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Alexander Graham Bell

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Engineers and inventors

   Alexander Graham Bell ( March 3, 1847 – August 2, 1922) was a Scottish
   scientist and inventor who emigrated to Canada. Today, Bell is widely
   considered as one of the foremost developers of the telephone, together
   with Antonio Meucci, inventor of the first telephone prototype, and
   Philipp Reis. Six years after having obtained his telephone patent he
   became a naturalized citizen of the United States. In addition to
   Bell's work in telecommunications technology, he was responsible for
   important advances in aviation and hydrofoil technology.

Biography

   Alexander Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on March 3, 1847. He
   later adopted the middle name 'Graham' out of admiration for Alexander
   Graham, a family friend. Many called Bell "the father of the Deaf."
   This title may be regarded as ironic, due to his belief in the practice
   of eugenics as well as his strong audist stance. While both his mother
   and his wife were deaf, he hoped to one day eliminate hereditary
   deafness.

   His family was associated with the teaching of elocution: his
   grandfather in London, his uncle in Dublin, and his father, Alexander
   Melville Bell, in Edinburgh, were all professed elocutionists. The
   latter has published a variety of works on the subject, several of
   which are well known, especially his treatise on Visible Speech, which
   appeared in Edinburgh in 1868. In this he explains his method of
   instructing deaf mutes, by means of their eyesight, how to articulate
   words, and also how to read what other persons are saying by the
   motions of their lips.

   Bell was educated at the Royal High School of Edinburgh, from which he
   graduated at the age of 13. At the age of 16 he secured a position as a
   pupil-teacher of elocution and music in Weston House Academy, at Elgin,
   Moray, Scotland. The next year he went to the University of Edinburgh.
   He graduated from University College London.

   From 1867 to 1868, he was an instructor at Somerset College at Bath,
   Somerset, England.

   While still in Scotland he is said to have turned his attention to the
   science of acoustics, with a view to ameliorate the deafness of his
   mother.

   In 1870, at the age of 23, he emigrated with his family to Canada where
   they settled at Brantford. Before he left Scotland, Bell had turned his
   attention to telephony, and in Canada he continued an interest in
   communication machines. He designed a piano which could transmit its
   music to a distance by means of electricity. In 1871, he accompanied
   his father to Montreal, Canada, where he was employed in teaching the
   system of visible speech. The elder Bell was invited to introduce the
   system into a large day-school for mutes at Boston, but he declined the
   post in favour of his son, who became Professor of Vocal Physiology and
   Elocution at Boston University's School of Oratory.
   Bell speaking into prototype model of the telephone
   Enlarge
   Bell speaking into prototype model of the telephone

   At Boston University he continued his research in the same field, and
   endeavored to produce a telephone which would not only send musical
   notes, but articulate speech. With financing from his American
   father-in-law, on March 7, 1876, the U.S. Patent Office granted him
   Patent Number 174,465 covering "the method of, and apparatus for,
   transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically … by causing
   electrical undulations, similar in form to the vibrations of the air
   accompanying the said vocal or other sound", the telephone.

   However, it has been recognized (such as by the U.S. Congress in 2002)
   that Antonio Meucci was the first to invent the telephone in 1871. Bell
   invented his own telephone in 1875 after discovering that a receiver
   could also be a transmitter. Some claim he went to the patent office
   and bribed the officials there to destroy the records of Meucci's
   inventor-of-the-telephone status (Meucci was too poor to secure a
   patent). In any case Bell then secured his own patent in 1876, just
   hours before Elisha Gray visited the patent office for his own work on
   the telephone. Meucci was understandably furious, and took Bell to
   court. However, he was too poor to hire a legal team, and in declining
   health, he died before the end of the court case. To Bell's credit, he
   successfully fought off several lawsuits, refined the telephone, and
   developed it into one of the most successful products. The Bell
   Telephone Company was created in 1877, and by 1886 over 150,000 people
   in the U.S. owned telephones and Bell became a millionaire.

   After obtaining the patent for the telephone, Bell continued his many
   experiments in communication, which culminated in the invention of the
   photophone-transmission of sound on a beam of light — a precursor of
   today's optical fibre systems. He also worked in medical research and
   invented techniques for teaching speech to the deaf. The range of
   Bell's inventive genius is represented only in part by the eighteen
   patents granted in his name alone and the twelve he shared with his
   collaborators. These included fourteen for the telephone and telegraph,
   four for the photophone, one for the phonograph, five for aerial
   vehicles, four for hydroairplanes, and two for a selenium cell.

   Bell had many ideas that were later realized in inventions. During his
   Volta Laboratory period, Bell and his associates considered impressing
   a magnetic field on a record, as a means of reproducing sound. Although
   the trio briefly experimented with the concept, they were unable to
   develop a workable prototype. They abandoned the idea, never realizing
   they had glimpsed a basic principle which would one day find its
   application in the tape recorder, the hard disc and floppy disc drive,
   and other magnetic media.

