Alexander Graham Bell By: Nicole Najpaver

Early Life Alexander Graham Bell was born on March 3, 1847, in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was homeschooled by his nearly deaf mother. His grandfather and father were experts on the mechanics of voice and speech. By 16, he joined his father in working with the deaf, and soon was in charge of his fathers London operations.

In 1872, Alexander moved to Boston and established a school for the deaf. The following year, he became a professor in speech and vocal physiology at Boston University. While he was teaching, he experimented with a means of transmitting several telegraph messages at the same time, through one wire. He also experimented with many devices to help the deaf learn to speak.

The First Telephone In 1874, the idea of the first telephone formed in his mind. “If I could make a current of electricity vary in intensity precisely as the air varies in density during the production of sound, I should be able to transmit speech telegraphically.” Two years later he applied for a patent, which was granted on March 7th, 1876. On March 10, the first coherent complete sentence was transmitted in his laboratory; “Mr. Watson, come here; I want you.” By the summer of 1876, Bell was transmitting voice messages several miles long in Ontario.

Alexander Graham Bell’s patent for the telephone.

The first telephone diagram (on left) The first telephone (on right)

After the Telephone Bell offered to sell his patent to Western Union for $100,000, but they believed the telephone was just a “fad”. By 1878, Western Union’s opinion had changed and tried to get the patent for $25 million (which would have been cheap), but failed due to the creation of the Bell Telephone Company in 1877.

Not Just the Telephone Alexander Graham Bell continued to invent and come up with new ideas after the telephone. In 1880, Bell and his assistant, Charles Summer Tainter, transmitted wireless voice messages a distance of over 200 meters in Washington D.C. The voice message was carried by a light beam.

Bell patented the photophone. “This was two decades before the first radio messages were sent without wires and a century before optic fiber communications became commercially viable.”

Other Great Accomplishments In 1881 after President James Garfield was shot, Bell invented the metal detector to locate the bullet precisely. The metal detector worked in tests, but the bullet was too deep to be detected. Also, in 1888 Bell was one of the founders of the National Geographic Society, and in 1887 he became its second president.

His Death Alexander Graham Bell died at the age of 75 on August 2nd, 1922 in Nova Scotia, Canada.  He was ill for several months with complications from diabetes. In his honor, every phone in North America was silenced for his funeral.

Fun Facts More than 150,000 people owned telephones in the United States, in 1886. An American electrical engineer named Elisha Gray filed a patent on the same day as Bell covering the transmission of sounds telegraphically. (There was 600 lawsuits between the two of them, but Bell won) The unit of sound intensity, the bel, more usually seen as the decibel, was named after Bell.

Catalog Entry If someone was to google my concept on Alexander Graham Bell, I would like google to talk about his great accomplishments. I would also like for them to include facts other than facts about the telephone for people to become more intrigued about Alexander Graham Bell.