Gray (Elisha Gray), who had a competitive relationship with Bell in the field of harmonic telegraphy.
Gray also filed a telephone patent application on February 14, 1876, but it was several hours later than Bell. Later, the two people fought for a long time, and the court finally ruled that Bell won.
The second person is the Italian Antonio Meucci (Antonio Meucci), also translated as Antonio Meucci.
Antonio Muzi (1808-1889)
Mu Qi’s story is very tragic, limited to space, there is no way to elaborate. All in all, he was poor because he had no money ($10) to renew his patent, and he lost the opportunity in the end. Later, because of poverty, the lawsuit with Bell was half-fought, and he died because of poverty and no money for treatment.
On June 15, 2002, the U.S. Congress ruled that Muzi was the inventor of the telephone, which was a relief to Muzi’s spirit in heaven. However, on June 21, 2002, the Canadian Parliament passed a resolution reiterating that Bell is the inventor of the telephone. Alas, it is really sad.
The third person is the German science teacher and inventor John Philip Rice.
Rice once sued Bell in the U.S. Supreme Court, claiming that he had invented the telephone between 1859 and 1860, capable of transmitting voices up to 100 meters away. He also claimed that he exhibited his “telephone device” at the Frankfurt Physics Society in 1861 and at the Giessen Conference of Natural Sciences Researchers in 1864.
However, the court found after investigation that Rice’s “telephone device” can only transmit one-way, cannot talk to each other, and has some shortcomings, so it rejected Rice’s lawsuit and still maintained Bell’s patent rights.
▉ Part.5 Achievements beyond the phone
At the beginning of this article, Mr. Xiaozao said that in addition to the telephone, Bell also invented many things. Next, let me introduce you one by one.
The first one is actually the phone. But what I said earlier is a line phone, this time it is a light phone, a phone that uses light to talk.
In 1880, Bell used sunlight as the light source, the atmosphere as the transmission medium, and the selenium crystal as the light receiving device, and successfully carried out the experiment of optical telephone. The distance of the call reached 213 meters.
Model of light phone
In 1881, Bell read a paper entitled “On the Production and Reproduction of Sound Using Light”, reporting on his optical telephone device.
In Bell himself: Among all his inventions, the optical telephone is the greatest invention.
However, in fact, optical phones are greatly affected by the environment and basically have no practical value. Later, they were gradually forgotten by people.
The second one is the telephone probe.
On July 2, 1881, President James A. Garfield was attacked at the Washington Railway Station and shot in the back.
Because Bell had previous experience with metal detectors, he was called to the president’s bedside to help find bullets using metal detectors. After tossing for a long time, the detection was unsuccessful (it seems to be because the president was lying on an iron bed). A few weeks later, the president died of infection.
Bell, who felt deeply self-blame, later set out to invent an efficient surgical probe and proposed a successful model in October 1881. He named his invention a telephonic probe.
To this end, Heidelberg University awarded Bell an honorary doctorate of medicine in recognition of his contribution to surgery.
The third is an improved version of the phonograph.
To be precise, this invention was unsuccessful. The phonograph was invented by Edison in 1877. Bell later discovered that the tinfoil records used by Edison’s phonograph to record and reproduce sounds would quickly break down after several uses. So Bell and his apprentice Charles Tainter (Charles Tainter) worked together to study how to improve.
The two were about to succeed, but Bell was called to save President Garfield, and the matter was delayed. Later, another inventor Emile Berliner (Emile Berliner) achieved final success.
The fourth important invention is related to Bell’s son.
After Bell and Mabel got married, they first gave birth to two daughters, Elsie and Marianne. Later, two more sons were born, Edward and Robert.
Bell and family
Unfortunately, the eldest son died soon after he was born, while the younger son was born with a congenital respiratory disease and died soon.
In distress, Bell quickly invented a “vacuum suit” to help people with breathing problems. This “vacuum suit” can help expand and contract the lungs through mechanical action, also known as the “iron lung”. Later, this device saved many lives.
The fifth is aircraft and hydrofoil.
