Evening star., 1922-03-03
ALEXANDER G.BELL
!! HAS 18TH BIRTHDAY
Inventor of Telephone Tells
How He Taught Dog
to Speak.

enty-fifth birthday anniversary to-
day in Cocoanut Grove. Fla. DR.. Bell
has been in Florida for some time and
his friends in Washington do not
know when lie Will return.
! Telephone companies have two spe-
cial kinds of yanities to contend with
among subscribers. One is possessed
by those who desire distinctive num-
bers and the other by those who seek
exclusiveneSs or would avoid possible
annoyance by not having their names
in the directory at all. The latter
are known as unlisted" telephones.
of which in Washington alone there
are more than a thousand
The National Geographic Society,
which has been DEPRESSING A bit from
its accustomed paths to study the
subject. has found, however, that the
inventor of the telephone Possesses
it. the Geographic Society points out
that the father OF the telephone ap-
pears thus lin the Washington tele-
phone directory:
Bell. a. Graham. 1891 Conn. ave.
Franklin IS"
The Geographic Society, in connec-
ton with Dr. Bells birthday. also is
the authority for the statement that
the inventor. who still works in his
la boratory daily. often until or {
y tIoth IL! lHe aSSeTleu
estly the other day TO a group of Of
ficials OF the United States patent Of
fee:
Il rather think that you know more
about the telephone today than / do"
5000 Patents Since.
He then called attention to the more
than 5000 patents relating to telephones
since he obtained the original patent Of
The Geopranbic SocIetv a1so opotes
from communication in which DR.. Bell
asserts that his invention OF the teie
phone really began with his grandfather.
Alexander Bell of London. who died the
year the civil war ended. OF his grand
father. DR.. Bell writes:
He was an .elocutionist and q cor
rector of defective utterance. He was
the first in the family TO take up the
STUDY of the mechanism of speech with
the object of correcting defects of
speech by explaining to his pupils the
correct positions of the vocal organs in
uttering the sounds that were defec-
tive"
! DR.. Bell then recounts the boyish ex-
periments he made with vocal utter
ance. including an attempt to make A
dog talk. Continuing his boyhood
"reminiscences he writes:
My father. Alexander Melville Bell
of Edinburgh, Scotland, was also an
elocutionist and corrector OF defective
utterance.
Interested in Mouths.
Il was always much interested iR
my fathers examinations of the
mouths of his elocutionary pupils.
They differed in an extraordinary de-
gree in size and shape, and yet all
these variations seemed to be quite
consistent with perfect speech: 1
then began to wonder whether there
was anything in the mouth of a dog
n
menced to make experiments with an
intelligent Skye terrier We possessed.
BY the application of suitable
doses of food material, the dog was
legs and growl continuously while l
manipulated his mouth, and stop
growing when 1 took my hands
away. L took his muzzle in my hands
and opened and closed the jaws a
number of times in succession. This
resulted in the production Of the syl-
liable mama -na-ma,' etc, S in the
case of the talking machine
THE mouth proved to be too small
to enable me to manipulate individ-
ual parts of the tongue, but upon
pushing upward between the bones
Of the lower jaw, near the throat. L
found it possible to completely close
the passageway at the back of the
mouth. and a succession Of pushes Of
this character resulted in the syl-
Repertoire of Sounds.
"The simple growl was an approx =
nation of the vowel an and this,
followed by a gradual construction
and rounding of the labial orifice by
the hand. became converted into the
diphthong 'ow. as in the word how
(2h-ool, and We soon obtained the
final element by itself-an imperfect
! 90 The dogs repertoire of SOUNDS
| finally consisted of the vowels am
and 'oo.' the diphthong 'ow,' and the
syllables ma and ga.
I'VE then proceeded to manufacture
| words and sentences composed OF
| these elements, and the dogs hnal
accomplishment consisted
in the production of the sentences
'Cpw-ah-oo- -gamama, which by this
exercise of a little imagination readi-
! ly passed muster for How are you,
grandmamma' (Ow-ah-oo- -gamama)?
| The dog soon learned that his buSi-
ness in life was to growl while my
hands were upon his mouth, and 10
stop growing the moment 1 took
them away, and We both of us became
| quite expert in the production OF the
| famous sentences, How are you.
grandmammag'
THE dog took quite bread-and- :
! butter interest in the experiments
| and often used to stand UP on his
| hind legs and try to say this sentence
| by himself, but without manipulation
was never able to do anything more
/ than grow1.
"The fame of the dog soon spread
among my fathers friends. and peo-
ple came from far and near to wit
| ness the performance. This is the
only foundation for the newspaper
| stories that 1 had once succeeded in
teaching dog TO speak"