Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1896-10-26

DR.. Bell, Like His Father. Was Interested
In Efforts To Instruct Deaf Mutes-Whils
Engaged In This Line of Work the Telc-
phone Was Suggested to His Mind.
The story IF how the telephone came
to be invented was told by Dr. Alexan-
der Graham Bell during his attendance
on 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
Engla and we'll known as q corrector
OF defects in utterance, as his GRANDPA
Their had also been. his father Lad de-
sised method Of representing tine ac-
ton of the vocal organs by symbols.
similar to those used in chemistry. In
like manner letters representing the VA
nous organs of speech, with figures at
tached 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 a certain formula
would produce q definite sound. The
use Of such a system tor the instruction
Of deaf mutes was not overlooked by
DIR. Bells father. and experiments Were
made III . little school in London. DIR.
Bell became interested in the subject
and developed q method Of teaching the
deaf to speak. His father had lecturcd
i'll this country, and in this way the
system had come to the knowledge OF
the deaf and dumb institutions in Bos-
ton and OF the prominent educators in
that city, and in 1877 the board Of edu-
cation invited DIR. Bell to see what he
could do in the Boston School For the
Deaf. He accepted the invitation and
| put the system i'll practice there with
very great success, and IL was intro
duced in one institution after another
throughout the country.
DIR. Bell did not ut 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 AZ it was spoken
by throwing picture of tine vibrations
on the screen. He commenced his exper.
iments with Koenig's manometric flame
apparatus, which, by means of vibrat.
ing diaphram. stretched on a piece oi
wood divided into two parts, and Il Sc
ries of mirrors produced u band of light
with wave effects, according to the
sound uttered. The fame Was too fee.
BILE to be photographed. DIR. Bell then
turned his attention to another appara
tus, called a phoneto2raph, in which
was stretched u membrane, against
which q person spoke and which car.
ried a little pencil over a smoked glass,
which made "a curved line that could
easily be photogra phed.
He made many hundreds of tracinss
but unfortunately they did not core
spond with the flame pictures before
described. and he attributed the trouble
to the clumsiness of the apparatus. II,
therefore mapped out changes i'm TN,
construction Of his phonetograph ant
thought he saw in his draft rude anal
ogy to the construction Of the human
ear. Instead Of bones actuated by {
membrane, as in the ear, he had leve,
of wood moved by membrane. II,
therefore concluded to modify the shap,
|
went to a distinguished 2urist in Bos
ton, Clarence A. Blake. who suggested
his experimenting with an actual hu
man ear. DIR. Blake got an ear and dis
sected it for DIR. Bell so as to expose tn,
membrane and the little bones. The doc
tor attached pencil to the bone Gale,
the malleus, moistened the membran,
with glycerin and water and construct
ed an outer car. With this, beautiful
tracings were made on tho smoked glass
The tracings, however, were difforcn
from what he had before produced.
While he was engaged upon the abov
line Of search at the Institution For tin
Deaf, he was also developing an iuven
ton out Of which he expected To max
some money-yiz, an electrical multi
pie telegraph, by which he could sem
many messages simultaneously over ON
wire. DR.. Bell simplified this apparatu
greatly. He noticed that when half
dozen were operating together Their
was a resultant electrical effect, an,
tina. but one sending magnet was nec..s
sary to produce all the sounds. Furthe
consideration convinced him that d
could net only send any number Of mu
steal tones simultaneously. but sound
of any kind His familiarity with til
nature Of speech had taught him tina
the term equality of sound mean
really a chord of different musical tone
having different intensities, and D.
: could conceive how sound of any kin
, | whatever, even words, might be trans
mitted if one Of these reeds could L
1 moved in front of an electro magnet i
the resultant way in which the air
| Moved when q sound is uttered. Hi
experiments in vibrations had laugh
him the form of the sound waves Til
: problem was to make Q mass Of ste,
vibrate in the way tine air does Tn
problem was in his mind at the time h
was making the experiments with tn
human ear, before described.
The thought suddenly struck hir
that there was great disproportion i
mass between the bones of the ear An
the membrane that connected them
that these bones were, relatively to tn
membrane, very heavy and very mas: