Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) was the inventor of the telephone.[1] Born in Scotland, Bell invented the telephone in 1875 after he emigrated to the United States. Bell's mother was deaf, and he devoted his life to attempting to help the deaf. His invention of the telephone was simply a byproduct of his devotion to helping the deaf communicate.
As a boy, Bell was began reading and writing at a very early age, under the instruction of his deaf mother. He also attempted new techniques for speaking to her:[2]
By the age of 14, Bell invented a device that could produce human-like sounds. When he was 16, he was already teaching music and elocution at a boarding school. He later studied at the University of London, where he read German papers by the physicist Hermann Von Helmholtz. Bell, who did not understand German well, misinterpreted Von Helmholtz's thesis, On The Sensations of Tone, to say that vowel sounds could be produced from combining electrical tuning forks and resonators. He later described this as his "very valuable blunder," because Bell thought this meant that a wire could transmit vowel sounds.
After Bell emigrated to Canada, and then to the United States, he pursued his dream of carrying sound over a wire. By legend the first sentence spoken over the telephone was by Bell to his assistant Watson: "Watson, come here; I want you."
Bell founded American Bell in 1875 to develop and market his invention, which founded American Telephone & Telegraph as a subsidiary in 1885. AT&T, as it is now called, has undergone many changes since then but remains profitable today.
Alexander Graham Bell is also credited with the invention of the hydrofoil boat, the metal detector, and a predecessor to the iron lung.
Bell obtained 14 patents for the "telephone" and "telegraph", 4 for the "photophone", 1 for the "phonograph", 5 for the "aerial vehicles", 4 for the "hydroairplanes" and 2 for the "selenium cells".
Categories: [Technology] [Inventions] [American History] [American Inventions] [Scottish People] [Inventors] [Gilded Age] [Eugenicists]