Alexander_Graham_Bell

qas: question: What is Bell most famous for inventing?
answers: text: telephone

question: What year did Bell die?
answers: text: 1922

question: What was special about his telephone?
answers: text: practical

question: What is Bell's full name?
answers: text: Alexander Graham Bell

question: What is Bell famous for inventing?
answers: text: telephone
context: Alexander Graham Bell (March 3, 1847 – August 2, 1922) was a Scottish-born[N 3] scientist, inventor, engineer and innovator who is credited with patenting the first practical telephone.

qas: question: What were his relatives known for working on?
answers: text: elocution and speech

question: What was interesting about his mother and wife?
answers: text: deaf

question: What year did Bell get the patent for his telephone?
answers: text: 1876

question: In what country did Bell patent his telephone?
answers: text: U.S.

question: What did Bell never put in his study?
answers: text: telephone
context: Bell's father, grandfather, and brother had all been associated with work on elocution and speech, and both his mother and wife were deaf, profoundly influencing Bell's life's work. His research on hearing and speech further led him to experiment with hearing devices which eventually culminated in Bell being awarded the first U.S. patent for the telephone in 1876.[N 4] Bell considered his most famous invention an intrusion on his real work as a scientist and refused to have a telephone in his study.[N 5]

qas: question: How many people started the National Geographic Society?
answers: text: 33

question: Bell was the second president of what magazine?
answers: text: National Geographic Society

question: What field did Bell later work in, apart from optical telecommunications and aeronautics?
answers: text: hydrofoils

question: What year did Bell become President of the National Geographic magazine?
answers: text: 1898
context: Many other inventions marked Bell's later life, including groundbreaking work in optical telecommunications, hydrofoils and aeronautics. Although Bell was not one of the 33 founders of the National Geographic Society, he had a strong influence on the magazine while serving as the second president from January 7, 1898 until 1903.

qas: question: What city was Bell born in?
answers: text: Edinburgh

question: What material marks Bells family  home as his birthplace?
answers: text: stone

question: What disease did his two brothers die of?
answers: text: tuberculosis

question: At what age did Bell ask for a middle name?
answers: text: 10

question: What did those close to him call Bell?
answers: text: Aleck
context: Alexander Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on March 3, 1847. The family home was at 16 South Charlotte Street, and has a stone inscription marking it as Alexander Graham Bell's birthplace. He had two brothers: Melville James Bell (1845–70) and Edward Charles Bell (1848–67), both of whom would die of tuberculosis. His father was Professor Alexander Melville Bell, a phonetician, and his mother was Eliza Grace (née Symonds). Born as just "Alexander Bell", at age 10 he made a plea to his father to have a middle name like his two brothers.[N 6] For his 11th birthday, his father acquiesced and allowed him to adopt the name "Graham", chosen out of respect for Alexander Graham, a Canadian being treated by his father who had become a family friend. To close relatives and friends he remained "Aleck".

qas: question: What sort of things did Bell collect as a child?
answers: text: botanical specimens

question: Who was Bell's closest friend as a child?
answers: text: Ben Herdman

question: What sort of mill did Bell's neighbors run?
answers: text: flour

question: Bell's dehusking machine combined what with nail brushes?
answers: text: rotating paddles

question: What was Bell's reward for his dehusking machine?
answers: text: small workshop
context: As a child, young Bell displayed a natural curiosity about his world, resulting in gathering botanical specimens as well as experimenting even at an early age. His best friend was Ben Herdman, a neighbor whose family operated a flour mill, the scene of many forays. Young Bell asked what needed to be done at the mill. He was told wheat had to be dehusked through a laborious process and at the age of 12, Bell built a homemade device that combined rotating paddles with sets of nail brushes, creating a simple dehusking machine that was put into operation and used steadily for a number of years. In return, John Herdman gave both boys the run of a small workshop in which to "invent".

qas: question: Bell was gifted at art, poetry, and what?
answers: text: music

question: What did Bell succeed at without being taught?
answers: text: piano

question: How old was Bell when his mom started to go deaf?
answers: text: 12

question: What part of his mom's head would Bell talk into?
answers: text: forehead

question: What did Bell research because of his mom's deafness?
answers: text: acoustics
context: From his early years, Bell showed a sensitive nature and a talent for art, poetry, and music that was encouraged by his mother. With no formal training, he mastered the piano and became the family's pianist. Despite being normally quiet and introspective, he reveled in mimicry and "voice tricks" akin to ventriloquism that continually entertained family guests during their occasional visits. Bell was also deeply affected by his mother's gradual deafness, (she began to lose her hearing when he was 12) and learned a manual finger language so he could sit at her side and tap out silently the conversations swirling around the family parlour. He also developed a technique of speaking in clear, modulated tones directly into his mother's forehead wherein she would hear him with reasonable clarity. Bell's preoccupation with his mother's deafness led him to study acoustics.

qas: question: Where did Bell's uncle live?
answers: text: Dublin

question: What was Bell's father most famous for publishing?
answers: text: The Standard Elocutionist

question: Bell learned to accurately read lips even without knowing what?
answers: text: pronunciation

question: The Standard Elocutionist was printed how many times?
answers: text: 168
context: His family was long associated with the teaching of elocution: his grandfather, Alexander Bell, in London, his uncle in Dublin, and his father, in Edinburgh, were all elocutionists. His father published a variety of works on the subject, several of which are still well known, especially his The Standard Elocutionist (1860), which appeared in Edinburgh in 1868. The Standard Elocutionist appeared in 168 British editions and sold over a quarter of a million copies in the United States alone. In this treatise, his father explains his methods of how to instruct deaf-mutes (as they were then known) to articulate words and read other people's lip movements to decipher meaning. Bell's father taught him and his brothers not only to write Visible Speech but to identify any symbol and its accompanying sound. Bell became so proficient that he became a part of his father's public demonstrations and astounded audiences with his abilities. He could decipher Visible Speech representing virtually every language, including Latin, Scottish Gaelic, and even Sanskrit, accurately reciting written tracts without any prior knowledge of their pronunciation.

qas: question: Who taught Bell when he was very young?
answers: text: father

question: What school did Bell leave at 15?
answers: text: Royal High School

question: What was Bell's favorite subject?
answers: text: biology

question: How old was Bell when he became a "pupil-teacher"?
answers: text: 16
context: As a young child, Bell, like his brothers, received his early schooling at home from his father. At an early age, however, he was enrolled at the Royal High School, Edinburgh, Scotland, which he left at age 15, completing only the first four forms. His school record was undistinguished, marked by absenteeism and lacklustre grades. His main interest remained in the sciences, especially biology, while he treated other school subjects with indifference, to the dismay of his demanding father. Upon leaving school, Bell travelled to London to live with his grandfather, Alexander Bell. During the year he spent with his grandfather, a love of learning was born, with long hours spent in serious discussion and study. The elder Bell took great efforts to have his young pupil learn to speak clearly and with conviction, the attributes that his pupil would need to become a teacher himself. At age 16, Bell secured a position as a "pupil-teacher" of elocution and music, in Weston House Academy, at Elgin, Moray, Scotland. Although he was enrolled as a student in Latin and Greek, he instructed classes himself in return for board and £10 per session. The following year, he attended the University of Edinburgh; joining his older brother Melville who had enrolled there the previous year. In 1868, not long before he departed for Canada with his family, Bell completed his matriculation exams and was accepted for admission to the University of London.

qas: question: In what year did Bell's father take him to see an automaton?
answers: text: 1863

question: Who created the automaton Bell saw?
answers: text: Sir Charles Wheatstone

question: What did the automaton mimic?
answers: text: human voice

question: Bell built his own automaton with who?
answers: text: Melville

question: What part of the automaton did Bell create?
answers: text: skull
context: His father encouraged Bell's interest in speech and, in 1863, took his sons to see a unique automaton, developed by Sir Charles Wheatstone based on the earlier work of Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen. The rudimentary "mechanical man" simulated a human voice. Bell was fascinated by the machine and after he obtained a copy of von Kempelen's book, published in German, and had laboriously translated it, he and his older brother Melville built their own automaton head. Their father, highly interested in their project, offered to pay for any supplies and spurred the boys on with the enticement of a "big prize" if they were successful. While his brother constructed the throat and larynx, Bell tackled the more difficult task of recreating a realistic skull. His efforts resulted in a remarkably lifelike head that could "speak", albeit only a few words. The boys would carefully adjust the "lips" and when a bellows forced air through the windpipe, a very recognizable "Mama" ensued, to the delight of neighbors who came to see the Bell invention.

qas: question: What living thing did Bell use in his research?
answers: text: Skye Terrier

question: What was Bell's pet's name?
answers: text: Trouve

question: What phrase did people believe Bell's dog could say?
answers: text: How are you grandma?

question: Bell investigated resonance using what?
answers: text: tuning forks

question: What did Bell  instruct his dog to do?
answers: text: growl continuously
context: Intrigued by the results of the automaton, Bell continued to experiment with a live subject, the family's Skye Terrier, "Trouve". After he taught it to growl continuously, Bell would reach into its mouth and manipulate the dog's lips and vocal cords to produce a crude-sounding "Ow ah oo ga ma ma". With little convincing, visitors believed his dog could articulate "How are you grandma?" More indicative of his playful nature, his experiments convinced onlookers that they saw a "talking dog". However, these initial forays into experimentation with sound led Bell to undertake his first serious work on the transmission of sound, using tuning forks to explore resonance.

qas: question: Who did Bell get to read his work?
answers: text: Alexander Ellis

question: What country was doing work similar to Bell's?
answers: text: Germany

question: Who wrote The Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music?
answers: text: Hermann von Helmholtz

question: How old was Bell when he wrote his paper?
answers: text: 19

question: What fictional character is based on Alexander Ellis?
answers: text: Professor Henry Higgins
context: At the age of 19, he wrote a report on his work and sent it to philologist Alexander Ellis, a colleague of his father (who would later be portrayed as Professor Henry Higgins in Pygmalion). Ellis immediately wrote back indicating that the experiments were similar to existing work in Germany, and also lent Bell a copy of Hermann von Helmholtz's work, The Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music.

qas: question: By what means did Bell conclude vowel sounds could be made?
answers: text: electrical

question: What else besides vowels did Bell decide could be created?
answers: text: consonants

question: What language was Bell happy he couldn't read?
answers: text: German

question: What did Bell think he didn't know well enough?
answers: text: electricity
context: Dismayed to find that groundbreaking work had already been undertaken by Helmholtz who had conveyed vowel sounds by means of a similar tuning fork "contraption", he pored over the German scientist's book. Working from his own erroneous mistranslation of a French edition, Bell fortuitously then made a deduction that would be the underpinning of all his future work on transmitting sound, reporting: "Without knowing much about the subject, it seemed to me that if vowel sounds could be produced by electrical means, so could consonants, so could articulate speech." He also later remarked: "I thought that Helmholtz had done it ... and that my failure was due only to my ignorance of electricity. It was a valuable blunder ... If I had been able to read German in those days, I might never have commenced my experiments!"[N 7]

qas: question: In what year did the Bell's move to London?
answers: text: 1865

question: Where did Bell go in work in 1865?
answers: text: Weston House

question: What building was Bell in?
answers: text: Somerset College

question: How did Bell sign his letters?
answers: text: A.G. Bell

question: In what year did Bell move home?
answers: text: 1867
context: In 1865, when the Bell family moved to London, Bell returned to Weston House as an assistant master and, in his spare hours, continued experiments on sound using a minimum of laboratory equipment. Bell concentrated on experimenting with electricity to convey sound and later installed a telegraph wire from his room in Somerset College to that of a friend. Throughout late 1867, his health faltered mainly through exhaustion. His younger brother, Edward "Ted," was similarly bed-ridden, suffering from tuberculosis. While Bell recovered (by then referring to himself in correspondence as "A.G. Bell") and served the next year as an instructor at Somerset College, Bath, England, his brother's condition deteriorated. Edward would never recover. Upon his brother's death, Bell returned home in 1867. His older brother Melville had married and moved out. With aspirations to obtain a degree at University College London, Bell considered his next years as preparation for the degree examinations, devoting his spare time at his family's residence to studying.

qas: question: What city is Susanna E. Hull located in?
answers: text: South Kensington

question: What sort of student attended Susanna E. Hull?
answers: text: deaf

question: Who died in 1870?
answers: text: Melville

question: Where did Bell's father go to recover from illness?
answers: text: Newfoundland

question: What did Bell help his final student get rid of?
answers: text: lisp
context: Helping his father in Visible Speech demonstrations and lectures brought Bell to Susanna E. Hull's private school for the deaf in South Kensington, London. His first two pupils were "deaf mute" girls who made remarkable progress under his tutelage. While his older brother seemed to achieve success on many fronts including opening his own elocution school, applying for a patent on an invention, and starting a family, Bell continued as a teacher. However, in May 1870, Melville died from complications due to tuberculosis, causing a family crisis. His father had also suffered a debilitating illness earlier in life and had been restored to health by a convalescence in Newfoundland. Bell's parents embarked upon a long-planned move when they realized that their remaining son was also sickly. Acting decisively, Alexander Melville Bell asked Bell to arrange for the sale of all the family property,[N 8] conclude all of his brother's affairs (Bell took over his last student, curing a pronounced lisp), and join his father and mother in setting out for the "New World". Reluctantly, Bell also had to conclude a relationship with Marie Eccleston, who, as he had surmised, was not prepared to leave England with him.

qas: question: How old was Bell when he went to Canada?
answers: text: 23

question: What boat did Bell travel on?
answers: text: SS Nestorian

question: In what Canadian city did Bell first arrive?
answers: text: Quebec City

question: What city did Bell arrive at by train?
answers: text: Paris

question: How many acres was the farm the Bell's bought in Canada?
answers: text: 10.5
context: In 1870, at age 23, Bell, his brother's widow, Caroline (Margaret Ottaway), and his parents travelled on the SS Nestorian to Canada. After landing at Quebec City the Bells transferred to another steamer to Montreal and then boarded a train to Paris, Ontario, to stay with the Reverend Thomas Henderson, a family friend. After a brief stay with the Hendersons, the Bell family purchased a farm of 10.5 acres (42,000 m2) at Tutelo Heights (now called Tutela Heights), near Brantford, Ontario. The property consisted of an orchard, large farm house, stable, pigsty, hen-house, and a carriage house, which bordered the Grand River.[N 9]

qas: question: What building did Bell use as a workshop?
answers: text: carriage house

question: What did Bell call his special spot in the back of the property?
answers: text: dreaming place

question: What Native American language did Bell learn?
answers: text: Mohawk

question: What special status did Bell get in the Mohawk tribe?
answers: text: Honorary Chief

question: Where was the Six Nations Reserve located?
answers: text: Onondaga
context: At the homestead, Bell set up his own workshop in the converted carriage house near to what he called his "dreaming place", a large hollow nestled in trees at the back of the property above the river. Despite his frail condition upon arriving in Canada, Bell found the climate and environs to his liking, and rapidly improved.[N 10] He continued his interest in the study of the human voice and when he discovered the Six Nations Reserve across the river at Onondaga, he learned the Mohawk language and translated its unwritten vocabulary into Visible Speech symbols. For his work, Bell was awarded the title of Honorary Chief and participated in a ceremony where he donned a Mohawk headdress and danced traditional dances.[N 11]

qas: question: What did Bell rework to send music?
answers: text: melodeon

question: What is a melodeon a kind of?
answers: text: pump organ

question: When did Bell go to Montreal?
answers: text: 1871

question: Who went with Bell to Montreal?
answers: text: father

question: How did Bell's reworked melodeon send music?
answers: text: electrically
context: After setting up his workshop, Bell continued experiments based on Helmholtz's work with electricity and sound. He also modified a melodeon (a type of pump organ) so that it could transmit its music electrically over a distance. Once the family was settled in, both Bell and his father made plans to establish a teaching practice and in 1871, he accompanied his father to Montreal, where Melville was offered a position to teach his System of Visible Speech.

qas: question: Who ran the Boston School for Deaf Mutes?
answers: text: Sarah Fuller

question: What name does the Boston School for Deaf Mutes go by now?
answers: text: the public Horace Mann School for the Deaf

question: What month did Bell go to Boston?
answers: text: April

question: Bell trained who in Boston?
answers: text: instructors

question: What city was the American Asylum in?
answers: text: Hartford
context: Bell's father was invited by Sarah Fuller, principal of the Boston School for Deaf Mutes (which continues today as the public Horace Mann School for the Deaf), in Boston, Massachusetts, to introduce the Visible Speech System by providing training for Fuller's instructors, but he declined the post in favor of his son. Traveling to Boston in April 1871, Bell proved successful in training the school's instructors. He was subsequently asked to repeat the program at the American Asylum for Deaf-mutes in Hartford, Connecticut, and the Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton, Massachusetts.

