About

About Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell and his family worked with deaf children and through experiments and the luck of the draw he was able to invent the telegraph and telephone. Thus, people should thank Alexander Graham Bell for pioneering the telephone. This invention really impacted society in a profound way, and also showed Alexander Graham Bell's excellence. His excellence can be seen by examining his background, what made him famous, and the changes he made in the world. Alexander Graham Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on March 3, 1847. He was born to Elisa Grace Symonds, a portrait painter and an accomplished musician. His father, Alexander Melville Bell, taught deaf-mutes to speak and wrote textbooks on speech. His father invented “Visible Speech,” a code of symbols that indicated the position of the throat, tongue, and lips in making sounds (World Book 240). Alexander Graham Bell followed in his father’s footsteps. As teenagers, he and his brother Melly made a realistic version of a sheep’s head. With the help of a bellows, they were able to make the sheep’s head say a realistic “mama”. From an early age, Alexander Graham Bell was fascinated by the science of human speech. His father recommended him to teach deaf kids at the Boston School of Deaf Mutes. Alec’s success of teaching visible speech, led to a professor of vocal physiology at Boston University. He taught students in the evening. While teaching, Bell had investigated the pitch of vibrating speech of vowel sounds, using musical tuning tools. Bell’s believe in the idea that sounds had been transmitted electrically guided him down the paths of experimentation that led to the invention of the telephone (Mathew 16). “At his parents Brantford home in the summer of 1874 he tried improving the phone autography, a machine that drew the shapes of sounds by tracing their vibrations with a pen. Alec thought the machine would help him teach two deaf kids to speak, in -stead it helped him discover the principle of the telephone” (Mathew 19-20). “Bell thought he might be able to generate an electrical current that could raise and fall according to pitch, speed, and of sound. Bell suggested the complex rising and falling voice could convert electric current, then be converted electrically into sound at the end to wire. Bell had described the principle of the telephone. He didn’t know that sound would carry over long distances. He didn’t have any thing to make a machine that could prove his theory. Alec needed supplies and money to build things”(Mathew 21-23). Thomas Sanders and Gardiner Green Hubbard wanted to be Alexander’s partners. They told him that they would buy the supplies and be of any assistance that he needed to make his invention’s. In, January 1875, Thomas Watson became his Bell’s assistant. Thomas Watson could quickly make machines out of Alec’s sketches. “ On June 2 1878, Alec and Watson were tuning the reeds in the multiple telegraph, transmitters, and receivers. With the electric current, Watson placed the reed on the receiver while in the next room Alec heard very faint noises coming from the transmitter that was connected to Watson’s receiver. Alec heard what most people simply wouldn’t have heard, complex sounds; like the human voice, it could induce a current, travel through a wire and become sounds at the other end of the wire. Alec quickly selected a machine, that because of its shape, he called it the gallows telephone and had Watson build a pair. It couldn’t carry conversations because the device didn’t transmit complex sounds” (Mathew 24). On, February 14, 1876; they filed an application for a patent. Alexander Graham Bell received a patent called “Improve in telegraphy”. On March 7, 1876; Bell and Hubbard, Sanders and Watson shared money made from this patent. Those four had the exclusive rights to make and sell telephones in the U.S. for 19 years (Mathew 26). Alexander Graham Bell and his father were dedicated promoters of science and learning. They published a magazine that was on the small size. Bell’s vision was very large for it. “The world and all that is in it is our theme” (Mathew 54). Bell was never happy with the world. He never complained, he always did something about it. He is best remembered for the telephone, but his centrifugations to society and human knowledge are to numerous to list in their entirety go far beyond that invention (Mathew 60). Alexander Graham Bell lived 45 years after the invention of the telephone. He gave many years of service to deaf and produced other communication devices. The French government awarded Bell the Volta prize of 50,000 Francs in 1880 for his invention. He used that money for research, investigations, and developing method of wax disc (The world book encyclopedia). When Alexander Graham Bell died in 1922, he had a massed 18 patents in his name and a further 12 that he shared with others. Among them were telephonic and telegraphic inventions, the phone, and photograph, number of air craft, hydrofoils and selenium cells. He has been showered with honors in his time. Among them the French legion d honor, the Volta prize, an Honorary PhD from University of Warburg in Bavaria and the Albert medal from royal society of art in London (Shelly 41 ).