Frostburg mining journal. [volume] (Frostburg, Md.) 1871-1913, 1896-12-26
ORIGIN OF THE HELLO
INVENTION OF THE TELEPHONE, AS
TOLD BY ITS AUTHOR.

DIR. Bell, Like His Father, Was Interested
In Efforts to Instruct Deaf N.utcs-While
Engaged In This Line of Work the Teie-
phone Was Suggested to His Mind.
The story of how the telephone came
to be invented was told by DR.. Alexan-
der Graham Bell during his attendance
OF the meeting of the American Associ-
alton to Promote the Teaching Of Speech
to the Deaf, held at Mount Airy. DR..
Bells father was an elocutionist in
England and well known as q corrector
of defects in utterance, rs his grandfa-'
Their had also been. His father had de-
vised method of representing the &C
ton of the vocal organs by symbols,
similar to those used in chemistry. In
like manner letters representing the va
rious organs of speech, with figures at
tachcd indicating the positions of those
organs, would represent certain sounds
or spoken words. A person placing his
tongue, teeth, lips and palate in the po-
sition indicated by certain formula
would produce u definite sound. The
use of such a system for the instruction
of deaf mutes was not overlooked by
DR.. Bells father, and experiments were
made in little school in London. DR..
Bell became interested in the subject
and developed method of teaching the
deaf to speak His father had lectured
in this country, and in this way the
system had come to the knowledge Of
the deaf and dumb institutions in Bos-
tnp md Of 10 in,
that city, and i'll 1871 the board of edu-
cation invited DR.. Bell to see what he
could do in the Boston School For the
Deaf. He accepted the invitation and
put tho system in practice there with
very great success, and it was intro
duced in one institution after another
throughout the country.
DR.. Bell did not at that time believe
it was possible for deaf mutes to under
stand speech by looking at the mouth of
the speaker The mechanism of speech
was he thought, too complicated for
that. He therefore set to work to in
vent an apparatus which would repre-
sent speech to the eye as it was spoken
by throwing picture of the vibrations
Oh the screen. He commenced his eXper
iments with Koenig's manometric flame
apparatus, which, by means of a vibrat-
ing diaphram, stretched on q piece of
wood divided into two parts, and Sc
ries of mirrors produced a band of light
with wave effects, according to the
sound uttered. The flame was too fee
BILE to be photographed. Dr.. Bell then
turned his attention to another appara-
tus, called phonetograph, in which
was stretched membrane, against
which person spoke and which car
ried little pencil over smoked glass,
which made Il curved line that could
easily be photographed.
He made many hundreds Of tracings,
but unfortunately they did not CORE
spond with the flame pictures before
described. and he attributed the trouble
to the clumsiness of the apparatus. He
therefore mapped out changes in the
construction of his phonetograph and
thought he saw in his draft rude anal
ogy to the construction of the human
ear. Instead of bones actuated by a
membrane, as in the ear, he had lever
of wood moved by q membrane. He
therefore concluded to modify the shape
to correspond with the human ear and
went to distinguished aurist in Bos-
ton, Clarence A. Blake, who suggested
his experimenting with an actual hui
man ear. DR.. Blake got an ear and dis
sected it for DR.. Bell so as to expose the
membrane and the little bones. The doc
tor attached pencil to the bone called
the malleus, moistened the membrane
with glycerin and water and construct
ed an outer ear. With this, beautiful
tracings were made on the smoked glass.
The tracings, however, were different
from what he had before produced.
While he was engaged upon the above
line of search at the Institution For the
Deaf, he was also developing an inven-
ton out of which he expected to make
some money-viz, an electrical multi
pie telegraph by which he could send
many messages simultaneously over one
wire. DR.. Bell simplified this apparatus
greatly. He noticed that when half a
dozen were operating together there
was a resultant electrical effect, and
that but one sending magnet was neces-
sary to produce all the sounds. Further
CONSIDERATION cOIN lllm tDdG ne
could not only send any number Of mu-
steal tones simultaneously, but sounds
Of any kind. His familiarity with the
nature of speech had taught him that
the term equality of sound" means
really chord of different musical tones
having different intensities, and he
could conceive how sound of any kind
whatever, even words, might be trans
mitted if one of these reeds could be
moved in front Of an electro magnet in
the resultant way in which the air is
moved when a sound is uttered. His
experiments in vibrations had taught
him the form of the sound waves. The
problem was to make a mass of steel
vibrate in the way the air does. The
problem was i'll his mind at the time he
was making the experiments with the
human ear, before described.
The thought suddenly struck him
that there was great disproportion in
mass between the bones of the ear and
the membrane that connected them
that these bones We're, relatively to the
membrane, very heavy and very mass
i've. Why, then, could not the piece of
iron or steel be moved by attaching it
to heavier and sitter membrane, of
the present telephone form. The prob
lem was solved. 1t will thus be seen
that the telephone was the result of two
separate lines of thought. -St. Louis