Alexander Graham Bell (
3 March 1847 -
2 August 1922) was an eminent
scientist,
inventor and
innovator. Most often associated with the invention of the
telephone, Bell was also called "the father of the
deaf". His father, grandfather and brother had all been associated with work on
elocution and
speech, and both his mother and wife were deaf, profoundly influencing Bell's life's work. His research on hearing and speech further led him to experiment with hearing devices that eventually culminated in the invention of the telephone. Bell was awarded the first U.S. patent for the invention of the telephone in 1876.
Many other inventions marked Bell's later life including
groundbreaking work in
hydrofoils and
aeronautics. In 1888, Alexander Graham Bell was one of the founding members of the
National Geographic Society.In later life, Bell considered his most famous invention was an intrusion on his real work and refused to have a telephone in his study. Upon Bell's death, all telephones throughout the United States stilled their ringing for a silent minute in tribute to the man whose yearning to communicate made them possible.
Alexander Bell was born in
Edinburgh,
Scotland on
3 March 1847. Throughout his early life, Bell was a British subject. The family home was at 16 South Charlotte Street, Edinburgh and has a commemorative marker at the doorstep, marking this as Alexander Graham Bell's birthplace. He had two brothers: Melville James Bell (1845-1870) and Edward Charles Bell (1848-1867). Both of his brothers died of
tuberculosis, Edward in 1867 and Melville in 1870. His father was Professor
Alexander Melville Bell, and his mother was Eliza Grace (nee Symonds). Although he was born "Alexander" at age ten, he made a plea to his father to have a middle name like his two brothers. For his 11th birthday, his father acquiesced and allowed him to adopt the middle name "Graham" chosen out of admiration for Alexander Graham, a Canadian being treated by his father and boarder who had become a family friend. To close relatives and friends he remained "Aleck" which his father continued to call him into later life. Throughout his early life, Alexander Graham Bell was a British subject.
As a child, Bell displayed a natural curiosity about his world, resulting in gathering
botanical specimens as well as
experimenting even at an early age. His best friend was Ben Herdman, a neighbour whose family operated a flour
mill, the scene of many forays. When their typical child's play had caused a racket one day, John Herdman admonished the two boys, "Why don't you do something useful?" Young Aleck asked what needed to be done at the mill. He was told
wheat had to be dehusked through a laborious process and at the age of 12, Bell built a homemade device that combined rotating paddles with sets of nail brushes, creating a simple dehusking
machine that was put into operation and used steadily for a number of years. In return, John Herdman gave both boys the run of a small workshop to "invent."
From his early years, young Aleck Bell showed a sensitive nature and a talent for art, poetry and music that was encouraged by his mother. With no formal training, he mastered the piano and became the family's pianist. Despite being normally quiet and introspective, he revelled in mimicry and "voice tricks" akin to ventriloquism that constantly entertained family guests. Bell was also deeply affected by his mother's gradual deafness (she began to lose her hearing when he was 12) and learned a manual finger language so he could sit at her side and tap out silently the conversations swirling around the family parlour. He also developed a technique of speaking in clear, modulated tones directly into his mother's forehead wherein she would hear him with reasonable clarity. Bell's preoccupation with his mother's deafness led him to study
acoustics.
His family was associated with the teaching of
elocution: his grandfather, Alexander Bell, in
London, his uncle in
Dublin, and his father, in Edinburgh, were all elocutionists. His father published a variety of works on the subject, several of which are still well known, especially his
The Standard Elocutionist (1860) and
treatise on
Visible Speech, which appeared in Edinburgh in 1868.
The Standard Elocutionist appeared in 168 British editions and sold over a quarter of a million copies in the United States alone. In this treatise, he explains his methods of how to instruct
deaf-mutes (as they were then known) to articulate words and read other people's lip movements to decipher meaning. Aleck's father taught him and his brothers not only to write Visible Speech but also to identify any symbol and its accompanying sound. Aleck became so proficient that he became part of his father's public demonstrations and astounded audiences with his abilities in deciphering
Latin,
Gaelic and even
Sanskrit symbols.
Although young Aleck Bell, like his brothers, received his early schooling at home from his father, he was enrolled at the
Royal High School, Edinburgh, Scotland, which he left at age 15, completing the first four forms only. His school record was undistinguished, marked by absenteeism and lacklustre grades. His main interest remained in the sciences, especially biology but other school subjects were treated with indifference, to the dismay of his demanding father. Upon leaving school, Aleck went to London to live with his grandfather, Alexander Bell. During the year he spent with his grandfather, a love of learning was born, with long hours spent in serious discussion and study. The elder Bell took great efforts to have his young pupil learn to speak clearly and with conviction, the attributes Aleck would need to become a teacher himself. At age 16, he secured a position as a "pupil-teacher" of
elocution and music, in Weston House Academy, at
Elgin,
Moray, Scotland. Although Alexander was enrolled as a student in Latin and Greek, he instructed in return for board and £10 per session. The following year he attended the
University of Edinburgh; joining his older brother Melville who had enrolled there the previous year, and where Aleck intended to write exams but later graduated from the
University of Toronto.