   Bell's own home used a primitive form of air conditioning, in which
   fans blew currents of air across great blocks of ice. He also
   anticipated modern concerns with fuel shortages and industrial
   pollution. Methane gas, he reasoned, could be produced from the waste
   of farms and factories. At his Canadian estate in Beinn Bhreagh, Nova
   Scotia, he experimented with composting toilets and devices to capture
   water from the atmosphere. In a magazine interview published shortly
   before his death, he reflected on the possibility of using solar panels
   to heat houses.

   In 1882, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. In 1888,
   he was one of the founding members of the National Geographic Society
   and became its second president. He was the recipient of many honours.
   The French Government conferred on him the decoration of the Légion
   d'honneur (Legion of Honour), the Académie française bestowed on him
   the Volta Prize of 50,000 francs, the Royal Society of Arts in London
   awarded him the Albert Medal in 1902, and the University of Würzburg,
   Bavaria, granted him a Ph.D. He was awarded the AIEE's Edison Medal in
   1914 for "For meritorious achievement in the invention of the
   telephone."

   Bell married Mabel Hubbard, who was one of his pupils at Boston
   University and also a deaf-mute, on July 11, 1877. His invention of the
   telephone resulted from his attempts to create a device that would
   allow him to communicate with his wife and his deaf mother. He died of
   a heart attack at Beinn Bhreagh, located on Nova Scotia's Cape Breton
   Island near the village of Baddeck, in 1922 was buried atop Beinn
   Bhreagh mountain overlooking Bras d'Or Lake. He was survived by his
   wife and two of their four children.

The photophone

   Another of Bell's inventions was the photophone, a device enabling the
   transmission of sound over a beam of light, which he developed together
   with Charles Sumner Tainter. The device employed light-sensitive cells
   of crystalline selenium, which has the property that its electrical
   resistance varies inversely with the illumination (i.e., the resistance
   is higher when the material is in the dark, and lower when it is
   lighted). The basic principle was to modulate a beam of light directed
   at a receiver made of crystalline selenium, to which a telephone was
   attached. The modulation was done either by means of a vibrating
   mirror, or a rotating disk periodically obscuring the light beam.

   This idea was by no means new. Selenium had been discovered by Jöns
   Jakob Berzelius in 1817, and the peculiar properties of crystalline or
   granulate selenium were discovered by Willoughby Smith in 1873. In
   1878, one writer with the initials J.F.W. from Kew an arrangement in
   Nature in a column appearing on June 13, asking the readers whether any
   experiments in that direction had already been done. In his paper on
   the photophone, Bell credited one A. C. Browne of London with the
   independent discovery in 1878—the same year Bell became aware of the
   idea. Bell and Tainter, however, were apparently the first to perform a
   successful experiment, by no means any easy task, as they even had to
   produce the selenium cells with the desired resistance characteristics
   themselves.

   In one experiment in Washington, D.C. the sender and the receiver were
   placed on different buildings some 700 feet (213 metres) apart. The
   sender consisted of a mirror directing sunlight onto the mouthpiece,
   where the light beam was modulated by a vibrating mirror, focused by a
   lens and directed at the receiver, which was simply a parabolic
   reflector with the selenium cells in the focus and the telephone
   attached. With this setup, Bell and Tainter succeeded to communicate
   clearly.

   The photophone was patented on December 18, 1880, but the quality of
   communication remained poor and the research was not pursued by Bell.
   Later on this helped in the discovery of fibre optics and laser
   communication systems.

Metal detector

   Bell is also credited with the invention of the metal detector in 1881.
   The device was hurriedly put together in an attempt to find the bullet
   in the body of U.S. President James Garfield. The metal detector
   worked, but didn't find the bullet because the metal bedframe the
   President was lying on confused the instrument. Bell gave a full
   account of his experiments in a paper read before the American
   Association for the Advancement of Science in August 1882. Though
   unsuccessful in its first incarnation, this achievement would
   eventually change the nature of physical security.

The hydrofoil

   The March 1906 Scientific American article by American hydrofoil
   pioneer William E. Meacham explained the basic principle of hydrofoils.
   Bell considered the invention of the hydroplane as a very significant
   achievement. Based on information gained from that article he began to
   sketch concepts of what is now called a hydrofoil boat.

   Bell and Casey Baldwin began hydrofoil experimentation in the summer of
   1908 as a possible aid to airplane takeoff from water. Baldwin studied
   the work of the Italian inventor Enrico Forlanini and began testing
   models. This led him and Bell to the development of practical hydrofoil
   watercraft.

   During his world tour of 1910–1911 Bell and Baldwin met with Forlanini
   in France. They had rides in the Forlanini hydrofoil boat over Lake
   Maggiore. Baldwin described it as being as smooth as flying. On
   returning to Baddeck a number of designs were tried culminating in the
   HD-4, using Renault engines. A top speed of 54 miles per hour was
   achieved, with rapid acceleration, good stability and steering, and the
   ability to take waves without difficulty.In 1913, Dr. Bell hired Walter
   Pinaud, a Sydney yacht designer and builder as well as the proprietor
   of Pinaud's Yacht Yard in Westmount, Nova Scotia to work on the
   pontoons of the HD-4. Pinaud soon took over the boatyard at Bell
   Laboratories on Beinn Bhreagh, Bell's estate near Baddeck, Nova Scotia.
   Pinaud's experience in boatbuilding enabled him to make useful design
   changes to the HD-4 however soon WWI intervened. After WWI work began
   again on the HD-4. Bell's report to the navy permitted him to obtain
   two 350 horsepower (260 kW) engines in July 1919. On September 9, 1919
   the HD-4 set a world's marine speed record of 70.86 miles per hour.