qas: question: How many wires did Bell send a signal through?
answers: text: 1

question: For  his system to work, Bell had to change what about each code?
answers: text: pitch

question: Bell needed to fix both the transmitter and what?
answers: text: receiver

question: Where was Bell's home?
answers: text: Brantford
context: Returning home to Brantford after six months abroad, Bell continued his experiments with his "harmonic telegraph".[N 12] The basic concept behind his device was that messages could be sent through a single wire if each message was transmitted at a different pitch, but work on both the transmitter and receiver was needed.

qas: question: What city did Bell decide to return to?
answers: text: Boston

question: In what year did Bell open his own school?
answers: text: 1872

question: How many people were in Bell's first class?
answers: text: 30

question: Which of Bell's students is the most well known?
answers: text: Helen Keller
context: Unsure of his future, he first contemplated returning to London to complete his studies, but decided to return to Boston as a teacher. His father helped him set up his private practice by contacting Gardiner Greene Hubbard, the president of the Clarke School for the Deaf for a recommendation. Teaching his father's system, in October 1872, Alexander Bell opened his "School of Vocal Physiology and Mechanics of Speech" in Boston, which attracted a large number of deaf pupils, with his first class numbering 30 students. While he was working as a private tutor, one of his most famous pupils was Helen Keller, who came to him as a young child unable to see, hear, or speak. She was later to say that Bell dedicated his life to the penetration of that "inhuman silence which separates and estranges." In 1893, Keller performed the sod-breaking ceremony for the construction of the new Bell's new Volta Bureau, dedicated to "the increase and diffusion of knowledge relating to the deaf".

qas: question: Bell's goal was to instruct the deaf to speak and not use what?
answers: text: sign language

question: What would happen so some children's hands in schools?
answers: text: tied behind their backs

question: In what light to many pro-deaf people see Bell?
answers: text: negative

question: What was the only language many deaf people had?
answers: text: signing
context: Several influential people of the time, including Bell, viewed deafness as something that should be eradicated, and also believed that with resources and effort they could teach the deaf to speak and avoid the use of sign language, thus enabling their integration within the wider society from which many were often being excluded. In several schools, children were mistreated, for example by having their hands tied behind their backs so they could not communicate by signing—the only language they knew—in an attempt to force them to attempt oral communication. Owing to his efforts to suppress the teaching of sign language, Bell is often viewed negatively by those embracing Deaf culture.

qas: question: With what school did Bell get his next teaching job?
answers: text: Boston University School of Oratory.

question: What was Bell's discipline?
answers: text: Vocal Physiology and Elocution

question: What did Bell do late at night?
answers: text: experiments

question: What health condition did Bell start to have?
answers: text: headaches

question: In what year did Bell start to focus on research into sound?
answers: text: 1873
context: In the following year, Bell became professor of Vocal Physiology and Elocution at the Boston University School of Oratory. During this period, he alternated between Boston and Brantford, spending summers in his Canadian home. At Boston University, Bell was "swept up" by the excitement engendered by the many scientists and inventors residing in the city. He continued his research in sound and endeavored to find a way to transmit musical notes and articulate speech, but although absorbed by his experiments, he found it difficult to devote enough time to experimentation. While days and evenings were occupied by his teaching and private classes, Bell began to stay awake late into the night, running experiment after experiment in rented facilities at his boarding house. Keeping "night owl" hours, he worried that his work would be discovered and took great pains to lock up his notebooks and laboratory equipment. Bell had a specially made table where he could place his notes and equipment inside a locking cover. Worse still, his health deteriorated as he suffered severe headaches. Returning to Boston in fall 1873, Bell made a fateful decision to concentrate on his experiments in sound.

qas: question: Bell's two remaining students were "Georgie" Sanders and who?
answers: text: Mabel Hubbard

question: What was Georgie's father's name?
answers: text: Thomas Sanders

question: What disease made Mabel deaf?
answers: text: scarlet fever

question: How old was Mabel when she became deaf?
answers: text: 15
context: Deciding to give up his lucrative private Boston practice, Bell retained only two students, six-year-old "Georgie" Sanders, deaf from birth, and 15-year-old Mabel Hubbard. Each pupil would play an important role in the next developments. George's father, Thomas Sanders, a wealthy businessman, offered Bell a place to stay in nearby Salem with Georgie's grandmother, complete with a room to "experiment". Although the offer was made by George's mother and followed the year-long arrangement in 1872 where her son and his nurse had moved to quarters next to Bell's boarding house, it was clear that Mr. Sanders was backing the proposal. The arrangement was for teacher and student to continue their work together, with free room and board thrown in. Mabel was a bright, attractive girl who was ten years Bell's junior, but became the object of his affection. Having lost her hearing after a near-fatal bout of scarlet fever close to her fifth birthday,[N 13] she had learned to read lips but her father, Gardiner Greene Hubbard, Bell's benefactor and personal friend, wanted her to work directly with her teacher.

qas: question: On what material did the phonautograph operate?
answers: text: smoked glass

question: What kind of reed did Bell want to play with?
answers: text: metal

question: What did Bell believe the reeds would turn the signal into?
answers: text: sound

question: What instrument is a phonautograph similar to?
answers: text: pen

question: In what year was Bell really working on his telegraph?
answers: text: 1874
context: By 1874, Bell's initial work on the harmonic telegraph had entered a formative stage, with progress made both at his new Boston "laboratory" (a rented facility) and at his family home in Canada a big success.[N 14] While working that summer in Brantford, Bell experimented with a "phonautograph", a pen-like machine that could draw shapes of sound waves on smoked glass by tracing their vibrations. Bell thought it might be possible to generate undulating electrical currents that corresponded to sound waves. Bell also thought that multiple metal reeds tuned to different frequencies like a harp would be able to convert the undulating currents back into sound. But he had no working model to demonstrate the feasibility of these ideas.

qas: question: What business was William Orton in charge of?
answers: text: Western Union

question: In 1874 the telegraph was known as the what of commerce?
answers: text: nervous system

question: What was the primary motivation for not building new telegraph lines?
answers: text: cost

question: Thomas Edison and what other scientist were already asked to work on a better telegraph?
answers: text: Elisha Gray
context: In 1874, telegraph message traffic was rapidly expanding and in the words of Western Union President William Orton, had become "the nervous system of commerce". Orton had contracted with inventors Thomas Edison and Elisha Gray to find a way to send multiple telegraph messages on each telegraph line to avoid the great cost of constructing new lines. When Bell mentioned to Gardiner Hubbard and Thomas Sanders that he was working on a method of sending multiple tones on a telegraph wire using a multi-reed device, the two wealthy patrons began to financially support Bell's experiments. Patent matters would be handled by Hubbard's patent attorney, Anthony Pollok.

qas: question: Who did Bell go to see in 1875?
answers: text: Joseph Henry

question: Who ran the Smithsonian in 1875?
answers: text: Joseph Henry

question: What was Henry's reply to Bell's statement that he lacked information to complete his telegraph?
answers: text: Get it!

question: Who did Bell meet in 1874?
answers: text: Thomas A. Watson

question: What kind of business did Watson work at?
answers: text: electrical machine
context: In March 1875, Bell and Pollok visited the famous scientist Joseph Henry, who was then director of the Smithsonian Institution, and asked Henry's advice on the electrical multi-reed apparatus that Bell hoped would transmit the human voice by telegraph. Henry replied that Bell had "the germ of a great invention". When Bell said that he did not have the necessary knowledge, Henry replied, "Get it!" That declaration greatly encouraged Bell to keep trying, even though he did not have the equipment needed to continue his experiments, nor the ability to create a working model of his ideas. However, a chance meeting in 1874 between Bell and Thomas A. Watson, an experienced electrical designer and mechanic at the electrical machine shop of Charles Williams, changed all that.

qas: question: Who did Bell take on to work with him?
answers: text: Thomas Watson

question: What month and day did Watson and Bell have a breakthrough?
answers: text: June 2

question: How many reeds did Bell conclude he needed?
answers: text: 1

question: What name was given to the telephone that sort of worked?
answers: text: gallows

question: Who gave money to Bell and Watson?
answers: text: Sanders and Hubbard
context: With financial support from Sanders and Hubbard, Bell hired Thomas Watson as his assistant,[N 15] and the two of them experimented with acoustic telegraphy. On June 2, 1875, Watson accidentally plucked one of the reeds and Bell, at the receiving end of the wire, heard the overtones of the reed; overtones that would be necessary for transmitting speech. That demonstrated to Bell that only one reed or armature was necessary, not multiple reeds. This led to the "gallows" sound-powered telephone, which could transmit indistinct, voice-like sounds, but not clear speech.