First experiments with sound
Bell's father encouraged Aleck's interest in speech and in 1863, took his sons to see a unique
automaton, developed by Sir
Charles Wheatstone based on the earlier work of
Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen. The rudimentary "mechanical man" simulated a human voice. Aleck was fascinated by the machine and after he obtained a copy of von Kempelen's book published in Germany and had laboriously translated it, Aleck and his older brother Melville built their own automaton head. Their father, highly interested in their project, offered to pay for any supplies and spurred the boys on with the enticement of a "big prize" if they were successful. While his brother constructed the
throat and
larynx, Aleck tackled the more difficult task of recreating a realistic
skull. His efforts resulted in a remarkably lifelike head that could "
speak," albeit only a few words. The boys would carefully adjust the "
lips" and when a
bellows forced air through the
windpipe, a very recognizable "Mama" ensued, to the delight of neighbors who came to see the Bell invention.
Intrigued by the results of the automaton, Aleck continued to experiment with a live subject, the family's Skye terrier, "Trouve". After he taught it to growl continuously, Aleck would reach into its mouth and manipulate the dog's lips and
vocal cords to produce a crude-sounding "Ow ah oo ga ma ma." With little convincing, visitors believed his dog could articulate "How are you grandma?" More indicative of his playful nature, his experiments convinced onlookers that they saw a "talking dog." However, these initial forays into experimentation with sound led Aleck to undertake his first serious work on the transmission of
sound, using
tuning forks to explore
resonance. At the age of 19, he wrote a report on his work and sent it to Alexander Ellis, a colleague of his father. Ellis immediately wrote back indicating that the experiments were similar to existing work in
Germany. Dismayed to find that
groundbreaking work had already taken place by
Hermann von Helmholtz who had conveyed vowel sounds by means of a similar tuning fork "
contraption", he pored over the German scientist's book,
Sensations of Tone. From his translation of the original German edition, Aleck then made a deduction that would be the underpinning of all his future work on transmitting sound, "Without knowing much about the subject, it seemed to me that if
vowel sounds could be produced by
electrical means so could
consonants, so could
articulate speech."
In 1865, when the Bell family moved to
London, Bell returned to Weston House as an assistant master and in his spare hours, continued experiments on sound using a minimum of laboratory equipment. Bell concentrated on experimenting with electricity to convey sound and later installed a
telegraph wire from his room in Somerset College to that of a friend. Throughout the fall and winter, his health faltered mainly through exhaustion. His younger brother, Edward "Ted" was similarly bed-ridden, suffering from
tuberculosis. While Bell recovered (now referring to himself in correspondence as "A.G. Bell") and served the next year as an instructor at
Somerset College,
Bath,
Somerset,
England, his brother's condition deteriorated. Edward would never recover. Upon his brother's passing, Bell returned home in 1867. His older brother, "Melly" had married and moved out. With aspirations to obtain a degree at the
University of London, Bell considered his next years as preparation for the degree examinations, devoting his spare time at his family's residence to studying.
Helping his father in Visible Speech demonstrations and lectures brought Bell to Susanna E. Hull's private school for the deaf in
South Kensington,
London. His first two pupils were "deaf mute" girls who made remarkable progress under his tutelage. While his older brother seemed to achieve success on many fronts including setting up his own school for elocution, applying for a patent on an invention, and beginning a family, Bell continued as a teacher. In May 1870, Melville died from complications of tuberculosis, causing a family crisis. His father had also suffered a debilitating illness earlier in life and had been restored to health by a convalescence in
Newfoundland. Bell's parents precipitated a long-planned move when they realized that their remaining son was also sickly. Making a swift judgement, Alexander Melville Bell asked Bell to arrange for the sale of all the family property, conclude all of his brother's affairs (Bell took over a last student, curing a pronounced lisp) and join his father and mother in setting out for the "
New World." Reluctantly, Bell also had to conclude a relationship with Marie Eccleston, whom he surmised was not prepared to leave England with him.