Aeronautics

   Bell was a supporter of aerospace engineering research through the
   Aerial Experiment Association, officially formed at Baddeck, Nova
   Scotia in October 1907 at the suggestion of Mrs. Mabel Bell and with
   her financial support. It was headed by the inventor himself. The
   founding members were four young men, American Glenn H. Curtiss, a
   motorcycle manufacturer who would later be awarded the Scientific
   American Trophy for the first official one-kilometre flight in the
   Western hemisphere and later be world-renowned as an airplane
   manufacturer; Frederick W. "Casey" Baldwin, the first Canadian and
   first British subject to pilot a public flight in Hammondsport, New
   York; J.A.D. McCurdy; and Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge, an official
   observer from the U.S. government. One of the project's inventions, the
   aileron, is a standard component of aircraft today. (The aileron was
   also invented independently by Robert Esnault-Pelterie.)

   Bell experimented with box kites and wings constructed of multiple
   compound tetrahedral kites covered in silk. The tetrahedral wings were
   named Cygnet I, II and III, and were flown both unmanned and manned
   (Cygnet I crashed during a flight carrying Selfridge) in the period
   from 1907-1912. Some of Bell's kites are on display at the Alexander
   Graham Bell National Historic Site.

Other Inventions

   Bell had made many other inventions in his life. They include the metal
   jacket that assists in breathing, the audiometer to detect minor
   hearing problems, a device that locates icebergs, investigated on how
   to separate salt from seawater, and also worked on finding alternative
   fuels.

Eugenics

   Along with many very prominent thinkers and scientists of the time,
   Bell was connected with the eugenics movement in the United States.
   From 1912 until 1918 he was the chairman of the board of scientific
   advisors to the Eugenics Record Office associated with Cold Spring
   Harbour Laboratory in New York, and regularly attended meetings. In
   1921 he was the honorary president of the Second International Congress
   of Eugenics held under the auspices of the American Museum of Natural
   History in New York. Organizations such as these advocated passing laws
   (with success in some states) that established the compulsory
   sterilization of people deemed to be, as Bell called them, a "defective
   variety of the human race." By the late 1930s about half the states in
   the US had eugenics laws, the California laws being used as a model for
   eugenics laws in Nazi Germany.

   His ideas about people he considered defective centered on the deaf.
   This was due to his feelings for his deaf family and his contact with
   deaf education. In addition to advocating sterilization of the deaf,
   Bell wished to prohibit deaf teachers from being allowed to teach in
   schools for the deaf, he worked to outlaw the marriage of deaf
   individuals to one another, and he was an ardent supporter of oralism
   over sign language. His avowed goal was to eradicate the language and
   culture of the deaf so as to force them to assimilate into the hearing
   culture for their own long-term benefit and for the benefit of society
   at large. Although this attitude is widely seen as paternalistic and
   arrogant today, it was mainstream in that era. See also: audism.

   Although he supported what many would consider harsh and inhumane
   policies today, he was not unkind to deaf individuals who supported his
   theories of oralism. He was a personal and longtime friend of Helen
   Keller (although she hated being deaf), and his wife Mabel was deaf,
   though none of their children were. Bell was known as a kindly father
   and loving family man who took great pleasure in playing with his many
   grandchildren.

Tributes

   In the early 1970s, UK rock group The Sweet recorded a tribute to Bell
   and the telephone, suitably titled "Alexander Graham Bell". The song
   gives a fictional account of the invention, in which Bell devises the
   telephone so he can talk to his girlfriend who lives on the other side
   of the United States. The song reached the top 40 in the UK and went on
   to sell over one million recordings world-wide.

   Another musical tribute to Bell was written by the British songwriter
   and guitarist Richard Thompson. The chorus of Thompson's songreminds
   the listener that "of course there was the telephone, he'd be famous
   for that alone, but there's fifty other things as well from Alexander
   Graham Bell". The song mentions Bell's work with discs rather than
   cylinders, the hydrofoil, Bell's work with the deaf, his invention of
   the respirator and several other of Bell's achievements.

   Bell was honored on the television programs the 100 Greatest Britons
   (2002), the top-ten Greatest Canadians (2004), and the 100 Greatest
   Americans (2005). The nominees and rankings for these programs were
   determined by popular vote. Bell was the only person to be on more than
   one of the programs.

   There is also a school located in Ajax, Ontario, Canada called
   Alexander Graham Bell Public School. One of the residence halls at
   Rochester Institute of Technology adjacent to the National Technical
   Institute for the Deaf building is Alexander Graham Bell Hall.

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