qas: question: What did Bell promise to split with his financers?
answers: text: U.S. profits

question: In what country other than the U.S. did Bell try to patent his telegraph?
answers: text: Britain

question: Which country did Bell first try to get a patent?
answers: text: Britain

question: Who did Bell ask to get a patent in Britain?
answers: text: George Brown

question: What kind of telegraph did Bell create?
answers: text: acoustic
context: In 1875, Bell developed an acoustic telegraph and drew up a patent application for it. Since he had agreed to share U.S. profits with his investors Gardiner Hubbard and Thomas Sanders, Bell requested that an associate in Ontario, George Brown, attempt to patent it in Britain, instructing his lawyers to apply for a patent in the U.S. only after they received word from Britain (Britain would issue patents only for discoveries not previously patented elsewhere).

qas: question: What material did Elisha Gray use to convey sound?
answers: text: water

question: On what date did Gray and Bell both put in for a patent?
answers: text: February 14, 1876

question: On what day did Bell get to Washington?
answers: text: February 26

question: What office in Washington did Bell and Gray visit?
answers: text: U.S. Patent Office

question: What sort of machine did Bell and Gray both try to patent at the same time?
answers: text: telephone
context: Meanwhile, Elisha Gray was also experimenting with acoustic telegraphy and thought of a way to transmit speech using a water transmitter. On February 14, 1876, Gray filed a caveat with the U.S. Patent Office for a telephone design that used a water transmitter. That same morning, Bell's lawyer filed Bell's application with the patent office. There is considerable debate about who arrived first and Gray later challenged the primacy of Bell's patent. Bell was in Boston on February 14 and did not arrive in Washington until February 26.

qas: question: What number is Bell's patent?
answers: text: 174,465

question: On what date did Bell get his patent?
answers: text: March 7, 1876

question: Bell's patent was for the method and what for transmitting vocal and other sounds telegraphically?
answers: text: apparatus

question: On what day did Bell go back to Boston?
answers: text: March 7, 1876

question: Bell sketched a design that looked like the work of who?
answers: text: Gray
context: Bell's patent 174,465, was issued to Bell on March 7, 1876, by the U.S. Patent Office. Bell's patent covered "the method of, and apparatus for, transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically ... by causing electrical undulations, similar in form to the vibrations of the air accompanying the said vocal or other sound" [N 16] Bell returned to Boston the same day and the next day resumed work, drawing in his notebook a diagram similar to that in Gray's patent caveat.

qas: question: What kind of transmitter did Bell put in his telephone?
answers: text: liquid

question: How did Bell refer to his partner in his well known line?
answers: text: Mr. Watson

question: What did the vibrations cause to change?
answers: text: electrical resistance
context: On March 10, 1876, three days after his patent was issued, Bell succeeded in getting his telephone to work, using a liquid transmitter similar to Gray's design. Vibration of the diaphragm caused a needle to vibrate in the water, varying the electrical resistance in the circuit. When Bell spoke the famous sentence "Mr. Watson—Come here—I want to see you" into the liquid transmitter, Watson, listening at the receiving end in an adjoining room, heard the words clearly.

qas: question: Bell implemented Gray's design as a what?
answers: text: proof of concept

question: Bell stopped using the liquid-based method after what month?
answers: text: March

question: Bell used his own design in all public demonstrations and what?
answers: text: commercial use
context: Although Bell was, and still is, accused of stealing the telephone from Gray, Bell used Gray's water transmitter design only after Bell's patent had been granted, and only as a proof of concept scientific experiment, to prove to his own satisfaction that intelligible "articulate speech" (Bell's words) could be electrically transmitted. After March 1876, Bell focused on improving the electromagnetic telephone and never used Gray's liquid transmitter in public demonstrations or commercial use.

qas: question: What part of the telephone was investigated by the patent officer?
answers: text: variable resistance

question: When did Bell put in his prior patent?
answers: text: February 25, 1875

question: What liquid did Bell use in his first application?
answers: text: mercury
context: The question of priority for the variable resistance feature of the telephone was raised by the examiner before he approved Bell's patent application. He told Bell that his claim for the variable resistance feature was also described in Gray's caveat. Bell pointed to a variable resistance device in Bell's previous application in which Bell described a cup of mercury, not water. Bell had filed the mercury application at the patent office a year earlier on February 25, 1875, long before Elisha Gray described the water device. In addition, Gray abandoned his caveat, and because he did not contest Bell's priority, the examiner approved Bell's patent on March 3, 1876. Gray had reinvented the variable resistance telephone, but Bell was the first to write down the idea and the first to test it in a telephone.

qas: question: Who declared himself an alcoholic?
answers: text: Zenas Fisk Wilber

question: In what war did Wilber and Bailey fight together?
answers: text: Civil War

question: How much did Wilber say Bell gave him in order to look at Gray's paperwork?
answers: text: $100

question: What did Bell only admit to knowing in a letter?
answers: text: technical details
context: The patent examiner, Zenas Fisk Wilber, later stated in an affidavit that he was an alcoholic who was much in debt to Bell's lawyer, Marcellus Bailey, with whom he had served in the Civil War. He claimed he showed Gray's patent caveat to Bailey. Wilber also claimed (after Bell arrived in Washington D.C. from Boston) that he showed Gray's caveat to Bell and that Bell paid him $100. Bell claimed they discussed the patent only in general terms, although in a letter to Gray, Bell admitted that he learned some of the technical details. Bell denied in an affidavit that he ever gave Wilber any money.

qas: question: From what city did Bell send his first message?
answers: text: Mount Pleasant

question: Bell sent messages over wires hooked onto telegraph lines and what?
answers: text: fences

question: What did the group at the Bells house hear other people doing?
answers: text: reading and singing
context: Continuing his experiments in Brantford, Bell brought home a working model of his telephone. On August 3, 1876, from the telegraph office in Mount Pleasant five miles (eight km) away from Brantford, Bell sent a tentative telegram indicating that he was ready. With curious onlookers packed into the office as witnesses, faint voices were heard replying. The following night, he amazed guests as well as his family when a message was received at the Bell home from Brantford, four miles (six km) distant, along an improvised wire strung up along telegraph lines and fences, and laid through a tunnel. This time, guests at the household distinctly heard people in Brantford reading and singing. These experiments clearly proved that the telephone could work over long distances.

qas: question: How much did Bell et al. try to sell his patent for?
answers: text: $100,000

question: Who did Bell et al. try to sell his patent to?
answers: text: Western Union

question: What did the President think the telephone was, such that he refused to buy the patent?
answers: text: a toy

question: How much the the President of Western Union want to pay for the patent later on?
answers: text: $25 million
context: Bell and his partners, Hubbard and Sanders, offered to sell the patent outright to Western Union for $100,000. The president of Western Union balked, countering that the telephone was nothing but a toy. Two years later, he told colleagues that if he could get the patent for $25 million he would consider it a bargain. By then, the Bell company no longer wanted to sell the patent. Bell's investors would become millionaires, while he fared well from residuals and at one point had assets of nearly one million dollars.

qas: question: In what city was the 1876 Centennial Exposition?
answers: text: Philadelphia

question: What important person saw the telephone at the Centennial Exposition?
answers: text: Emperor Pedro II

question: Pedro II was the Emperor of what Country?
answers: text: Brazil

question: Which Queen did Bell present his invention to?
answers: text: Victoria
context: Bell began a series of public demonstrations and lectures to introduce the new invention to the scientific community as well as the general public. A short time later, his demonstration of an early telephone prototype at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia brought the telephone to international attention. Influential visitors to the exhibition included Emperor Pedro II of Brazil. Later Bell had the opportunity to demonstrate the invention personally to Sir William Thomson (later, Lord Kelvin), a renowned Scottish scientist, as well as to Queen Victoria, who had requested a private audience at Osborne House, her Isle of Wight home. She called the demonstration "most extraordinary". The enthusiasm surrounding Bell's public displays laid the groundwork for universal acceptance of the revolutionary device.

qas: question: In what year was the Bell Telephone Company founded?
answers: text: 1877

question: How many people in the United States had a telephone by 1886?
answers: text: 150,000

question: In what year did Bell get some of Edison's patents?
answers: text: 1879

question: What addition let people stop yelling into the telephone?
answers: text: carbon microphone

question: What company did Bell acquire the carbon microphone from?
answers: text: Western Union
context: The Bell Telephone Company was created in 1877, and by 1886, more than 150,000 people in the U.S. owned telephones. Bell Company engineers made numerous other improvements to the telephone, which emerged as one of the most successful products ever. In 1879, the Bell company acquired Edison's patents for the carbon microphone from Western Union. This made the telephone practical for longer distances, and it was no longer necessary to shout to be heard at the receiving telephone.

