The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1910-08-07

A-'Iio anu cIf Charles Wheat
stone, who did far more than they a,,e,.
knew to forward Bell in the dirac+;a, .
Of the telephone.
EIHS was the president of the Lon |
don Pathological Society. Also. no WIS
the translator of the famous hook an !
" The Sensations of Tone written b1- |
HelmhoItz, who, in the period from 1871 |
to 1894 made Berlin the world !
tor the study of the physical sciences, |
10 It happened that when Bell ran 10 !
Ellis as young enthusiast and told
his experiments, Ellis informed him tba-
Helmholtz had done the same thinqs
several years before and done them
more completely. He brought Bell to
ms house and showed him what Helm
holtz had done-hOw he had kent INN
lng-torks in vibration by the power of
electro magnets, and blended the tones
of several tuning-forks together to pro
duce the complex quality of the human
voice.
Now, Helmholtz had not been irving
to invent telephone, nor any sort of
a message -carrier His aim was TO noint
out the physical basis of music. and
nothing more. But this fact that an
tromagnet would set a tuning fork
hummlng was new to Bell and very at
tractive. 1t appealed at once to him
as student of speech If a tuning
fork could be made to sing by a mag
net or an electrified wire, why would
it not be possible to make musical
telegraph-a telegraph with a piano
keyboard, so that many messages could
( be sent at once over a single wire9
/ Unknown to Bell. there were several
/ dozen inventors then at work upon this
/ problem, which proved in the end to
! be very elusive. But it gave him at
least starting point. and he forthwith
| commenced his quest of the telephone
/ As he was then in England. his first
step was naturally to visit Sir Charles
| Wheatstone, the best known English
expert on telegraphy. Sir Charles had
earned his title by many Inventions
He was a simple, natural scientist, and
treated Bell with the utmost kindness.
He showed him an ingenious talking
machine that had been made by Baron
de Kempelin. At this time Bell was
twenty-five and unknown; Wheatstone
was sixty-seven and famous. And the
personality of the veteran scientist
made so vivid a picture upon the mind
of the impressionable young Bell that
the grand passion of science became
henceforth the master-motif of his life.
From this summit of glorious ambi-
ton he was thrown, several months
later. into the depths of grief and de-
spondency The White Plague had
come to the home in Edinburgh and
taken away his two brothers. More. 1t
had put its mark upon the young inven-
tor himself Nothing but a change of
climate said his doctor, would put him
out of danger. And so, to save his life
he and his father and mother set sail
from Glasgow and came TO the small
Canadian town of Brantford, where fou
wear he fought down his tendency tc
= consumption. and satisfied his nervous
: energy by teaching 'EVisible Speech
70 tribe of Mohawk Indians.
A Rv this time it had become evident
; both to his parents and to his friends
- that voung Graham was destined to be
= come some sort of a creative genius
, He was tall and supple. with pale com
/, plexion, large nose, full lips, jet-blact
ewes. and iet-black hair. brushed hlgf
In +emperameut he was a true sclenth(
Bohemian. with the ideals of savan'
and the disposition of an artist. Ht
+ was wholly a man of enthusiasts, more
devoted to ideas than to people; anC
e less likely TO master his own thoughts
I than to be mastered by them. He hat
: no ebrawdness. in any commercial sense
r and very little knowledge of the SINAI
d practical details of ordinary living. II,
J. was ALWAYS intense, always absorbed
When he applied his mind to a prob
r lem II became at once an enthralllnG
4 arena. in which there went whirlng
n eb3riot-race of ideas and InventlV'
0 fancies.
r He had been fascinated from boyhoo'
e by his fathers system OF ' SID
4 Speech. - He knew it so well That Il
e once astonished a professor OF orlehIa
q languages by repeating correctly sen
q tence of Sanscrit that had been write (,
IN s.VisibIe Speech characters. Nhll
- he had been living in London MS mos
~, absorbing enthusiasm had been the III
II .+rrotfon of a class Of deaf-mutes, VIII
t aouId be trained to talk, he believed, b.
( means of the "Visible Speech alpha
II bet He was so deeply impressed b
e fine nroeress made by these pupils, an
+ bv the pathos of their dumbness, Una
n when he arrived in Canada he was III
P dilemma as to which Of these two task
Is vas the more important-the teaehiH
.e of deaf-mutes or the invention OF
IT musical telegraph.
n At thi, point, and before Ben had Dc Dc
At gun to experiment with his TELEGRAPH
- The scene Of the story shifts from { al
.s ada a. Massachusetts, 1t appears Una
.s his father. while Ieeturing IN 15oS1ol
;. had mentioned Graham : exploits WI
: class Of deaf-mutes; and soon aIl .e
ward the Boston Board Of Educate 1ca6 }:
II wrote to Graham, offering him s20 w.
aa would come to Boston and lntrooQ u
1[ his system Of teaching in a scnooi /,
nj aaaf-mutes that had been recently oPel
BE- ed. The Young man loytuuy agree,
- aaa ON the first Of April, 1871, crosse
III the line and became for the TeIaa'Ll"e
in of his life an American.
For the next two years his teLe4Ia -,
Is work was laid aside, if not torgot1ei
a- lii success as a teacher Of deat-mutt
.o was sudden and overwhelming. - W.