I admire Alexander Graham Bell because his work was an important contribution to the development of telecomunication. I would like to be as brilliant as he was, in his lifetime the thecnological advances that we have nowdays where not available, however he managed to do a graet deal of interesting proyects that where though of as imposible in his time. Nowdays all the thecnology that is available to us somehow limits our intelectual development. That being the main reason why I will think of Alexander Graham and his work, to help me think of improving our way of thinking.
Alexander Graham Bell (3 March 1847 – 2 August 1922) was an eminent
scientist,
inventor and
innovator who is widely credited with the invention of the
telephone.
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 Bell being awarded the first U.S. patent for the invention of the telephone in 1876. In reflection, Bell considered his most famous invention an intrusion on his real work as a scientist 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."
Many other inventions marked Bell's later life including
groundbreaking work in
hydrofoils and
aeronautics. In 1888, Alexander Graham Bell became one of the founding members of the
National Geographic Society.
Telephone
Main article:
Invention of the telephoneBy 1874, Bell's initial work on the harmonic telegraph had entered a formative stage with progress it made both at his new Boston "laboratory" (a rented facility) as well as at his family home in Canada a big success..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, even though he did not have the equipment needed to continue his experiments, nor the ability to create a working model of his ideas. However, 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 the two of them 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 necessary, not multiple reeds. This led to the "
gallows" sound-powered telephone, which was able to transmit indistinct, voice-like sounds, but not clear speech.
