The importance of Alexander Graham Bell on todays society is visible, or rather audible, every day and everywhere. First and foremost, Alexander Graham Bell was a prolific teacher of the deaf. This is what he considered to be his true lifes work, but only one of the many important things he did. Through his research of speech and sound, and his creative mind, he would become one of the most influential inventors in modern history.
His own definition of an inventor, A man who looks upon the world and is not contented with things as they are. He wants to improve whatever he sees, he wants to benefit the world. suits him well. Every thing that he did had an impact on someone. Alexander Graham Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, to a family of speech educators. His father, Melville Bell, had invented Visible Speech, a code of symbols for all spoken sounds that was used in teaching deaf people to speak (Clarke 15).
His mother was deaf, this lead Melville and Alexander to exploration in the subject. Alexander Bell studied at Edinburgh University in 1864 and assisted his father at University College, London, from 1868-70. During these years he became deeply interested in the study of sound and the mechanics of speech, inspired in part by the acoustic experiments of German physicist Hermann Von Helmholtz, which gave Bell the idea of telegraphing speech (Paschoff 18). When young Bells two brothers died of tuberculosis, Melville Bell took his remaining family to the healthier climate of Canada in 1870. From there, Aleck Bell journeyed to Boston, Massachusetts, in 1871 and joined the staff of the Boston School for the Deaf.
The following year, Bell opened his own school in Boston for training teachers of the deaf. In 1873 he became a professor of vocal physiology at Boston University, and he also tutored private pupils as a side job (Clarke 15, 16). Bells interest in speech and communication led him to investigate the transmission of sound over wires. In particular, he experimented with development of the harmonic telegraph a device that could send multiple messages at the same time over a single wire.
Bell also worked with the possibility of transmitting the human voice, experimenting with vibrating membranes and an actual human ear. Bell even manipulated his dogs vocal cords so that when the dog barked it made sounds that were kind of like words more than barks. Gardiner Hubbard and Thomas Sanders, fathers of two of his deaf pupils backed Bell financially in his investigations (Allen 68). Early in 1874 Bell met Thomas A.
Watson, a young machinist at a Boston electrical shop. Watson became Bells indispensable assistant, bringing to Bells experiments the crucial ingredient that had been lacking, his technical expertise in electrical engineering. Together the two men spent endless hours experimenting (Paschoff 43,44). Although Bell formed the basic concept of the telephone using a varying but unbroken electric current to transmit the varying sound waves of human speech, in the summer of 1874, Hubbard insisted that the young inventor focus his efforts on the harmonic telegraph instead. Bell wanted to continue his work on the telephone but he complied. When he patented one of his telegraph designs in February 1875, he found that Elisha Gray had patented a multiple telegraph two days earlier.
Greatly discouraged, Bell consulted in Washington with the elderly Joseph Henry, who urged Bell to pursue his germ of a great invention speech transmission (Grosvenor and Wesson 55). Back in Boston, Bell and Watson continued to work on the harmonic telegraph, but still with the telephone in mind. By accident on a June day in 1875, an intermittent transmitter produced a steady current and transmitted sound, when Watson tightened or loosened a particular screw it produced a sound that would vary in pitch. Bell had proof of his 1874 idea; he quickly sketched a design for an electric telephone, and Watson built it. The partners experimented all summer, but failed actually to transmit voice sounds.
That fall, Bell began to write the patent specifications, but delayed application; Hubbard finally filed for the patent on February 14, 1876, just hours before Gray appeared at the same patent office to file an intent to patent his telephone design. Bells patent was granted on March 7, 1876, and on March 10, the first message transmitted by telephone passed from Bell to Watson in their workshop: Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you!(Macleod 12). After a year of refining the new device, Watson and Bell, along with Hubbard and Sanders, formed the Bell Telephone Company in 1877. Bell immediately married Mabel Hubbard, daughter of his new partner, and sailed to England to promote his telephone (Paschoff 46-59). The phone company grew fast and Bell became a wealthy man.