qas: question: In what month and year did Bell telephone across the country?
answers: text: January 1915

question: What company office did Bell make the original cross country phone call from?
answers: text: AT&T

question: What city did Bell make the first cross country call from?
answers: text: New York

question: What city did Bell make the first cross country call to?
answers: text: San Francisco

question: Who was on the other end of the first cross country phone call?
answers: text: Thomas Watson
context: In January 1915, Bell made the first ceremonial transcontinental telephone call. Calling from the AT&T head office at 15 Dey Street in New York City, Bell was heard by Thomas Watson at 333 Grant Avenue in San Francisco. The New York Times reported:

qas: question: During how many years did the Bell Company battle lawsuits?
answers: text: 18

question: How many times were Bell's patents contested?
answers: text: 587

question: How many of the court cases wound up at the Supreme Court?
answers: text: 5

question: Elisha Gray and what other man were behind many of the court cases?
answers: text: Amos Dolbear
context: As is sometimes common in scientific discoveries, simultaneous developments can occur, as evidenced by a number of inventors who were at work on the telephone. Over a period of 18 years, the Bell Telephone Company faced 587 court challenges to its patents, including five that went to the U.S. Supreme Court, but none was successful in establishing priority over the original Bell patent and the Bell Telephone Company never lost a case that had proceeded to a final trial stage. Bell's laboratory notes and family letters were the key to establishing a long lineage to his experiments. The Bell company lawyers successfully fought off myriad lawsuits generated initially around the challenges by Elisha Gray and Amos Dolbear. In personal correspondence to Bell, both Gray and Dolbear had acknowledged his prior work, which considerably weakened their later claims.

qas: question: In 1887 the US Government wanted to undo Bell's patent due to fraud and what?
answers: text: misrepresentation

question: The US Government lost the bid to overturn Bell's patent in what court?
answers: text: Supreme Court

question: How many years did Bell and the US Government fight in court?
answers: text: 9

question: What excuse did the judges have for the trial despite the fact that the patents had expired?
answers: text: precedent

question: On what date did the US Government stop legal action?
answers: text: November 30, 1897
context: On January 13, 1887, the U,S. Government moved to annul the patent issued to Bell on the grounds of fraud and misrepresentation. After a series of decisions and reversals, the Bell company won a decision in the Supreme Court, though a couple of the original claims from the lower court cases were left undecided. By the time that the trial wound its way through nine years of legal battles, the U.S. prosecuting attorney had died and the two Bell patents (No. 174,465 dated March 7, 1876 and No. 186,787 dated January 30, 1877) were no longer in effect, although the presiding judges agreed to continue the proceedings due to the case's importance as a "precedent". With a change in administration and charges of conflict of interest (on both sides) arising from the original trial, the US Attorney General dropped the lawsuit on November 30, 1897 leaving several issues undecided on the merits.

qas: question: Who claimed to have invented the in 1834?
answers: text: Antonio Meucci

question: How many court trials did Meucci participate in?
answers: text: 3

question: At what company were Meucci's prototypes supposedly lost?
answers: text: American District Telegraph (ADT)

question: In what year did Western Union absorb ADT?
answers: text: 1901

question: What event caused Meucci's trials to be dropped?
answers: text: death
context: During a deposition filed for the 1887 trial, Italian inventor Antonio Meucci also claimed to have created the first working model of a telephone in Italy in 1834. In 1886, in the first of three cases in which he was involved, Meucci took the stand as a witness in the hopes of establishing his invention's priority. Meucci's evidence in this case was disputed due to a lack of material evidence for his inventions as his working models were purportedly lost at the laboratory of American District Telegraph (ADT) of New York, which was later incorporated as a subsidiary of Western Union in 1901. Meucci's work, like many other inventors of the period, was based on earlier acoustic principles and despite evidence of earlier experiments, the final case involving Meucci was eventually dropped upon Meucci's death. However, due to the efforts of Congressman Vito Fossella, the U.S. House of Representatives on June 11, 2002 stated that Meucci's "work in the invention of the telephone should be acknowledged", even though this did not put an end to a still contentious issue.[N 17] Some modern scholars do not agree with the claims that Bell's work on the telephone was influenced by Meucci's inventions.[N 18]

qas: question: Because of their patent, what didn't Siemens & Halske have to give Bell?
answers: text: royalties

question: What was the home city for the International Bell Telephone Company?
answers: text: Brussels

question: In what year was the International Bell Telephone Company founded?
answers: text: 1880
context: The value of the Bell patent was acknowledged throughout the world, and patent applications were made in most major countries, but when Bell had delayed the German patent application, the electrical firm of Siemens & Halske (S&H) managed to set up a rival manufacturer of Bell telephones under their own patent. The Siemens company produced near-identical copies of the Bell telephone without having to pay royalties. The establishment of the International Bell Telephone Company in Brussels, Belgium in 1880, as well as a series of agreements in other countries eventually consolidated a global telephone operation. The strain put on Bell by his constant appearances in court, necessitated by the legal battles, eventually resulted in his resignation from the company.[N 19]

qas: question: Who did Bell marry in 1877?
answers: text: Mabel Hubbard

question: How many children did Bell and Mabel have?
answers: text: 4

question: Where did Bell and his wife go on their honeymoon?
answers: text: Europe

question: Before 1897, what did Bell get most of his money from?
answers: text: lectures
context: On July 11, 1877, a few days after the Bell Telephone Company was established, Bell married Mabel Hubbard (1857–1923) at the Hubbard estate in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His wedding present to his bride was to turn over 1,487 of his 1,497 shares in the newly formed Bell Telephone Company. Shortly thereafter, the newlyweds embarked on a year-long honeymoon in Europe. During that excursion, Bell took a handmade model of his telephone with him, making it a "working holiday". The courtship had begun years earlier; however, Bell waited until he was more financially secure before marrying. Although the telephone appeared to be an "instant" success, it was not initially a profitable venture and Bell's main sources of income were from lectures until after 1897. One unusual request exacted by his fiancée was that he use "Alec" rather than the family's earlier familiar name of "Aleck". From 1876, he would sign his name "Alec Bell". They had four children:

qas: question: In what year did Mabel's father move to Washington D.C.?
answers: text: 1880

question: In what year did Bell acquire a house in D.C.?
answers: text: 1882

question: Where did Bell and Mabel live before 1880?
answers: text: Cambridge, Massachusetts

question: What did Bell have to go to court for in D.C.?
answers: text: patent disputes
context: The Bell family home was in Cambridge, Massachusetts, until 1880 when Bell's father-in-law bought a house in Washington, D.C., and later in 1882 bought a home in the same city for Bell's family, so that they could be with him while he attended to the numerous court cases involving patent disputes.

qas: question: In what year did Bell officially become an American?
answers: text: 1882

question: What was Bell's original nationality?
answers: text: British

question: Besides the US and UK, what other country claims Bell as a citizen?
answers: text: Canada

question: What does Bell call people who are citizens of two countries?
answers: text: hyphenated
context: Bell was a British subject throughout his early life in Scotland and later in Canada until 1882, when he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. In 1915, he characterized his status as: "I am not one of those hyphenated Americans who claim allegiance to two countries." Despite this declaration, Bell has been proudly claimed as a "native son" by all three countries he resided in: the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

qas: question: What Island in Nova Scotia did the Bells go to in 1885?
answers: text: Breton Island

question: In 1886, what lake did Bell start building a house near?
answers: text: Bras d'Or

question: What did the Bells call the house completed in 1889?
answers: text: The Lodge

question: How many people worked for the Bell Boatyard?
answers: text: 40
context: By 1885, a new summer retreat was contemplated. That summer, the Bells had a vacation on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, spending time at the small village of Baddeck. Returning in 1886, Bell started building an estate on a point across from Baddeck, overlooking Bras d'Or Lake. By 1889, a large house, christened The Lodge was completed and two years later, a larger complex of buildings, including a new laboratory, were begun that the Bells would name Beinn Bhreagh (Gaelic: beautiful mountain) after Bell's ancestral Scottish highlands.[N 21] Bell also built the Bell Boatyard on the estate, employing up to 40 people building experimental craft as well as wartime lifeboats and workboats for the Royal Canadian Navy and pleasure craft for the Bell family. An enthusiastic boater, Bell and his family sailed or rowed a long series of vessels on Bras d'Or Lake, ordering additional vessels from the H.W. Embree and Sons boatyard in Port Hawkesbury, Nova Scotia. In his final, and some of his most productive years, Bell split his residency between Washington, D.C., where he and his family initially resided for most of the year, and at Beinn Bhreagh where they spent increasing amounts of time.

