New-York tribune., 1922-08-13

maker, yet none Is so distinctive a0G so unlike
the things that other inventors work at, as
the experiment which DIR. Bell, when only a
boy, carried on with his own Skye terrier.
The interest of the Bell boys--Alexander
Graham and his brother Melville-in the
mechanism of the voice was inspired by their
father, Alexander Melville Bell, a specialist in
phonetics. With his help they constructed an
autognaton--a model of the human head, phys
ioogically correct, with mouth of gutta percha,
tongue Of wood and throat of tin. 1t talked,
after fashion, but instead of encouraging the
embryo inventors to perfect its mechanism, 1T
gave them the idea of practcing on live ami
mals-the dog was the handiest object.
The fact that the shape of the human mouth
had nothing to do with the quality or volume
of sound produced was quickly noticed by Bell
and his brother. Persons with high palates
could talk just as well as those with low ones.
Mouths varied greatly in size, yet words
formed by them were just the same. Hence,
Bell concluded the principal thing was simply
possession of mouth of some sort, and with
that equipment, speech possible And as
the dog certainly had mouth, the inventors
concluded that he ought to be able to talk.
Experimenting with the Skye took lot Of
groundwork First it was necessary to teach
him when to talk and when not to. BY
steady training he came TO understand that
when Bell put his hands on his muzzle it was
time to growl, and when the hands were re-
moved, it was time to stop. The rumble Of
voice" coming out of the dogs throat was all
the operator had to start with but by opening
and closing the mouth several times while the
growing continued, Bell succeeded in produc-
ing the sylables mama -ma-ma-," as he had
done with the automaton.
The further details Of the dog experiment
were related by DR.. Bell himself about year
ago in an address to officials of the United
States Patent Office in Washington. Subse-
quently he wrote his speech for "The Ma
tional Geographic Magazine" Describing the
experiment, and how it was necessary to ma
nipulate the dogs mouth in order to get the
desired results, DR.. Bell wrote:
"The mouth proved to be too small to en-
able me to manipulate individual 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 pas
sageway at the back Of the mouth, and sue
cession of pushes of this character resulted in
the syllables 'ga-ga-ga-ga, etc.
"The simple growl was an approximation of
the vowel 'ah,' and this, followed by a grad
ual constructions and rounding of the labial
oriice by the hand, became converted into the
diphthong 'ow' in the word how (ah-oo),
and finally obtained the final element by
itself-an imperfect 'oo. The dogs reper-
tory finally consisted Of the vowels 'ah and
'oo,' the diphthong 'ow and the syllables
ma and ga
eve then proceeded to manufacture words
and sentences composed of these elements,
and the dogs final linguistic accomplishment
consisted in the production of the sentence
'Ow-ah-oo- gamama, which, by the exercise of
little imagination, readily passed muster for
How you, grand-mamma cows h-oo-ga-
mamaD.
"The dog soon learned that his business in
life was to growl while my hands were upon
his mouth and to stop growing the moment I
took them away, and we both of US became
quite expert in the production of the famous
sentence, How are you, grand-mama?
"The dog took quite bread-and- butter in
terest in the experiments, and often used to
stand upon his hind legs and try to say this
sentence by himself, but without manipula-
tion was never able to do anything more than
growl.
''The fame of the dog soon spread among
my fathers friends, and people came from
far and near to witness the performance"
All the inventions credited to Bell even the
telephone, only milestones in his life
long search for some device that his wife, deaf
from childhood, could enjoy. His supreme am
bition in life was to find way mechanically
TO register sound waves. in such way that
they could be heard" by the eye of his wife
The telephone, discovered incidentally in ex-
perimental work along this line, did not satisfy
the inventor because it was of no use to Mrs.
Bell. He continued his studies and eventually
worked out the photophone, device that trans
mits the human voice along a ray Of light
This still is in common use among the deaf,
and was adopted in many countries before the
coming of wireless telegraphy, to establish
communication over short distances between
ships and shore.
Bell realized fully that the telephone was not
perfect. He little dreamed, because of his
small knowledge of electricity when he began
his experiments, that the voice would some day
be carried by radio. But later in life he did
not hesitate to predict that eventually men