Since 1890, Bell has transferred his interest to aviation.
In 1907, the Bells and some partners jointly founded the Aviation Experiment Association (AEA). The association has manufactured several classic airplanes with outstanding performance.
Association member McCurdy piloted a silver dart airplane for a test flight in Baddeck
Building airplanes was not enough, and later the couple also built clippers.
In 1919, a hydrofoil vessel (model HD-4) they built set a world record of 114 km/h. At that time, the fastest steamboat in the world was only 48 kilometers per hour. Their record was not surpassed until more than ten years later.
In addition to invention, Bell has many achievements and contributions.
After becoming famous, Bell has never given up his deaf education career. He wrote a large number of articles on education for the deaf throughout his life, and also made donations and investments in education for the deaf. In 1890, the American Association for the Teaching of Speech for the Deaf (now Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hearing Impaired) was established, and Bell served as the chairman of the association.
As we mentioned earlier, Bell founded Bell Telephone Company.
The Bell Telephone Company later had a subsidiary called AT&T. After AT&T grew bigger, it in turn acquired the parent company Bell Telephone Company. Everyone at AT&T should be familiar with it. The greatest technology company of the 20th century is also the earliest telecom operator. The famous Bell Labs belongs to AT&T and is named after Bell.
However, in 1879, two years after the establishment of the Bell Telephone Company, Bell sold its shares and only served as a technical consultant. In other words, Bell did not make any money from subsequent market value growth. His income mainly comes from the royalties received each year.
In 1880, the French government awarded Bell a bonus of 50,000 francs (about 10,000 US dollars) in recognition of his invention of the telephone. With the money, Bell set up the famous Volta Laboratory in Washington, DC, specializing in scientific research.
He has conducted research on desalination, tried to breed “super breed” sheep, and even funded early atomic experiments.
In 1888, Bell helped found the National Geographic Society. The first president was his father-in-law and the second president was himself.
The society founded a magazine of its own, the famous “National Geographic”. Bell hopes that the magazine will attract the public, not just professional geographers and geologists. At the same time, he also advocated the use of photography in magazines.
Later, Bell hired Gilbert Hovy Grosvenor (Gilbert Hovy Grosvenor) as the editor of the magazine and married his daughter Elsie to Grosvenor.
Grosvenor was a pioneer in photojournalism. Under his leadership, the circulation of National Geographic magazine increased from under 1,000 to more than 2 million, and it remains the most influential journal in the world.
In addition to “National Geographic”, Bell also supported the founding of “Science” magazine. Later this magazine became the most important scientific research journal in the United States.
Finally, I want to talk about the friendship between Bell and Helen Keller.
Helen Keller
Bell got acquainted with Helen Keller in 1887, and has maintained close contact and communication since then. Keller has visited the Bells many times. In Keller’s book The Story of My Life (1903), Keller said this:
“He (Bell) taught deaf people to speak, and made the hearing ears able to hear speech from the Atlantic to the Rocky Mountains.”
▉ Part.6 Final farewell
On January 25, 1915, 65-year-old Bell was invited to attend the opening ceremony of the transcontinental telephone line between New York and San Francisco. His assistant Watson was also invited.
That day, Bell was in New York and Watson was in San Francisco. They were sitting in front of the telephone. When the scheduled time came, Bell picked up the transmitter and said:
“Mr. Watson — come here — I want to see you.” (Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.)
Yes, this is exactly what they said when talking on the phone for the first time 40 years ago.
Watson answered immediately:
“Okay, I’ll go right away, but it will take a week!”
Through the loudspeaker, everyone heard the conversation between them and couldn’t help laughing and applauding enthusiastically.
On August 2, 1922, Bell died of complications from diabetes at the age of 72. Five months later, his wife Mabel followed him.
To pay tribute to Bell, when Bell’s funeral ceremony began on August 4, telephone services in the United States and Canada were suspended for one minute.
After the death of Bell, he was buried with his wife in Baddeck Manor. On his tombstone, there is a line of words:
“Died a Citizen of the United States.” (It was a US citizen who died here)
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