qas: question: Where did the Bells live when the Halifax Explosion happened?
answers: text: Beinn Bhreagh

question: On what day did the Halifax Explosion happen?
answers: text: December 6, 1917

question: Which of their two homes did the Bells start spending more time as Bell aged?
answers: text: Beinn Bhreagh

question: What city adopted the Bells?
answers: text: Baddeck

question: What did the Bells do to help the victims in Halifax?
answers: text: mobilized the community
context: Until the end of his life, Bell and his family would alternate between the two homes, but Beinn Bhreagh would, over the next 30 years, become more than a summer home as Bell became so absorbed in his experiments that his annual stays lengthened. Both Mabel and Bell became immersed in the Baddeck community and were accepted by the villagers as "their own".[N 22] The Bells were still in residence at Beinn Bhreagh when the Halifax Explosion occurred on December 6, 1917. Mabel and Bell mobilized the community to help victims in Halifax.

qas: question: What series of books does Gray say Bell would go to sleep reading?
answers: text: Encyclopædia Britannica

question: How many solo patents did Bell get?
answers: text: 18

question: How many patents did Bell co-author?
answers: text: 12
context: Although Alexander Graham Bell is most often associated with the invention of the telephone, his interests were extremely varied. According to one of his biographers, Charlotte Gray, Bell's work ranged "unfettered across the scientific landscape" and he often went to bed voraciously reading the Encyclopædia Britannica, scouring it for new areas of interest. The range of Bell's inventive genius is represented only in part by the 18 patents granted in his name alone and the 12 he shared with his collaborators. These included 14 for the telephone and telegraph, four for the photophone, one for the phonograph, five for aerial vehicles, four for "hydroairplanes" and two for selenium cells. Bell's inventions spanned a wide range of interests and included a metal jacket to assist in breathing, the audiometer to detect minor hearing problems, a device to locate icebergs, investigations on how to separate salt from seawater, and work on finding alternative fuels.

qas: question: What famous lab did Bell spend time working for?
answers: text: Volta

question: What type of energy did Bell investigate at the Volta Laboratory?
answers: text: magnetic

question: The magnetic field is part of what sort of recorder?
answers: text: tape recorder
context: Bell worked extensively in medical research and invented techniques for teaching speech to the deaf. During his Volta Laboratory period, Bell and his associates considered impressing a magnetic field on a record as a means of reproducing sound. Although the trio briefly experimented with the concept, they could not develop a workable prototype. They abandoned the idea, never realizing they had glimpsed a basic principle which would one day find its application in the tape recorder, the hard disc and floppy disc drive and other magnetic media.

qas: question: What form of water played a part in Bell's home cooling system?
answers: text: ice

question: What did Bell think could be collected from farm and factory byproduct?
answers: text: Methane gas

question: What kind of toilet did Bell work on?
answers: text: composting

question: Right before his death, what kind of energy did he speculate about?
answers: text: solar
context: Bell's own home used a primitive form of air conditioning, in which fans blew currents of air across great blocks of ice. He also anticipated modern concerns with fuel shortages and industrial pollution. Methane gas, he reasoned, could be produced from the waste of farms and factories. At his Canadian estate in Nova Scotia, he experimented with composting toilets and devices to capture water from the atmosphere. In a magazine interview published shortly before his death, he reflected on the possibility of using solar panels to heat houses.

qas: question: What did Bell call his cord-free phone?
answers: text: photophone

question: Who did Bell invent the cord-free phone with?
answers: text: Charles Sumner Tainter

question: What did Bell's cord-free phone use to transmit messages?
answers: text: light

question: What lab association did Bell and Tainter both eventually join?
answers: text: Volta Laboratory Association

question: In the photophone, light carried sound and what?
answers: text: normal human conversations
context: Bell and his assistant Charles Sumner Tainter jointly invented a wireless telephone, named a photophone, which allowed for the transmission of both sounds and normal human conversations on a beam of light. Both men later became full associates in the Volta Laboratory Association.

qas: question: Bell and his assistant first used their photophone on what date?
answers: text: June 21, 1880

question: How many feet did the first photophone message travel?
answers: text: 700

question: From what building was the first photophone message sent?
answers: text: Franklin School

question: How many years after this photophone message would the first message take place over radio?
answers: text: 19
context: On June 21, 1880, Bell's assistant transmitted a wireless voice telephone message a considerable distance, from the roof of the Franklin School in Washington, D.C., to Bell at the window of his laboratory, some 213 metres (700 ft) away, 19 years before the first voice radio transmissions.

qas: question: What did Bell call the best thing he ever made?
answers: text: The photophone

question: Bell thought the photophone was better than what famous invention?
answers: text: telephone

question: What modern technology takes the next step from the photophone?
answers: text: fiber-optic communication

question: When was fiber-optics first patented?
answers: text: 1880

question: In what decade did fiber-optics become widely used?
answers: text: 1980s
context: Bell believed the photophone's principles were his life's "greatest achievement", telling a reporter shortly before his death that the photophone was "the greatest invention [I have] ever made, greater than the telephone". The photophone was a precursor to the fiber-optic communication systems which achieved popular worldwide usage in the 1980s. Its master patent was issued in December 1880, many decades before the photophone's principles came into popular use.

qas: question: What did Bell create in 1881?
answers: text: metal detector

question: What was in James Garfield that they wanted to get out?
answers: text: bullet

question: What did Bell think was wrong with the bed, which prevented his machine from finding the bullet?
answers: text: metal bed frame

question: On which run did Bell's metal detector give a small indication?
answers: text: first

question: When did Bell's metal detector work well?
answers: text: in tests
context: Bell is also credited with developing one of the early versions of a metal detector in 1881. The device was quickly put together in an attempt to find the bullet in the body of U.S. President James Garfield. According to some accounts, the metal detector worked flawlessly in tests but did not find the assassin's bullet partly because the metal bed frame on which the President was lying disturbed the instrument, resulting in static. The president's surgeons, who were skeptical of the device, ignored Bell's requests to move the president to a bed not fitted with metal springs. Alternatively, although Bell had detected a slight sound on his first test, the bullet may have been lodged too deeply to be detected by the crude apparatus.

qas: question: Bell gave his story about trying to find the bullet to the American Association for the Advancement of what?
answers: text: Science

question: Where did Bell go the day after trying to find the bullet?
answers: text: Executive Mansion

question: What kind of mattress was the President directly on?
answers: text: horse-hair

question: Where did Bell indicate that the bullet was too deep for his machine to register?
answers: text: footnote
context: Bell's own detailed account, presented to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1882, differs in several particulars from most of the many and varied versions now in circulation, most notably by concluding that extraneous metal was not to blame for failure to locate the bullet. Perplexed by the peculiar results he had obtained during an examination of Garfield, Bell "...proceeded to the Executive Mansion the next morning...to ascertain from the surgeons whether they were perfectly sure that all metal had been removed from the neighborhood of the bed. It was then recollected that underneath the horse-hair mattress on which the President lay was another mattress composed of steel wires. Upon obtaining a duplicate, the mattress was found to consist of a sort of net of woven steel wires, with large meshes. The extent of the [area that produced a response from the detector] having been so small, as compared with the area of the bed, it seemed reasonable to conclude that the steel mattress had produced no detrimental effect." In a footnote, Bell adds that "The death of President Garfield and the subsequent post-mortem examination, however, proved that the bullet was at too great a distance from the surface to have affected our apparatus."

qas: question: Who wrote the paper laying out hydrofoils and hydroplanes?
answers: text: William E. Meacham

question: What nationality was Meacham?
answers: text: American

question: What did Bell start drawing after reading the article?
answers: text: hydrofoil boat

question: Who helped Bell investigate hydrofoils in 1908?
answers: text: Frederick W. "Casey" Baldwin

question: Which Italian scientist did Baldwin draw inspiration from?
answers: text: Enrico Forlanini
context: The March 1906 Scientific American article by American pioneer William E. Meacham explained the basic principle of hydrofoils and hydroplanes. Bell considered the invention of the hydroplane as a very significant achievement. Based on information gained from that article he began to sketch concepts of what is now called a hydrofoil boat. Bell and assistant Frederick W. "Casey" Baldwin began hydrofoil experimentation in the summer of 1908 as a possible aid to airplane takeoff from water. Baldwin studied the work of the Italian inventor Enrico Forlanini and began testing models. This led him and Bell to the development of practical hydrofoil watercraft.