He turned to other interests on his return to the United States in 1879. He also had to defend his patents against numerous lawsuits. The French government awarded Bell with the Volta prize, an award rarely given out. It was set up by the first Napolean and named after famous Italian scientist Alessandro Volta, in 1880. With the money Bell received from the prize he created the Volta Laboratory. Bell invented many new things at the Volta Laboratory, among them were the graphaphone for recording sound, the photophone, for transmitting speech on a beam of light, an audiometer, a telephone probe, and an induction balance for detecting metal in the human body (Bruce 340-347).
Bell founded many organizations to support teaching of the deaf. He helped to establish Science magazine and the National Geographic Society. He also worked on air conditioning, an improved strain of sheep, an early iron lung, solar distillation of water, and sonar detection of icebergs. The possibility of flight fascinated Bell. He built tetrahedral kites capable of carrying a human being.
In his later years of life, Bell concentrated more on flight. He spent years experimenting with kites and different types of flying apparatus. He supported Samuel Langleys pioneering experiments in aviation, and helped found the Aerial Experiment Association in 1907 (Grosvenor and Wesson 216-220) Bell was born to help the deaf. His mother was deaf and this had a great impact on him since his early childhood. The fact that his dad was a speech educator and invented Visible Speech also had a lasting impact. The combination of these is what harbored Bells longing to help people communicate better.
During the time-period that Bell lived in there werent many people that were as well educated as his father was on deaf people and teaching them to communicate. While still young Bell had a good grasp of the concepts that he had learned from his father on how speech works and also with sounds and how they worked (Paschoff 5-25). This is what allowed Bell to excel in not only his lifes work as a teacher, but in the know-how needed to create something as influential as the telephone. All that Bell didnt have was the engineering knowledge but he received that in the form of Thomas A Watson. All of these things were involved in allowing Alexander Graham Bell to become the great man that he did, but there were also some external events that impinge on him. Some of the major events that occurred during the times Bell lived in were; the American Civil War 1861-1865, World War I 1914-1918, The Emancipation Proclamation was given freeing slaves, France held the International Convention for Protection of Industrial Property, and man took his first flight.
Alexander Graham Bell was actually part of World War I. Sometime around 1915 or so he created a floating dock that could be filled with water and sunk to just above the level of the water. When these were lined up they could be used to create a makeshift harbor and that is exactly what the United States military wanted them for. They showed up at his Volta Laboratory one day and asked for the plans on how to make these floating docks.
They were actually used a short time after that to help around Normandy (Bruce 355-357). Had it not been for the International Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property Bells ideas for his telephone could have been stolen and used in other countries. The Convention protected this from happening. It was originally adopted in Paris in 1883 and amended several times since. It gave inventors who file an application in one member country the benefit of using that first filing date for applications in other member states.
His interest in communications resulted in an invention that changed the way of life for people worldwide. He is such an important piece of the puzzle that describes our life today. What he did goes a lot deeper than just the telephone. He figured out how to transmit sounds through electrical devices. Every day when someone uses the internet they are using something impacted by Bell.
The internet works by sending beeps and sounds through telephone lines to other computers that decode the beeps and sounds into data. This would not be possible if Bell hadnt figured out how to transmit these sounds. The same thing goes for radios and cell-phones and televisions. The speakers in these devices are all made possible by the understanding that Bell acquired of sounds and transmitting them through electrical devices. Alexander Graham Bell was a man of warmth and human frailty, loved by his wife, children, and grandchildren. His life did seem to demonstrate the oneness of the world.
He was cheered at exhibitions, applauded at scientific meetings, and sought out by reporters. He and his wife united two numerous and close-knit families. Children, especially those of his own extended family, loved him. His marriage was a model of devotion throughout its forty-five years. He was nominally a member of more clubs and other organizations than he could recall at any given time, and he was active in a number of them (Allen 70,71).
He was much more than one of the most influential inventors of modern history, he was a great Husband, a mentor for youth, a model citizen, and an excellent teacher.