In 1870, at age 23, Bell, his brother's widow, Caroline (Margaret Ottaway), and his parents travelled on the
SS Nestorian to Canada. After landing at Quebec City, the Bells boarded a train to
Montreal and later to
Paris, Ontario to stay with the Reverend Thomas Henderson, a family friend. After a brief stay with the Hendersons, the Bell family purchased a ten and a half acre farm at Tutelo Heights (now called Tutela Heights), near
Brantford,
Ontario. The property consisted of an orchard, larger farm house, stable, pigsty, hen-house and carriage house, bordering the
Grand River.
At the homestead, Bell set up his own workshop in the converted
carriage house near to what he called his "dreaming place," a large hollow nestled in trees at the back of the property above the river. Despite his frail condition upon arriving in Canada, Be;; found the climate and environs to his liking, and rapidly improved. He continued his interest in the study of the human voice and when he discovered the
Six Nations Reserve across the river at
Onondaga, he learned the Mohawk language and translated its unwritten vocabulary into Visible Speech symbols. For his work, Bell was awarded the title of honorary chief and participated in a ceremony where he donned a
Mohawk headdress and danced traditional dances.
After setting up his workshop, Bell continued experiments based on Helmholtz's work with electricity and sound. He designed a
piano which, by means of electricity, could transmit its music at a distance. Once the family was settled in, both Bell and his father made plans to establish a teaching practice and in 1871, he accompanied his father to Montreal, where Melville was offered a position to teach his System of Visible Speech.
Subsequently, his father was invited by Sarah Fuller, principal of the
Boston School for Deaf Mutes (which continues today as the
Horace Mann School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing), in
Boston,
Massachusetts,
United States, to introduce the Visible Speech System by providing training for Fuller's instructors but he declined the post, in favor of his son. Travelling to Boston in April 1871, Alexander provided a successful inservicing of the school's instructors. Bell was subsequently asked to repeat the program at the
American Asylum for Deaf-mutes in
Hartford and the
Clarke School for the Deaf in
Northampton.
Returning home to Brantford after six months abroad, Bell continued his experiments with his "harmonic telegraph."The basic concept behind his device was that messages could be sent through one wire if each message was transmitted at a different pitch but work on both the transmitter and receiver were needed. Unsure of his future, he first contemplated returning to London to complete his studies but decided to return to Boston as a teacher. His father helped him set up his private practise by contacting
Gardiner Greene Hubbard, the president of the Clarke School for the Deaf for a recommendation. Teaching his father's system, in October 1872, Alexander Bell opened a school in Boston named the "Vocal Physiology and Mechanics of Speech" which attracted a large number of deaf pupils. His first class numbered 30 students. Working as a private tutor, one of his most famous pupils was
Helen Keller, who came to him as a young child, unable to see, hear or speak. She later was to say that Bell dedicated his life to the penetration of that "inhuman silence which separates and estranges."
Continuing experimentation
In the following year, Bell became professor of Vocal Physiology and Elocution at the
Boston University School of Oratory. During this period, he alternated between Boston and Brantford, spending summers in his Canadian home. At Boston University, Bell was "swept up" by the excitement engendered by the many scientists and inventors resident in the city. He continued his research in sound and endeavoured to find a way to transmit musical notes and articulate speech, but although absorbed by his experiments, he found it difficult to devote enough time to experimentation. While days and evenings were occupied by his teaching and private classes, Bell began to stay awake late into the night, running experiment after experiment in rented facilities at his boarding house. Keeping up "
night owl" hours, he worried that his work would be discovered and took great pains to lock up his notebooks and laboratory equipment. Bell had a specially made table where he could place his notes and equipment inside a locking cover. Worse still, his health deteriorated as he suffered severe headaches. Returning to Boston in fall 1873, Bell made a fateful decision to concentrate on his experiments in sound.
Deciding to give up his lucrative private Boston practise, Bell only retained two students, six-year old "Georgie" Sanders, deaf from birth and 15-year old Mabel Hubbard. Each pupil would serve to play an important role in the next developments. George's father, Thomas Sanders, a wealthy businessman, offered Bell a place to stay at nearby
Salem with Georgie's grandmother, complete with a room to "experiment." Although the offer was made by George's mother and followed the year-long arrangement in 1872 where her son and his nurse had moved to quarters next to Bell's boarding house, it was clear that Mr. Sanders was backing the proposal. The arrangement was for teacher and student to continue their work together with free room and board thrown in. Mabel was a bright, attractive girl who was ten years his junior but became the object of Bell's affection. Losing her hearing after a bout of
scarlet fever at age five, she had learned to read lips but her father, Gardiner Greene Hubbard, Bell's
benefactor and personal friend, wanted her to work directly with her teacher.
