The Bismarck tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, N.D.) 1916-current, 1922-08-02
HAD FAILED RAPIDLY.

Washington, Aug. 2.-News of the
death of DR.. Alexander Graham Bell
at his summer place and laboratories
at Baddeck, Nova Scotia, came as a
shock to the scientists many friends
in Washington, although they knew
he had been f~,iing for several
months. At birthday luncheon
some months ago DR.. Bells friends
were surprised to see that he had
become feeble from age during the
last year and that his remarkable
vigor was fast disappearing. ...
Davis S. Fairchild, the agricultural
explorer, one of DR.. Bells son-in-
laws, telegraphed the Geographic So
ciety that the famous inventor died
at o'clock; this morning of aenemia.
Mrs. Fairchild, who was Marion Bell,
and Mrs. Bell, were with DR.. Bell
when the end came. DR.. Bells other
Mrs. Gilbert H.. Grosvenor
of Washington is. with her husband
in Brazil. % ,}'.-.. .g - ..,,,
No funeral arrangements have been
announced, but it is expected that DR..
Bells body will be brought to Wash
ingtOn for burial.
Alexander Graham. Bell lived to
see experiments which he began with
a dead mans ear less than fifty years
ago result in a. means of communica-
tion for millions Of long distance tel
ephone conversations daily in all
parts of the world. The possibili.,
of talking over wire, ridiculed then
as dream by almost everybody ex-
cept Bell, became during his life
time reality commonplace and mar.
vellous.
Means of communication had been
a hobby in the Bell 1amlly lon,
before the inventor of the telephone
was born. Two generations back,
Alexander Bell became noted for in
venting system for overcoming
stammering speech, while his son,
Alexander Melville Bell, father of the
inventor Of the telephone, perfected
4 system of visible speech.
With this heritage, the son, bor~
in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1s47, un-
dertook similar experiments Will,
still lad. lie constructed an arti-
fetal skull Of gutta-percha and In
dian rubber that would pronounce
several words in weird tone, when
blown into by hand bellows. At
The age of sixteen he became, like
his father, teacher of elocution,
and an instructor of deaf mutes.
Bell reached crisis in his life ut
the age of %, when he was threaten
ed with tuberculosis. The white
plague caused the death of his two
brothers and the Bell family mi
grated to Brantford, Canada.
A meeting at that time with Sir
Charles Wheatstone, the English in
ventor of the telegraph, fired the
young elocutionist with ambition to
invent musical, or multiple, tele-
graph, which eventually turned ou.
10 be telephone. .....
His father while giving lecture
in Boston, proudly mentioned t>a
sons success in teaching London
deaf mutes. This led the Boston
Board of Education to offer the young
Bell $500 to introduce his system in
The newly opened school for deaf
nutes. He was then "a years old,
md instantly became the educational
of the day. He was ap-
pointed a professor in Boston uni
and openec his instantly sue
.essful "School of Vocal Physiology"
Prefers lnventing.
But teaching interfered with his
nventing, and he soon gave up all
out two pupils. One of these was
Mabel Hubbard, of wealthy family.
She had lost her hearing and speech
n an attack of scarlet fever while
,aby. 1t was she who later became
Bells wife. ....
Bell spent the following thrcs
,ears in night work in cellar in
Salem, Mass. His money needs were
net by Gardiner G. Hubbard, his fu-
;ure father-in-law, .nd Thomas San-
lers, the owner of the cellar. AS he
worked he began to see the possibil-
ty of conveying speech over an cleo
rically charged wife-the telephone
He used dead mans ear for trans
hitter.
"If I can make a deaf mute talk"
Bell had declared, Il can make iron
ak"
His first success came while test
ne his instruments in his new quar-
ers in Boston. Thomas A. Watson,
Bells assistant, had struck a clock
spring at one end of the wire, and
Bell was electrified to hear the sound