Alexander Graham Bell was born in Edinburgh (Scotland) on March 3, 1847. The range of interests of this American scientist and inventor was unusually wide. In his amazing experiments, he managed to combine art and science: acoustics and music, electrical engineering and mechanics. It was Alexander Bell who invented the telephone and in many ways contributed to the development of the telecommunications industry in the United States.
Children's years and youth
Alexander Melville Bell, father of the future inventor, is a professional philologist and author of large-scale work on the art of eloquence. In particular, he is credited with creating the “Visible Speech” system, which allows you to convey the sounds of oral human speech using special written notations. Thanks to this development, the speaker, even without knowing a foreign language, could correctly pronounce certain words.
Bell's parents tried to pay maximum attention to the sound of their voices and the recitation skills of their son. At the age of thirteen, Alexander graduated from Edinburgh Royal School, and a year later he moved to his grandfather in London. Here he is actively studying the subtleties of oratory, reading thematic literature. At the age of sixteen, a talented young man becomes a teacher of eloquence and music at the Weston House Academy. Alexander Bell did not finish his studies at Edinburgh University .
Relocation to America
Soon after, Bell's two brothers died of tuberculosis. Doctors advised Alexander to change the situation. He decides to move to Canada. In 1870, the whole family settled in Ontario, in a town called Brantford.
Beginning in 1871, Alexander Bell lives in Boston and teaches at a special school for deaf and dumb students. During his work as a teacher, the future scientist was actively looking for a way to demonstrate the deaf articulation of speech sounds . In particular, I tested an apparatus in which a special membrane oscillated under the influence of sound waves and transmitted the resulting vibrations to the needle. The needle, in turn, recorded data on a rotating drum. This invention of Bell was the impetus for his major discovery.
The Talking Telegraph
In 1876, as part of the World Exhibition (Philadelphia), the scientist presented to the public an amazing apparatus, which he called the "talking telegraph." This was the first phone of Alexander Bell. You can imagine the jury members wondering when they were able to hear the famous Prince Danish monologue “To be or not to be?” From the mouthpiece, which the inventor himself read in the next room. Needless to say, the jury's verdict regarding the first phone on the planet was unambiguous - to be?
The scientist began work on the possibility of transmitting signals by telecommunication channels back in Scotland. While in America, he continued his development. The appearance of the world's first phone has contributed to many other interesting inventions.
For example, at a certain stage, Bell was able to create a unique electric piano, which allows you to transmit music sounds by wire.
Once the company Western Union announced a huge cash reward to someone who would find a way to transmit multiple telegrams simultaneously using only one pair of wires. The management sought to refuse additional telegraph lines, and Bell was able to offer them a suitable solution - with the help of its development it became possible to transmit up to 7 telegrams at once!
In his scientific research, Bell actively collaborated with Thomas Watson, and under the laws of electricians he was advised by the famous scientist from Boston D. Henry.
The personal life of a scientist
On June 11, 1877, Alexander Bell married his former student Mabel Hubbard. The inventor’s wife lost her hearing in her early childhood, at the age of four, after having been ill with scarlet fever. After the wedding ceremony, the newlyweds returned to Bella's homeland, in England. Here, the inventor actively told everyone about the amazing talking telegraph. The "telephone performance" was even given to the royal family, whose members were indescribable rapture.
Bell lived 45 years with his wife. All this considerable period between them warm friendly relations remained.
Success and recognition
After the well-known and wealthy companies refused to buy the rights to make phones, the scientist created the American Speaking Telephone Company, which after some time became the largest in the world and began to generate huge income. By March 1979, Alexander Bell and his wife received 15% of the total profit, and by 1883 their fortune reached an impressive mark of a million dollars.
In 1880, the inventor received the Volta Prize. Bell spent the money on the development of a new gramophone project, one of the earliest recording systems in the world, created in collaboration with Charles Sumner Tanter.
At the same time, he continued his work in the field of medicine. So, the University of Heidelberg awarded Bell an honorary degree for his development in the field of acoustic physiology.
The improvement of the phone continued. In 1881, he became almost fully operational.
last years of life
Alexander Bell and his invention literally turned the world upside down. Unfortunately, the health began to fail the scientist. Until his very last breath, his wife Mabel remained nearby. Later, she writes in her diary that Bell's last silent message was a barely perceptible shaking of her fingers at the moment when she asked not to leave her. The inventor died on August 4, 1922. As a sign of mourning for the great scientist throughout Canada and the United States, all phones were turned off, of which at that time there were more than 13 million.
Interesting facts from the life of the inventor
The biography of Alexander Bell is interesting down to the smallest detail. So, the famous scientist had the habit of working exclusively in the dark, at night. Sometimes this became the cause of disagreements and disputes between spouses. Understanding Mabel’s worries, Bell repeatedly made desperate attempts to return to a “normal” daily routine, but not one of them was successful.
And on August 15, 1877, an interesting debate took place between Alexander and his legendary contemporary Thomas Edison, which eventually resolved in favor of the latter. Edison proved that the ideal hello at the beginning of a telephone conversation is the word "hello", which in Russia was remade into the familiar "hello". The inventor of the phone himself suggested using the word "ahoy", which translates as "Hey, who is it?"
It is also interesting that Bell himself did not like to use the phone - calls distracted him from thought and work. But he could not talk to either his mother or his wife - both of them were completely deaf.