By 1874, Bell's initial work on the harmonic telegraph had entered a formative stage with progress made both at his new Boston "laboratory" as well as at his family home in Canada.
While working that summer in Brantford, Bell experimented with a "phonautograph," a pen-like machine that could draw shapes of sound waves on smoked glass by tracing their vibrations. Bell thought it might be possible to generate undulating electrical currents that corresponded to sound waves. Bell also thought that multiple metal reeds tuned to different frequencies like a harp would be able to convert the undulatory currents back into sound. But he had no working model to demonstrate the feasibility of these ideas.
In 1874, telegraph message traffic was rapidly expanding and in the words of
Western Union President William Orton, had become "the nervous system of commerce." Orton had contracted with inventors
Thomas Edison and
Elisha Gray to find a way to send multiple
telegraph messages on each telegraph line to avoid the great cost of constructing new lines. When Bell mentioned to Gardiner Hubbard and Thomas Sanders that he was working on a method of sending multiple tones on a telegraph wire using a multi-reed device, the two wealthy patrons began to financially support Bell's experiments. Patent matters would be handled by Hubbard's patent attorney Anthony Pollok.
In March 1875, Bell and Pollok visited the famous scientist
Joseph Henry, who was then director of the
Smithsonian Institution, and asked Henry's advice on the electrical multi-reed apparatus that Bell hoped would transmit the human voice by telegraph. Henry replied that Bell had "the germ of a great invention". When Bell said that he did not have the necessary knowledge, Henry replied, "Get it!" That declaration greatly encouraged Bell to keep trying. Bell did not have the equipment needed to continue his experiments, nor the ability to create a working model of his ideas. A chance meeting in 1874 between Bell and
Thomas A. Watson, an experienced electrical designer and mechanic at the electrical machine shop of
Charles Williams, changed all that.
With financial support from Sanders and Hubbard, Bell was able to hire Thomas Watson as his assistant and Bell and Watson experimented with
acoustic telegraphy. On
2 June 1875, Watson accidentally plucked one of the reeds and Bell at the receiving end of the wire, heard the overtones of the reed, overtones that would be necessary for transmitting speech. That demonstrated to Bell that only one reed or armature was needed, not multiple reeds. This led to the "
gallows" sound-powered telephone, which was able to transmit indistinct voice-like sounds but not clear speech.
The race to the patent office
Meanwhile, Elisha Gray was also experimenting with acoustic telegraphy and thought of a way to transmit speech using a water transmitter. On
14 February 1876, Gray filed a
caveat with the U.S. patent office for a telephone design that used a water transmitter. That same morning, Bell's lawyer filed an application with the patent office for the telephone. There is a debate about who arrived first.
On
14 February 1876, Bell was in Boston. Hubbard, who was paying for the costs of Bell's patents, told his patent lawyer Anthony Pollok to file Bell's application in the U.S. Patent Office. This was done without Bell's knowledge. Patent Number 174,465 was issued to Bell on
7 March 1876 by the
U.S. Patent Office which covered "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."
Three days after his patent was issued, Bell experimented with a water transmitter, using an acid-water mixture. Vibration of the diaphragm caused a needle to vibrate in the water which varied the electrical resistance in the circuit. When Bell spoke the famous sentence "Mr Watson — Come here — I want to see you" into the liquid transmitter, Watson, listening at the receiving end in an adjoining room, heard the words clearly.
Continuing his experiments in Brantford, Bell brought a working model of his telephone home. On
3 August 1876, from the telegraph office in
Mount Pleasant five miles (eight km) away from Brantford, Alexander sent a tentative telegram indicating he was ready. With curious onlookers packed into the office as witnesses, faint voices were heard replying. The following night, he amazed his family and guests when a message was received at the Bell home from Brantford, four miles (six km) distant along an improvised wire strung up along telegraph lines, fences and ending up being laid through a tunnel. This time guests at the household distinctly heard people in Brantford reading and singing. These first long-distance transmissions clearly proved that the telephone could work over long distances.
Bell and his partners, Hubbard and Sanders, offered to sell the patent outright to Western Union for $100,000. The president of Western Union balked, countering that the telephone was nothing but a toy. Two years later, he told colleagues that if he could get the patent for $25 million he would consider it a bargain. By then the Bell company no longer wanted to sell the patent. Bell's investors would become
millionaires while he fared well from residuals and at one point, had assets nearly reaching one million dollars.
Bell began a series of public demonstrations and lectures in order to introduce the new invention to the scientific community as well as the general public. His demonstration of an early machine at the 1876 Centenary Exhibition in
Philadelphia,the following day, made the telephone the featured headline worldwide. Influential visitors to the exhibition included
Emperor Pedro II of
Brazil, and later Bell had the opportunity to personally demonstrate the invention to
William Thomson, a renowned Scottish scientist and even
Queen Victoria who had requested a private audience at her
Isle of Wight home; she called it "most extraordinary." The enthusiasm that surrounded Bell's public displays laid the groundwork for acceptance of the revolutionary device.
The
Bell Telephone Company was created in 1877, and by 1886, over 150,000 people in the U.S. owned telephones. Bell company engineers made numerous other improvements to the telephone which developed into one of the most successful products. In 1879, the Bell company acquired Edison's patents for the
carbon microphone from Western Union. This made the telephone practical for long distances, unlike Bell's voice-powered transmitter that required users to shout into it to be heard at the receiving telephone, even at short distances. On
25 January 1915, Alexander Graham Bell sent the first transcontinental telephone call, at 15 Day Street in
New York City, which was received by
Thomas Watson at 333 Grant Avenue in
San Francisco.
As is sometimes common in scientific discoveries, simultaneous developments can occur, as evidenced by a number of inventors who were at work on the telephone. Although many of these devices had common features that were incorporated in Bell's machine, none were successful in establishing priority over the original Bell patent. The Bell company lawyers successfully fought off a myriad of lawsuits generated initially around the challenges by Elisha Gray and
Amos Dolbear. On
13 January 1887, the Government of the United States moved to annul the patent issued to Bell on the grounds of fraud and misrepresentation. The prosecuting attorney was the Hon. George M. Stearns under the direction of the Solicitor General George A. Jenks. The Bell company decisively won the landmark case.
Over a period of 18 years, the Bell Telephone Company faced over 600 litigations from inventors claiming to have invented the telephone, never once losing a case. One such example was Italian inventor
Antonio Meucci who claimed in 1834 to have created the first working model of a telephone in
Italy. In 1876, Meucci took Bell to court in order to establish his priority. Meucci lost his case due to lack of material evidence of his inventions. Meucci's work, like many other inventors of the period, was based around earlier acoustic principles. However, due to the efforts of Italian American Congressman
Vito Fossella,
Resolution 269 the
U.S. House of Representatives on
11 June 2002 stated that Meucci's "work in the invention of the telephone should be acknowledged," even though this did not put an end to a still contentious issue. Overwhelmingly, modern scholars do not recognize the claims of acoustic devices such as Meucci's had any bearing on the development of the telephone.
The value of the Bell patent was acknowledged throughout the world, and when Bell had delayed the German patent application, the electrical firm of
Siemens & Halske (S&H) managed to set up a rival manufacturer of Bell telephones under their own patent. A series of agreements in other countries eventually consolidated a global telephone operation. The strain on Bell by his constant appearances in court necessitated by the legal battles, eventually resulted in his resignation from the company.
On
11 July 1877, a few days after the
Bell Telephone Company began, Bell married
Mabel Hubbard (1857-1923) at the Hubbard estate in
Cambridge, and shortly after, embarked on a year-long honeymoon in Europe. During the Bells' European honeymoon, Alec brought a handmade model of his telephone with him, making it a "working holiday." Although the courtship had begun years earlier, Alexander waited until he was financially secure before marrying. Although the telephone appeared to be an "instant" success, it was not initially a profitable venture and Bell's main sources of income were from lectures until after 1897. One unusual request exacted by his fiancée was that he use "Alec" rather than the family's earlier familiar name. From 1876, he would sign his name "Alec Bell." They had four children: Elsie May Bell (1878-1964) who married
Gilbert Grosvenor of
National Geographic fame; Marian Hubbard Bell (1880-1962) who was referred to as "Daisy"; and two sons who died in infancy.
In 1882, Bell became a
naturalized citizen of the United States. The Bell family maintained a residence in
Washington, DC, where Alec set up a laboratory. In 1915, he characterized his status as: "I am not one of those hyphenated Americans who claim allegiance to two countries." Despite this declaration, Bell has been claimed as a "native son" by
Canada, Scotland and the
United States. By 1885, a new summer retreat was contemplated. That summer, the Bells had a vacation on
Cape Breton Island in
Nova Scotia, spending time at the small village of
Baddeck. Returning in 1886, Bell started building an estate on a point across from Baddeck, overlooking
Bras d'Or Lake. By 1889, a large house, christened "The Lodge" was completed and two years later, a larger complex of buildings were begun that the Bells would name
Beinn Bhreagh(Gaelic:
beautiful mountain) after Alec's ancestral Scottish highlands. Bell would spend his final, and some of his most productive years in residence in both Washington, D.C. and
Beinn Bhreagh.
