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Alexander Graham Bell
1847 - 1922
Alexander Graham Bell (3 March 1847 - 2 August 1922) was a
Scottish scientist, inventor and innovator. Throughout his early
life, Alexander Graham Bell was a British subject but 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. Born and raised
in Edinburgh, Scotland, he emigrated to Canada in 1870, and then
to the United States in 1871, becoming a U.S. citizen in 1882.
Bell would spend his final, and some of his most productive
years in residence in both Washington, D.C. and Beinn Bhreagh
(Gaelic: beautiful mountain), a summer retreat he built in Nova
Scotia, Canada. Recognized as an eminent scientist and inventor,
Alexander Graham Bell is most often associated with the
invention of the telephone. 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.
Alexander Graham Bell was 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. Although other inventors had
claimed the honor, the Bell patent remained in effect. 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. 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.
Early years
Alexander Graham Bell was born in Edinburgh Scotland on 3 March
1847. 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). 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.
First invention
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."
Early work with speech
From his early years, Aleck 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 reveled in mimicry and "voice tricks" akin to
ventriloquism that constantly entertained family guests. Aleck
was also deeply affected by his mother's gradual deafness (she
began to lose her hearing when Aleck 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. Aleck'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. 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.
Education
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 ten pounds per session. The following year,
he attended the University of Edinburgh, joining his older
brother Melville who was already enrolled there the previous
year; Aleck intended to write exams there 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 chords to
produce a crude-sounding "Ow ah oo ga ma ma" ("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."
Family tragedy
In 1865, when the Bell family moved to London, Aleck returned to
Weston House as an assistant master and in his spare hours,
continued experiments on sound using a minimum of laboratory
equipment. Throughout the fall and winter, his health faltered
mainly through exhaustion. His younger brother, Edward "Ted" was
similarly bed-ridden, suffering from tuberculosis. While Aleck
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, Aleck returned home in 1867. His older brother, "Melly"
had married and moved out. With aspirations to obtain a degree
at the University of London, Aleck 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 Aleck 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, Aleck
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. Making a swift judgement, Alexander Melville Bell
asked Aleck to arrange for the sale of all the family property,
conclude all of his brother's affairs (Aleck took over a last
student, curing a pronounced lisp) and join his father and
mother in setting out for the "New World." Reluctantly, Aleck
also had to conclude a relationship with Marie Eccleston, whom
he surmised was not prepared to leave England with him.
Canada
In 1870, at age 23, Aleck, 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, Aleck 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, Aleck 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, Aleck 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, Aleck 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 Aleck 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.
Work with the deaf
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, Alexander
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 Aleck 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, Alexander 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 endeavored 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, Alexander 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. Worse still, his health deteriorated as he
suffered severe headaches. Returning to Boston in fall 1873,
Alexander made a fateful decision to concentrate on his
experiments in sound.
Deciding to give up his lucrative private Boston practise,
Alexander 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." 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 Alexander'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.
Telephone
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.
That year, 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. Philipp Reis, a German
self-taught scientist and inventor, also worked on a version of
the telephone many years before Bell.
While working that summer in Brantford, Bell concentrated on his
"phonautograph," a pen-like machine that could draw shapes of
sounds on glass by tracing their vibrations. His preliminary
work on the device led to a "giant leap in logic," in that it
showed that sound travelled in waves and that it might be
possible to generate an electrical current that corresponded to
vibrations of sound. Transferring this spark of intuition to his
harmonic telegraph led Bell to consider that he could send an "undulatory"
current that could be converted into sounds.
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 early 1875, Bell visited the famous scientist Joseph
Henry, who was then director of the Smithsonian Institution, and
asked Henry's advice on an electrical multi-reed apparatus which
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 faced one crucial obstacle in that he did not
have the equipment needed to continue his experiments, nor the
ability to create a working model of his ideas. A chance meeting
between Bell and Thomas A. Watson, an experienced electrical
designer and mechanic at the electrical machine shop of Charles
Williams, changed all that.
With the benefit of his financial support, Bell was able to hire
Thomas Watson as his assistant. Bell and Watson experimented
with acoustic telegraphy in 1874 and 1875. 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. 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.
Later developments
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.
Competitors
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.
Family life
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 yearlong
honeymoon in Europe. Although the courtship had begun years
earlier, Alexander waited until he was financially secure before
marrying. 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.
Although the Bell family maintained a residence in Washington,
DC, where Alec would set up a laboratory, 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 after Alec's
ancestral Scottish highlands. Until the end of his life Alec 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."
Later inventions
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.
Metal detector
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.
Hydrofoils
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 boatbuilding 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.
Aeronautics
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.
Eugenics
Along with many very prominent thinkers and scientists of the
time, Bell was connected with the eugenics movement in the
United States. 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. Organizations 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
(none of their children were).
Awards and honours
In 1880, Bell received the Volta Prize which he used to fund the
Volta Laboratory in Washington, D.C. 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 honors. The French
government conferred on him the decoration of the Légion
d'honneur (Legion of Honor); the Académie française bestowed on
him the Volta Prize of 50,000 francs; 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."
Death
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.
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