qas: question: In what country did Baldwin and Forlanini get together?
answers: text: France

question: What did Baldwin liken the hydrofoil boat to?
answers: text: flying

question: Which boat was first powered by a Renault engine?
answers: text: HD-4
context: During his world tour of 1910–11, Bell and Baldwin met with Forlanini in France. They had rides in the Forlanini hydrofoil boat over Lake Maggiore. Baldwin described it as being as smooth as flying. On returning to Baddeck, a number of initial concepts were built as experimental models, including the Dhonnas Beag, the first self-propelled Bell-Baldwin hydrofoil. The experimental boats were essentially proof-of-concept prototypes that culminated in the more substantial HD-4, powered by Renault engines. A top speed of 54 miles per hour (87 km/h) was achieved, with the hydrofoil exhibiting rapid acceleration, good stability and steering along with the ability to take waves without difficulty. In 1913, Dr. Bell hired Walter Pinaud, a Sydney yacht designer and builder as well as the proprietor of Pinaud's Yacht Yard in Westmount, Nova Scotia to work on the pontoons of the HD-4. Pinaud soon took over the boatyard at Bell Laboratories on Beinn Bhreagh, Bell's estate near Baddeck, Nova Scotia. Pinaud's experience in boat-building enabled him to make useful design changes to the HD-4. After the First World War, work began again on the HD-4. Bell's report to the U.S. Navy permitted him to obtain two 350 horsepower (260 kilowatts) engines in July 1919. On September 9, 1919, the HD-4 set a world marine speed record of 70.86 miles per hour (114.04 kilometres per hour), a record which stood for ten years.

qas: question: What color silk covered Bell's kites?
answers: text: maroon

question: Who was on Cygnet I when it crashed?
answers: text: Selfridge

question: Bell's kits were flown from 1907 to what year?
answers: text: 1912

question: How many tetrahedral wings did Bell create?
answers: text: 3

question: Some of the kites remain at what National Historic Site?
answers: text: Alexander Graham Bell
context: In 1898, Bell experimented with tetrahedral box kites and wings constructed of multiple compound tetrahedral kites covered in maroon silk.[N 23] The tetrahedral wings were named Cygnet I, II and III, and were flown both unmanned and manned (Cygnet I crashed during a flight carrying Selfridge) in the period from 1907–1912. Some of Bell's kites are on display at the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site.

qas: question: What organization did Bell set up due to his interest in aerospace?
answers: text: Aerial Experiment Association

question: When was the AEA founded?
answers: text: 1907

question: Which original member of the AEA held motorcycle speed records?
answers: text: Glenn H. Curtiss

question: Which branch of the military was Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge in?
answers: text: army
context: Bell was a supporter of aerospace engineering research through the Aerial Experiment Association (AEA), officially formed at Baddeck, Nova Scotia, in October 1907 at the suggestion of his wife Mabel and with her financial support after the sale of some of her real estate. The AEA was headed by Bell and the founding members were four young men: American Glenn H. Curtiss, a motorcycle manufacturer at the time and who held the title "world's fastest man", having ridden his self-constructed motor bicycle around in the shortest time, and who was later awarded the Scientific American Trophy for the first official one-kilometre flight in the Western hemisphere, and who later became a world-renowned airplane manufacturer; Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge, an official observer from the U.S. Federal government and one of the few people in the army who believed that aviation was the future; Frederick W. Baldwin, the first Canadian and first British subject to pilot a public flight in Hammondsport, New York, and J.A.D. McCurdy —Baldwin and McCurdy being new engineering graduates from the University of Toronto.

qas: question: What did the AEA work on after kites?
answers: text: gliders

question: What material was the Red Wing's frame made of?
answers: text: bamboo

question: What kind of plane was the Red Wing?
answers: text: biplane

question: How many accident-free flights had the AEA taken by 1909?
answers: text: 150

question: Who was the first person to die in a plane crash?
answers: text: Selfridge
context: The AEA's work progressed to heavier-than-air machines, applying their knowledge of kites to gliders. Moving to Hammondsport, the group then designed and built the Red Wing, framed in bamboo and covered in red silk and powered by a small air-cooled engine. On March 12, 1908, over Keuka Lake, the biplane lifted off on the first public flight in North America.[N 24] [N 25] The innovations that were incorporated into this design included a cockpit enclosure and tail rudder (later variations on the original design would add ailerons as a means of control). One of the AEA's inventions, a practical wingtip form of the aileron, was to become a standard component on all aircraft. [N 26] The White Wing and June Bug were to follow and by the end of 1908, over 150 flights without mishap had been accomplished. However, the AEA had depleted its initial reserves and only a $15,000 grant from Mrs. Bell allowed it to continue with experiments. Lt. Selfridge had also become the first person killed in a powered heavier-than-air flight in a crash of the Wright Flyer at Fort Myer, Virginia, on September 17, 1908.

qas: question: What did the AEA name their last plane?
answers: text: Silver Dart

question: Who was the first to fly the Silver Dart?
answers: text: J.A.D. McCurdy

question: What professional did Bell make sure was present during the first Silver Dart flight?
answers: text: a doctor

question: What business did Baldwin and McCurdy start after the AEA folded?
answers: text: Canadian Aerodrome Company

question: On what month and day did the Silver Dart take its first flight?
answers: text: February 23
context: Their final aircraft design, the Silver Dart, embodied all of the advancements found in the earlier machines. On February 23, 1909, Bell was present as the Silver Dart flown by J.A.D. McCurdy from the frozen ice of Bras d'Or, made the first aircraft flight in Canada. Bell had worried that the flight was too dangerous and had arranged for a doctor to be on hand. With the successful flight, the AEA disbanded and the Silver Dart would revert to Baldwin and McCurdy who began the Canadian Aerodrome Company and would later demonstrate the aircraft to the Canadian Army.

qas: question: What kind of parents did Bell state were more prone to having deaf children?
answers: text: congenitally deaf parents

question: In 1921 the American Museum of Natural History hosted what event?
answers: text: Second International Congress of Eugenics

question: Which biologist ran the Committee on Eugenics?
answers: text: David Starr

question: What did Bell like to do that led to his involvement with eugenics?
answers: text: livestock breeding
context: Bell was connected with the eugenics movement in the United States. In his lecture Memoir upon the formation of a deaf variety of the human race presented to the National Academy of Sciences on November 13, 1883 he noted that congenitally deaf parents were more likely to produce deaf children and tentatively suggested that couples where both parties were deaf should not marry. However, it was his hobby of livestock breeding which led to his appointment to biologist David Starr Jordan's Committee on Eugenics, under the auspices of the American Breeders' Association. The committee unequivocally extended the principle to man. From 1912 until 1918 he was the chairman of the board of scientific advisers to the Eugenics Record Office associated with Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, and regularly attended meetings. In 1921, he was the honorary president of the Second International Congress of Eugenics held under the auspices of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Organisations such as these advocated passing laws (with success in some states) that established the compulsory sterilization of people deemed to be, as Bell called them, a "defective variety of the human race." By the late 1930s, about half the states in the U.S. had eugenics laws, and California's compulsory sterilization law was used as a model for that of Nazi Germany.

qas: question: What are Bell's personal papers known as?
answers: text: Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers

question: In what part of the Library of Congress are Bell's papers kept?
answers: text: Manuscript Division

question: Apart from in person, how can one look at many of Bell's papers?
answers: text: online

question: In what university is the Alexander Graham Bell Institute?
answers: text: Cape Breton University

question: In what province is the Alexander Graham Bell Institute located?
answers: text: Nova Scotia
context: A large number of Bell's writings, personal correspondence, notebooks, papers and other documents reside at both the United States Library of Congress Manuscript Division (as the Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers), and at the Alexander Graham Bell Institute, Cape Breton University, Nova Scotia; major portions of which are available for online viewing.