Until the end of his life Bell and his family would alternate between the two homes, but
Beinn Bhreagh would, over the next 30 years, become more than a summer home as Bell became so absorbed in his experiments that annual stays lengthened. Both Mabel and Alec became immersed in the Baddeck community and were accepted by the villagers as "their own." The Bells were still in residence at
Beinn Bhreagh when the
Halifax Explosion occurred on
6 December 1917. Mabel and Alec mobilized the community to help victims in Halifax.
Although Alexander Graham Bell is most often associated with the invention of the telephone, his interests were extremely varied. The range of Bell's inventive genius is represented only in part by the 18 patents granted in his name alone and the 12 he shared with his collaborators. These included 14 for the telephone and telegraph, four for the
photophone, one for the
phonograph, five for aerial vehicles, four for "hydroairplanes" and two for
selenium cells. Bell's inventions spanned a wide range of interests and included a metal jacket to assist in breathing, the
audiometer to detect minor hearing problems, a device to locate icebergs, investigations on how to separate salt from seawater, and work on finding alternative fuels.
Bell worked extensively in medical research and invented techniques for teaching speech to the deaf. 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 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.
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 flawlessly in tests but did not find the assassin's bullet partly because the metal bed frame the president was lying on disturbed the instrument, resulting in static. The president's surgeons, who were sceptical of the device, ignored Bell's requests to move the president to a bed not fitted with metal springs. Alternately, although Bell had detected a slight sound on his first test, the bullet may have lodged too deeply to be detected by the crude apparatus. Bell gave a full account of his experiments in a paper read before the
American Association for the Advancement of Science in August 1882.
The March 1906
Scientific American article by American
hydrofoil pioneer
William E. Meacham explained the basic principle of
hydrofoils and
hydroplanes. 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 assistant
Frederick W. "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 initial concepts were built as experimental models, including the
Dhonnas Beag, the first self-propelled Bell-Baldwin hydrofoil. The experimental boats were essentially proof-of-concept prototypes that culminated in the more substantial HD-4, powered by
Renault engines. A top speed of 54 miles per hour (87 km/h) was achieved, with the hydrofoil exhibiting rapid acceleration, good stability and steering along with 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 boat-building enabled him to make useful design changes to the HD-4. After the
First World War, work began again on the HD-4. Bell's report to the U.S. Navy permitted him to obtain two 350
horsepower (260
kW) engines in July 1919. On
9 September 1919, the HD-4 set a world's marine speed record of 70.86 miles per hour (114.04 km/h). This record stood for ten years.
Bell was a supporter of aerospace engineering research through the
Aerial Experiment Association (AEA), officially formed at Baddeck, Nova Scotia, in October 1907 at the suggestion of Mrs. Mabel Bell and with her financial support. The AEA was headed by Bell and the founding members were four young men: American
Glenn H. Curtiss, a motorcycle manufacturer who later was awarded the Scientific American Trophy for the first official one-kilometre flight in the
Western hemisphere and became a world-renowned airplane manufacturer;
Frederick W. 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.
In 1891, Bell began experiments to develop motor-powered heavier-than-air aircraft.
In 1898, Bell experimented with
tetrahedral 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.
The AEA's work progressed to heavier-than-air machines, applying their knowledge of kites to gliders. Moving to Hammondsport, the group then designed and built the
Red Wing, framed in bamboo and covered in red silk and powered by a small air-cooled engine. On
12 March 1908, the biplane lifted off on the first public flight in North America. The innovations that were incorporated into this design included a cockpit enclosure and tail rudder (later variations on the original design would add ailerons as a means of control). One of the AEA project's inventions, the
aileron, is a standard component of aircraft today. (The aileron was also invented independently by
Robert Esnault-Pelterie.) The
White Wing and
June Bug were to follow and by the end of 1908, over 150 flights without mishap had been accomplished. However, the AEA had depleted its initial reserves and only a $10,000 grant from Mrs. Bell allowed it to continue with experiments.
Their final aircraft design, the
Silver Dart embodied all of the advancements found in the earlier machines. On
23 February 1909, Bell was present as the
Silver Dart flown by J.A.D. McCurdy from the frozen ice of Lake Baddeck, made the first aircraft flight in Canada (and the British Empire). Bell had worried that the flight was too dangerous and had arranged for a doctor to be on hand. With the successful flight, the AEA disbanded and the
Silver Dart would revert to Baldwin and McCurdy who began the Canadian Aerodrome Company and would later demonstrate the aircraft to the Canadian Army.
