BELL, Alexander Graham
(1847--1922), Scottish-born American scientist, inventor, and teacher
of the deaf, whose development of the telephone and contributions to
other inventions in aeronautics had profound effects on the shaping of
modern society.
Bell was born on March 3, 1847, in Edinburgh and educated at the
universities of Edinburgh and London. He immigrated to Canada in 1870
and to the U.S. in 1871. In the U.S. he began teaching deaf-mutes,
publicizing the system called visible speech. The system, which was
developed by his father, the Scottish educator Alexander Melville Bell
(1819--1905), shows how the lips, tongue, and throat are used in the
articulation of sound. In 1872 Bell founded a school for deaf-mutes in
Boston. The school subsequently became part of Boston University, where
Bell was appointed professor of vocal physiology. He became a
naturalized U.S. citizen in 1882.
Since the age of 18, Bell had been working on the idea
of transmitting speech electrically. In 1874, while working on a
multiple telegraph, he developed the basic ideas for the telephone. His
experiments finally proved successful on March 10, 1876, when the first
complete sentence was transmitted: "Watson, come here; I want you."
Demonstrations of Bell's telephone, notably at the 1876 Philadelphia
Centennial Exposition, introduced the telephone to the world and led to
the organization of the Bell Telephone Co. in 1877.
Bell's patent for the telephone (granted in 1876)
became the subject of litigation. American inventor Elisha Gray
contested it, but Bell's right to the patent was upheld by the Supreme
Court of the United States. Italian-American inventor Antonio Meucci
(1808--1889), who had tried to patent his telephone in 1871 but lacked
the funds to complete the application process, also became involved in
litigation; the case to annul Bell's patent was remanded for trial by
the Supreme Court, but Meucci's death in 1889 led to the end of legal
action.
In 1880 France bestowed on Bell the 50,000-franc Volta
Prize for his invention. With this money he founded the Volta
Laboratory in Washington, D.C., where, in that same year, he and his
associates invented the photophone, which transmits speech by light
rays. Other inventions include the audiometer, which measures acuity in
hearing; the induction balance, developed in 1881 and used to locate
metal objects in human bodies; and the first wax recording cylinder,
introduced in 1886. The cylinder, along with the flat wax disk, formed
the basis of the modern phonograph. In addition, Bell was one of the
cofounders of the National Geographic Society and he served as its
president from 1896 to 1904.
After 1895 Bell's interest turned mostly to
aeronautics; many of his subsequent inventions were first tested near
his summer home at Baddeck on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia. His
study of flight began with the construction of large kites, and he
eventually devised (1907) a kite capable of carrying a person. The
Aerial Experiment Association (1907--1909), a group that Bell founded
and that included among its five members the American inventor and
aviator Glenn Hammond Curtiss, explored the principles of aileron, a
movable section of an airplane wing controlling roll, and the tricycle
landing gear, which first permitted takeoff from and landing on a
flying field. Curtiss flew alone (May 1908) in an airplane designed and
built by Bell's group. Applying the principles of aeronautics to marine
propulsion, Bell's group started work on hydrofoil boats, which travel
above the water at high speeds. His final full-sized "hydrodrome,"
developed in 1917, reached speeds in excess of 113 km/hr (70 mph) and
for many years was the fastest boat in the world.
Bell's continuing studies on the causes and heredity of
deafness led to experiments in eugenics, including sheep breeding, and
to his book Duration of Life and Conditions Associated with Longevity (1918).
He died on Aug. 2, 1922, at Baddeck, where a museum containing many of
his original inventions is maintained by the Canadian government.