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Alexander
Graham Bell
by Kinlon
On March 3rd 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland, Alexander Graham Bell, the extraordinary man who invented so many things to make our lives easier was born. Alexander Graham Bell was the 2nd son of Professor Alexander Melville Bell and Eliza Grace Bell. Alexander had two brothers, the first was named Melville Bell and the second was named Edward Bell. At first Alexander and his brothers were homeschooled by their mother. She taught them mathematics, history, art and piano lessons. Alexander was a great pianist and music was very important to him since his mother was deaf. When he was a child his father was concerned about the smoke and dirt of a big city so he bought a new house near the seashore to get away from the big city and so they could get some fresh air. Young Alexander loved to study the new plants, animals and birds that he found along the shore. He also spent much of his time trying to invent new things. When Alexander was 11 years old, one of his father’s old students named Alexander Graham visited the family, Alexander liked the man’s name, so to show his independence from his father and since each one of his brothers had a middle name too, he added the name Graham to his own and was now called Alexander Graham Bell. Also when he was 11 he was sent away from home to study at the Royal Edinburgh High School. He did not do well there because he didn’t like the strict discipline and left school after four years without getting a diploma. His father was concerned about him doing so poorly in school that he wrote to his own father, Alexander’s grandfather, who suggested that he send Alexander to London to live with him. He was only 15 years old at this time and Alexander later wrote this was “the turning point of my whole career”. Alexander’s grandfather was very strict but Alexander respected him, he was able to influence him like no one else could. Alexander’s father was very impressed when he came to visit him in London a year later, he had changed from a clumsy unruly schoolboy into a well-dressed and self-confident young man. When Alexander was 16 he got a job as a teacher at Weston House in Elgin, which is north of Edinburgh. He taught there for one year, then he spent one year at Edinburgh University, where he studied Latin and Greek before returning to Weston House in 1865 to teach. At the young age of 18 Alexander was promoted to assistant master. During his time as a teacher he would spend hours in his room experimenting with his voice, touching his throat and cheeks while making different vowel sounds to feel the vibration. He continued the study of phonetics, the results of his experiments sometimes was different than his father’s ideas but he was making great progress of his own. In April of 1865 Alexander’s grandfather died. Two years later, terrible tragedy struck the Bell family again when Alexander’s brother, Edward, who had suffered from bad health most of his life had died of Tuberculosis. In 1868, Alexander enrolled in London University to study anatomy and physiology while helping his father to teach Visible Speech. During the same time, he started his own project of teaching and tutoring deaf children the basics of speech. One of his students, Mabel Hubbard would later become his wife. In 1870 Alexander’s other brother, Melville, died of the same lung disease. Wanting to start a new life for the family and afraid that Alexander would become ill, his father decided to move to North America after receiving enthusiastic results of his demonstrations in North America of his visible speech teachings. Reluctant to leave his life he had begun to make for himself, Alexander moved with his family out of obligation and continued teaching speech. In September of 1873 when he was only 26, Bell was chosen as the professor of Vocal Physiology at Boston University, the University had opened just four years earlier, it was first university in the United States to accept women as students. During this time at the University, he met the parents of some of his students that later financed his experiments. Mr. Thomas Sanders was a rich Boston businessman and Mr. Gardiner Hubbard was an important lawyer. In his spare time, Alexander also liked to perform experiments to improve the telegraph. He knew if he could make a telegraph that can send and received more than one messages at a time, he would make a name for himself. He wanted fame and fortune. He tried very hard, but his lack of electrical knowledge kept his progress slow. He met up with Thomas Watson, who was a brilliant electrician, at an electronics store where Mr. Watson worked as an assistant. Alexander’s luck was changing. Mr. Sanders and Mr. Hubbard help financed Alexander’s work and he was able to hire Mr. Watson to further his experimentation to improve on the telegraph. On February 25, 1875, he patented a device called “autograph telegraph” which made dots and dashes on a piece of paper. By June 2, 1875, Alexander accidentally stumbled on a discovery of Electromagnetic induction. He found that a piece of magnetized metal could generate an electric current if it was placed near a wire. This discovery would be the basic principle of the telephone. He also thought that maybe a diaphragm would work better than metal strips for this device. All these discoveries would later make the telephone what it is today. On March 7, 1876, Alexander was granted one of the most valuable patents in history, the Telephone. Many people who said they were the first for this invention tried to sue him. No one had working models except Alexander. Eventually, the lawsuits had failed and Alexander won. With the help of Mr. Hubbard and Mr. Sanders, the Bell Telephone company was founded on July 9,1877. Bell retired at the young age of 33 and resigned from the Bell Telephone. He was very rich but he never stop wanting to invent. He was awarded the prestigious Volta Prize for science by the French Government. He used the prize money to set up a new company, the Volta Laboratory in Washington. He helped improve the phonograph and he designed many types of kites. One of the very light but strong kites he invented was the tetrahedral kite. He also designed successful airplanes like the June Bug and Silver Dart. He also designed a high-speed boat call the hydrofoil, which, can move by skimming the surface of water. Alexander Graham Bell continued working on inventions all through his life until he died on August 2, 1922 at the age of 75. Sources: Alexander Graham Bell by Struan Reid, Heinemann Library, Chicago,
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