Along with many very prominent thinkers and scientists of the time, Bell was connected with the
eugenics movement in the United States. In his lecture
Memoir upon the formation of a deaf variety of the human race presented to the
National Academy of Sciences on
13 November 1883 he noted that congenitally deaf parents were more likely to produce deaf children and tentatively suggested that couples where both parties were deaf should not marry. However, it was his hobby of in livestock breeding which led to his appointment to biologist
David Starr Jordan's Committee on Eugenics, under the auspices of the
American Breeders Association. The committee unequivocally extended the principle to man. From 1912 until 1918 he was the chairman of the board of scientific advisers to the
Eugenics Record Office associated with
Cold Spring Harbor 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. Organisations 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 U.S. had eugenics laws, and the
California laws were used as a model for eugenics laws in
Nazi Germany.
His ideas about people he considered defective centered on the deaf. This was because of 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 the use of
sign language to educate deaf students. His avowed goal was to eradicate the language and culture of the deaf so as to encourage them to assimilate into the hearing culture, for their own long-term benefit and for the benefit of society at large.
Although he supported what some 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, and his wife Mabel was deaf (though none of their children were).
In 1880, Bell received the Volta Prize of 50,000 francs ($10,000) for the invention of the telephone from L’
Académie française, representing the French government, in
Paris. Among the luminaries who judged were Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas, fils. The Volta Prize was established by Napoleon Banaparte in 1803 to honor Alessandro Volta, an Italian physicist noted for developing the battery. (The modern usage of the word "volt" is derived from his name.) Since he was reaching affluent circumstances himself, Bell used the money from the Prize to create a number of social structures in and around Washington, D.C. using the symbolic "Volta": the "Volta Fund," "Volta Laboratories" and "Volta Bureau."
In partnership with Gardiner Hubbard, Bell established the publication
Science in 1883. In 1888, Bell was one of the founding members of the
National Geographic Society and became its second president (1897-1904) and Regent of the
Smithsonian Institution (1898-1922). He was the recipient of many honours. The
French government conferred on him the decoration of the
Légion d'honneur (Legion of Honour); 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 meritorious achievement in the invention of the telephone."
Bell died of
pernicious anemia on
2 August 1922, at his private estate, Beinn Bhreagh, Nova Scotia, at age 75. While tending to her husband after a long illness, Mabel whispered, "Don't leave me." By way of reply, Bell traced the sign for "No" – and promptly expired.
Dr. Alexander Graham Bell was buried atop Beinn Bhreagh mountain overlooking Bras d'Or Lake. He was survived by his wife and his two daughters, Elisa May and Marion.
The bel (B) is a unit of measurement invented by
Bell Labs and named after Bell. The bel was too large for everyday use, so the
decibel (dB), equal to 0.1 B, became more commonly used as a unit for measuring sound intensity.
In the early 1970s, the 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 worldwide.
The
Royal Bank of Scotland £1 note was issued to mark the 150th Anniversary of the birth of Alexander Graham Bell on
3 March 1997.
Eric Walters'
The Hydrofoil Mystery (1999) sets a novel in Alexander Graham Bell's workshops, casting the hydrofoil as a new weapon of war being readied for use against German U-boats in the
First World War.
Bell was honoured 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.
Another musical tribute to Bell,
Alexander Graham Bell (2006) was written by the British songwriter and guitarist
Richard Thompson. The chorus reminds the listener that "of course there was the telephone, he'd be famous for that alone, but there's 50 other things as well from Alexander Graham Bell".
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.
There is a public grammar (K-8) school on the north side of Chicago named Alexander Graham Bell School. This school educates deaf, blind, mentally disabled, gifted and standard students.
;Notes
;Bibliography
* Alexander Graham Bell (booklet). Halifax, Nova Scotia: Maritime Telegraph & Telephone Limited, 1979.
* Bruce, Robert V. Bell: Alexander Bell and the Conquest of Solitude. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1990. ISBN 0-80149691-8.
* Black, Harry. Canadian Scientists and Inventors: Biographies of People who made a Difference. Markham, Ontario: Pembroke Publishers Limited, 1997. ISBN 1-55138-081-1.
* Boileau, John. Fastest in the World: The Saga of Canada's Revolutionary Hydrofoils. Halifax, Nova Soctia: Formac Publishing Company Limited, 2004. ISBN 0-88780-621-X.
* Dunn, Andrew. Alexander Graham Bell (Pioneers of Science series). East Sussex, UK: Wayland (Publishers) Limited, 1990. ISBN 1-8521-958-0.
* Eber, Dorothy Harley. Genius at Work: Images of Alexander Graham Bell. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1982. ISBN 0-7710-3036-3.
* Evenson, A. Edward. The Telephone Patent Conspiracy of 1876: The Elisha Gray - Alexander Bell Controversy. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland Publishing, 2000. ISBN 0-7864-0138-9.
* Gray, Charlotte. Reluctant Genius: Alexander Graham Bell and the Passion for Invention. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2006. ISBN 1-55970-809-3.
* Groundwater, Jennifer. Alexander Graham Bell: The Spirit of Invention. Calgary: Altitude Publishing, 2005. ISBN 1-55439-006-0.
* Grosvenor, Edwin S. and Wesson, Morgan. Alexander Graham Bell: The Life and Times of the Man Who Invented the Telephone. New York: Harry N. Abrahms, Inc., 1997. ISBN 0-8109-4005-1.
* Mackay, James. Sounds Out of Silence: A life of Alexander Graham Bell. Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing Company, 1997. ISBN 1-85158-833-7.
* MacLeod, Elizabeth. Alexander Graham Bell: An Inventive Life. Toronto: Kids Can Press, 1999. ISBN 1-55074-456-9.
* Matthews, Tom L. Always Inventing: A Photobiography of Alexander Graham Bell. Washington, DC: National Geographic Society, 1999. ISBN 0-7922-7391-5.
* Micklos, John Jr. Alexander Graham Bell: Inventor of the Telephone. New York: Harper Collins Publishers Ltd., 2006. ISBN 978-0-06-057618-9.
* Parker, Steve. Alexander Graham Bell and the Telephone(Science Discoveries series). New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1995. ISBN 0-7910-3004-0.
* Petrie, A. Roy. Alexander Graham Bell. Don Mills, Ontario: Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited, 1975. ISBN 0-88902-209-7.
* Phillips, Allan. Into the 20th Century: 1900/1910 (Canada's Illustrated Heritage). Toronto: Natural Science of Canada Limited, 1977. ISBN 0-9196-4422-8.
* Ross, Stewart. Alexander Graham Bell (Scientists who Made History series). New York: Raintree Steck-Vaughn Publishers, 2001. ISBN 0-7398-441-6.
* Town, Florida. Alexander Graham Bell. Toronto: Grolier Limited, 1988. ISBN 0-7172-1950-X.
* Tulloch, Judith. The Bell Family in Baddeck: Alexander Graham Bell and Mabel Bell in Cape Breton. Halifax: Formac Publishing Company Limited, 2006. ISBN 978-0-88780-713-8.
* Walters, Eric. The Hydrofoil Mystery. Toronto: Puffin Books, 1999. ISBN 0-14-130220-8.
* Webb, Michael, ed. Alexander Graham Bell: Inventor of the Telephone. Mississauga, Ontario, Canada: Copp Clark Pitman Ltd., 1991. ISBN 0-7730-5049-3.
* Winfield, Richard. Never the Twain Shall Meet: Bell, Gallaudet, and the Communications Debate. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 1987. ISBN 0-913580-99-6.
* Wing, Chris. Alexander Graham Bell at Baddeck. Baddeck, Nova Scotia: Christopher King, 1980.
;Further reading
* Bender, Lionel. Invention (Eyewitness Books series). London: Dorling Kindersley Books, 1991. ISBN 0-7737-2464-8.
* Coe, Lewis. The Telephone and Its Several Inventors: A History. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland Publishing, 1995. ISBN 0-7864-0138-9.
* Costain, Thomas. The Chord of Steel: Alexander Graham Bell and the Invention of the Telephone. Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1960.
*
Complete list of Bell patents
U.S. patent images in TIFF format
*
Improvement in Transmitters and Receivers for Electric Telegraphs, filed March 1875, issued April 1875 (multiplexing signals on a single wire)
*
Improvement in Telegraphy, filed
February 14 1876, issued
March 7,
1876 (Bell's first telephone patent)
*
Improvement in Telephonic Telegraph Receivers, filed April 1876, issued June 1876
*
Improvement in Generating Electric Currents (using rotating permanent magnets), filed August 1876, issued August 1876
*
Electric Telegraphy (permanent magnet receiver), filed
January 15 1877, issued
January 30 1877
*
Apparatus for Signalling and Communicating, called Photophone, filed August 1880, issued December 1880
*
Aerial Vehicle, filed June 1903, issued April 1904
*
*
The Story of Alexander Graham Bell, 1939 film reformatted for VCR tape, Don Ameche playing Bell, (1966) ISBN 0-7939-1251-2
*
Biography - Alexander Graham Bell, A&E DVD biography based on historical footage and still pictures of Bell, (2005)
Bell
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