qas: question: Adjusted for inflation, how many dollars were awarded to Bell alongside the Volta Prize?
answers: text: $250,000

question: Victor Hugo and what other author helped judge the Volta Prize in 1880?
answers: text: Alexandre Dumas

question: Who first established the Volta Prize?
answers: text: Napoleon Bonaparte

question: The Volta lab improved the phonograph by replacing tinfoil with what substance?
answers: text: wax

question: Which Bell-founded institution still operates in Georgetown today?
answers: text: Volta Bureau
context: In 1880, Bell received the Volta Prize with a purse of 50,000 francs (approximately US$250,000 in today's dollars) for the invention of the telephone from the Académie française, representing the French government. Among the luminaries who judged were Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas. The Volta Prize was conceived by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1801, and named in honor of Alessandro Volta, with Bell receiving the third grand prize in its history. Since Bell was becoming increasingly affluent, he used his prize money to create endowment funds (the 'Volta Fund') and institutions in and around the United States capital of Washington, D.C.. These included the prestigious 'Volta Laboratory Association' (1880), also known as the Volta Laboratory and as the 'Alexander Graham Bell Laboratory', and which eventually led to the Volta Bureau (1887) as a center for studies on deafness which is still in operation in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. The Volta Laboratory became an experimental facility devoted to scientific discovery, and the very next year it improved Edison's phonograph by substituting wax for tinfoil as the recording medium and incising the recording rather than indenting it, key upgrades that Edison himself later adopted. The laboratory was also the site where he and his associate invented his "proudest achievement", "the photophone", the "optical telephone" which presaged fibre optical telecommunications, while the Volta Bureau would later evolve into the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (the AG Bell), a leading center for the research and pedagogy of deafness.

qas: question: What magazine did Bell found alongside Hubbard?
answers: text: Science

question: When did Bell cease to be President of the National Geographic Society?
answers: text: 1903

question: What enduring feature of National Geographic did Bell help implement?
answers: text: illustrations

question: What award did Bell win in 1902?
answers: text: Albert Medal
context: In partnership with Gardiner Greene Hubbard, Bell helped establish the publication Science during the early 1880s. In 1898, Bell was elected as the second president of the National Geographic Society, serving until 1903, and was primarily responsible for the extensive use of illustrations, including photography, in the magazine. he also became a Regent of the Smithsonian Institution (1898–1922). The French government conferred on him the decoration of the Légion d'honneur (Legion of Honor); the Royal Society of Arts in London awarded him the Albert Medal in 1902; the University of Würzburg, Bavaria, granted him a PhD, and he was awarded the Franklin Institute's Elliott Cresson Medal in 1912. He was one of the founders of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1884, and served as its president from 1891–92. Bell was later awarded the AIEE's Edison Medal in 1914 "For meritorious achievement in the invention of the telephone".

qas: question: What did Bell receive from many centers of post-secondary education?
answers: text: honorary degrees

question: What is the most famous statue built for Bell and his creation?
answers: text: Bell Telephone Memorial

question: When was the Bell Telephone Memorial constructed?
answers: text: 1917

question: In what city was the Bell Telephone Memorial constructed?
answers: text: Brantford

question: In which gardens was the Bell Telephone Memorial constructed?
answers: text: Alexander Graham Bell Gardens
context: Honors and tributes flowed to Bell in increasing numbers as his most famous invention became ubiquitous and his personal fame grew. Bell received numerous honorary degrees from colleges and universities, to the point that the requests almost became burdensome. During his life he also received dozens of major awards, medals and other tributes. These included statuary monuments to both him and the new form of communication his telephone created, notably the Bell Telephone Memorial erected in his honor in Alexander Graham Bell Gardens in Brantford, Ontario, in 1917.

qas: question: In 1936, what place did Bell receive on a list of best inventors?
answers: text: First

question: What was created in Bell's image in 1940?
answers: text: commemorative stamp

question: Bell's stamp is part of which line?
answers: text: Famous Americans Series

question: On what date was the stamp officially released?
answers: text: October 28

question: In which city was the stamp officially released?
answers: text: Boston
context: In 1936 the US Patent Office declared Bell first on its list of the country's greatest inventors, leading to the US Post Office issuing a commemorative stamp honoring Bell in 1940 as part of its 'Famous Americans Series'. The First Day of Issue ceremony was held on October 28 in Boston, Massachusetts, the city where Bell spent considerable time on research and working with the deaf. The Bell stamp became very popular and sold out in little time. The stamp became, and remains to this day, the most valuable one of the series.

qas: question: What bird is depicted on the Scottish banknote?
answers: text: geese

question: What do the sheep on the Scottish banknote represent?
answers: text: genetics

question: What form of currency did Canada issue to celebrate Bell in 1997?
answers: text: C$100 gold coin

question: In what year did Canada put out a coin to commemorate the Silver Dart?
answers: text: 2009
context: The 150th anniversary of Bell's birth in 1997 was marked by a special issue of commemorative £1 banknotes from the Royal Bank of Scotland. The illustrations on the reverse of the note include Bell's face in profile, his signature, and objects from Bell's life and career: users of the telephone over the ages; an audio wave signal; a diagram of a telephone receiver; geometric shapes from engineering structures; representations of sign language and the phonetic alphabet; the geese which helped him to understand flight; and the sheep which he studied to understand genetics. Additionally, the Government of Canada honored Bell in 1997 with a C$100 gold coin, in tribute also to the 150th anniversary of his birth, and with a silver dollar coin in 2009 in honor of the 100th anniversary of flight in Canada. That first flight was made by an airplane designed under Dr. Bell's tutelage, named the Silver Dart. Bell's image, and also those of his many inventions have graced paper money, coinage and postal stamps in numerous countries worldwide for many dozens of years.

qas: question: In 2002, where did Bell place in a list of the Greatest Britons?
answers: text: 57th

question: In 2004 Bell was listed in the top how many Greatest Canadians?
answers: text: 10

question: In what Scottish Hall of Fame is Bell listed?
answers: text: Scottish Science Hall of Fame

question: Which institution listed Bell in their Hall of Fame?
answers: text: National Library of Scotland
context: Alexander Graham Bell was ranked 57th among the 100 Greatest Britons (2002) in an official BBC nationwide poll, and among the Top Ten Greatest Canadians (2004), and the 100 Greatest Americans (2005). In 2006 Bell was also named as one of the 10 greatest Scottish scientists in history after having been listed in the National Library of Scotland's 'Scottish Science Hall of Fame'. Bell's name is still widely known and used as part of the names of dozens of educational institutes, corporate namesakes, street and place names around the world.

qas: question: What disease contributed greatly to Bell's death?
answers: text: diabetes

question: On what day and month did Bell die?
answers: text: August 2

question: Who was the last person to see Bell alive?
answers: text: Mabel

question: In what Province did Bell die?
answers: text: Nova Scotia
context: Bell died of complications arising from diabetes on August 2, 1922, at his private estate, Beinn Bhreagh, Nova Scotia, at age 75. Bell had also been afflicted with pernicious anemia. His last view of the land he had inhabited was by moonlight on his mountain estate at 2:00 a.m.[N 29][N 30] While tending to him after his long illness, Mabel, his wife, whispered, "Don't leave me." By way of reply, Bell traced the sign for "no" in the air —and then he died.

qas: question: What kind of wood was Bell's coffin made from?
answers: text: Beinn Bhreagh pine

question: What color silk was used in Bell's coffin?
answers: text: red

question: What color were attendees asked to not wear at Bell's funeral?
answers: text: black

question: Which singer performed at Bell's funeral?
answers: text: Jean MacDonald
context: Bell's coffin was constructed of Beinn Bhreagh pine by his laboratory staff, lined with the same red silk fabric used in his tetrahedral kite experiments. To help celebrate his life, his wife asked guests not to wear black (the traditional funeral color) while attending his service, during which soloist Jean MacDonald sang a verse of Robert Louis Stevenson's "Requiem":

qas: question: Where was Bell buried?
answers: text: atop Beinn Bhreagh mountain

question: Bell's living daughters were named Elsie May and what?
answers: text: Marian

question: Over how many years did Bell spend a great deal of time at Beinn Bhreagh?
answers: text: 35
context: Dr. Alexander Graham Bell was buried atop Beinn Bhreagh mountain, on his estate where he had resided increasingly for the last 35 years of his life, overlooking Bras d'Or Lake. He was survived by his wife Mabel, his two daughters, Elsie May and Marian, and nine of his grandchildren.

qas: question: What unit is named after Bell?
answers: text: The bel

question: What does the bel and decibel measure?
answers: text: sound intensity

question: What lab invented the term "bel."
answers: text: Bell Labs

question: In what field is the Alexander Graham Bell Medal given out?
answers: text: telecommunications

question: What was the first year the Alexander Graham Bell Medal was given out?
answers: text: 1976
context: The bel (B) and the smaller decibel (dB) are units of measurement of sound intensity invented by Bell Labs and named after him. [N 28] Since 1976 the IEEE's Alexander Graham Bell Medal has been awarded to honor outstanding contributions in the field of telecommunications.