The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-05-17
Nv ZOE BECKLEY

By LOE
 Washington, May 16-(Special)-W YOU have been through the capitol ana the east room of the White House ana bought an amorphous image of horse made from macerated paper money ana thrilled at the mural color orgy Of the congressional library and gazed at the now somewhat anomalous Russian an-- bassador's home and got the Improving statistics of the monument-when you have done all these things. there Ctiil remains to you one of Washington's most interesting sights"
 To see it you must explore the siun- brous district of Georgetown as far as Tbirtv-fifth street and Volta place. There, on opposite corners, stand very old b,ifding and a very new one. Between them, as if to personify the link con meeting past and present, you may see at almost any hour a tall, broad, nrisK' busy and distinguished looking man pass ing. He is hatless, hurrying, far 100 Interested in his own occupations to Know or care that you are observing him.
 The bareheaded, snowy-haired and bearded man is Alexander Graham Bell, whose Interesting toy of 40 years ago is now the little box on your wall rom which (for consideration of s9D you can talk from New York to San Fran cisco
 The old house is the former home or A. Melville Bell, father of Bell, or the Bell telephone, and now used by the latter as a workshop and office. The new building is the Volta bureau, built and en- dowed by the famous inventor as center for the dissemination of aid to the deaI' And it is the apple of his eye!
 ROMANCE LED TO INVENTION
 It is not a school. It is g. place to which anyone may write for help in teach- ing little children born deaf, or persons who, like Mabel Gardiner Bell, the great scientists wife, were robbed of their hearing by illness The bureau sends out vast quantities of instruction by mail and publishes a magazine to which both Dr. and Mrs. Graham Bell contribute ar- ticles.
 1 believe most people know Alexander Graham Bell solely as ''the inventor of the telephone" Yet this thing which revolutionized the world of commerce in the incredibly short term of one genera ton is but by-product of Bells scien- tifc research. His chief work has al- ways been the teaching of the deaf both to hear through their eyes" (by lip reading) and to develop the organs of speech.
 It is an old story, but full of romance, how Bell first started experimenting with electric currents, transmitters, vibrators and receivers in the hope of carrying speech from distance to his sweetheart, hao totally since babyhood
 I can't explain it technically, but as l understand the idea, it was to send the voice over a wire connecting at the other end with a device for recording either by taps or by marks made with feather point In a surface of lamp black the message in code.
 The use Of the eardrum itself to re- ceive the message was sort of after thought. If Bell had not worked it out for us perhaps the other men who for years fought the Bell patents on the claim of priority, would have invented the telephone for us. But Bell, inspired by his deaf sweetheart, turned the trick which annihilates distance and keeps people on isolated farms from going crazyl
 Gree the telephone was a commercial success Dr. Bell promptly dismissed it rom ms Ire ana went Ddck to HIS real work" of which this Volta bureau is the symbol.
 Not for s years" he told me, has the telephone meant anything to me. My interest ceased when it grew to commer- cial utility. It no longer needed me or i it. In fact, I won't have one of the things near me if I can help it. They're nuisancel
 LONGEVITY HIS STUDY~
 I'm much more interested in aviation and in the talking light and in the graphophone- photograph and"
 I couldn't help breaking in to ask what the talking light was, and Dr. Bell good -humoredly went into a painstaking explanation of an invention he considers more wonderful than the telephone, al though it has been passed over in the search for scientific utilities.
 It is "phototone" for transmitting