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 greatly contributed to the development of the telecommunications industry in the United States.
Childhood and adolescence
Alexander Melville Bell, the father of the future inventor, is a professional philologist and author of a large-scale work on the art of eloquence. In particular, it is he who is credited with creating the Visible Speech system, which makes it possible to convey the sounds of oral human speech using special written symbols. 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 the voice and recitation skills ofson. At the age of thirteen, Alexander graduated from the Edinburgh Royal School, and a year later he moved to his grandfather in London. Here he actively studies the intricacies of oratory, reads thematic literature. At the age of sixteen, a talented young man becomes a teacher of eloquence and music at Weston House Academy. Alexander Bell never graduated from Edinburgh University.
Moving to America
Shortly after, two of Bell's brothers died of tuberculosis. Doctors advised Alexander to change the situation. He decides to move to Canada. In 1870, the whole family settled in the province of Ontario, in a town called Brantford.
Since 1871, Alexander Bell has lived in Boston and taught at a specialized school for deaf and dumb students. During his work as a teacher, the future scientist was actively looking for a way to demonstrate the articulation of speech sounds to the deaf. In particular, he tested an apparatus in which a special membrane vibrated 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 main discovery.
Talking Telegraph
In 1876, within the framework of the World Exhibition (Philadelphia), the scientist presented to the attention of the public an amazing apparatus, which he called the “talking telegraph”. This was the first telephone of Alexander Bell. Can you imagine the surprisemembers of the jury, when they were able to hear from the mouthpiece the famous monologue of the Prince of Denmark “To be or not to be?”, Which at the same time was read by the inventor himself in the next room. Needless to say, the jury's verdict regarding the first phone on the planet was unequivocal - to be?
Work on the possibility of broadcasting signals by telecommunication channels, the scientist began back in Scotland. While in America, he continued his developments. Many other interesting inventions contributed to the appearance of the world's first telephone.
For example, at a certain stage, Bell managed to create a unique electric piano that allows you to transmit the sounds of music through wires.
One day, the Western Union company announced a huge cash reward to anyone who would find a way to transmit several telegrams at the same time using only one pair of wires. The management sought to abandon additional telegraph lines, and Bell was able to offer them a suitable solution - with the help of his development, it became possible to transmit up to 7 telegrams at once!
In his scientific research, Bell actively collaborated with Thomas Watson, and the famous scientist from Boston D. Henry advised him on the laws of electricity.
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 early childhood, at the age of four, after she had been ill with scarlet fever. After the wedding ceremony, the newlyweds returned to Bell's homeland, to England. Herethe inventor actively told everyone about the amazing talking telegraph. The “telephone performance” was even given to the royal family, whose members were overjoyed.
Bell lived with his wife for 45 years. Throughout this considerable period, warm friendly relations have been maintained between them.
Success and recognition
After the well-known and rich companies refused to buy the rights to manufacture telephones, the scientist created the American Speaking Telephone Company, which after some time became the largest in the world and began to bring huge income. By March 1979, Alexander Bell and his wife received 15% of the total profit, and by 1883 their fortune had reached an impressive mark of one million dollars.
In 1880, the inventor received the Volta Prize. Bell spent the money he received on the development of a new gramophone project - one of the world's earliest sound recording systems, created jointly with Charles Sumner Tainter.
At the same time, he continued his work in the field of medicine. So, the University of Heidelberg awarded Bell with an honorary degree for his developments in the field of acoustic physiology.
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, he alth began to fail the scientist. Until his very last breath, his wife Mabel remained by his side. She would later write toher diary that Bell's last silent message was a barely perceptible shaking of the fingers of the hand 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, all phones, which at that time were more than 13 million, were turned off throughout Canada and the United States.
Interesting facts from the life of the inventor
Alexander Bell's biography is interesting down to the smallest detail. So, the famous scientist had a habit of working exclusively in the dark, at night. Sometimes this became the cause of disagreements and disputes between spouses. Understanding Mabel's anxieties, Bell repeatedly made desperate attempts to return to a "normal" daily routine, but none of them were successful.
And on August 15, 1877, a curious dispute took place between Alexander and his legendary contemporary Thomas Edison, which was eventually resolved in favor of the latter. Edison proved that the ideal greeting at the beginning of a telephone conversation is the word "hello", which in Russia was converted into the well-known "hello". The inventor of the telephone himself suggested using the word "ahoy", which translates as "Hey, who's there?".
It is also interesting that Bell himself did not like to use the phone - calls distracted him from his thoughts and work. But he could not talk to his mother or his wife - both of them were completely deaf.
