March 10, 1876: ‘Mr. Watson, Come Here …’ | WIRED Time of Publication: 7:00 am. 7:00 am March 10, 1876: ‘Mr. Watson, Come Here …’ 1876: Alexander Graham Bell makes the first telephone call in his Boston laboratory, summoning his assistant, Thomas A. Watson, from the next room. The Scottish-born Bell had a lifelong interest in the nature of sound. He was born into a family of speech instructors, and his mother and his wife both had hearing impairments. While ostensibly working in 1875 on a device to send multiple telegraph signals over the same wire by using harmonics , he heard a twang. That led him to investigate whether his electrical apparatus could be used to transmit the sound of a human voice. Bell’s journal, now at the Library of Congress , contains the following entry for March 10, 1876: I then shouted into M [the mouthpiece] the following sentence: “Mr.

Watson, come here — I want to see you.” To my delight he came and declared that he had heard and understood what I said. I asked him to repeat the words. He answered, “You said ‘Mr. Watson — come here — I want to see you.'” We then changed places and I listened at S [the speaker] while Mr. Watson read a few passages from a book into the mouthpiece M. It was certainly the case that articulate sounds proceeded from S. The effect was loud but indistinct and muffled. Watson’s journal, however, says the famous quote was: “Mr. Watson come here I want you.” That disagreement, though, is trifling compared to the long controversy over whether Bell truly invented the telephone. Another inventor, Elisha Gray, was working on a similar device, and recent books claim that Bell not only stole Gray’s ideas, but may even have bribed a patent examiner to let him sneak a look at Gray’s filing . After years of litigation, Bell’s patents eventually withstood challenges from Gray and others — perhaps by right, perhaps by virtue of bigger backers and better barristers.

In that respect, the controversy recalls the patent battle over the telegraph and foreshadows later squabbles over the automobile , the airplane, the spreadsheet, online shopping carts, web-auction software, and the look and feel of operating systems. One thing we know for sure: Mr. Watson was at work that day in Bell’s lab. The telephone call did not interrupt his dinner with a special offer for home repairs or timeshare vacations in Florida. Source: Various Photo: Alexander Graham Bell demonstrates speaking into the telephone using a model prototype in 1876. (Early Office Museum) This article first appeared on Wired.com March 10, 2008. See Also: "Mr. Watson. Come Here. I need you.": Bell and the Invention of the Telephone "Mr. Watson. Come Here. I need you.": Bell and the Invention of the Telephone The Telegraph Learns to Talk 10 March 1876: first demonstration of electronic transmission of speech by Alexander Graham Bell. Bell was born in Edinburgh Scotland in 1847. Family moves to Canada and later Boston.

Becomes Professor of Vocal Physiology at Boston University: teacher of deaf children, disproving commonly held theory that the deaf could not be taught to speak. The Basic Invention: magnetic induction method. Thin iron diaphragm in front of an iron core surrounded by a coil of wire. Sound waves hitting the core cause it to vibrate in the magnetic field, inducing an electric current in the surrounding wire coil. This is transmitted by wires to the receiver, where the current variations induce a magnetic field, move the receiver's core, and cause the diaphragm to vibrate. Bell's first patent, #174,465, of March 1876. Original magnetic induction method replaced by variable resistance circuits. Changes in resistance induce changes in current and vice versa. Exhibited at the US Centenary Celebration at Philadelphia, July 1876. Operating in only one direction and over only a few hundred feet of twisted pair wires! Thomas Edison's improvement: carbon granule transmitter. Better sensitivity than Bell's. Aluminum alloy diaphragm, sealed section with a sandwich of front carbon, carbon granuales, and back carbon.

1877: Bell offers to sell out to the Western Union company for $100,000. They refuse. Bell Telephone company founded 9 July 1877. 1878: Western Union enters competition with Bell, using equipment designed by Thomas Edison and Elisha Gray. Bell sues Western Union for patent infringement and wins in 1879. Western Union leaves the telephone business. For Charles Dickens' view of the Patent Office in England at this time, click here . Evolution of the Network Bell's patents expire in early 1890s. Virtually anyone can build telephone handsets. 6000 independent telephone companies spring up. Challenge is to interconnect them. American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) formed to provide long distance service. Becomes parent company of the Bell System in 1900. Switches: start out as peg boards manually establishing connections by telephone operators. Are eventually replaced by mechanical systems. 1889: Almon Brown Strowger (1839 - 1902). Invents the "girl-less, cuss-less" telephone system.

His invention consists of: A device for use by customer, creates trains of on-off current pulses corresponding to the digits 0-9 (this evolves into the rotary telephone dial) Switch at telephone exchange. Rotating arm steps over, in a semi-circular fashion, 10 possible contact points. Stepping motion controlled by current pulses coming from the originating customer's dialing device. These can be cascaded to enable connection among more than 10 customers. Switching device can also be positioned in vertical direction as well as horizontal direction, also increasing the switching capacity. Not widely deployed by the Bell System until the 1920s. Switches grow to capacity of 100,000 connections. Early days of telephony were really a construction business: iron wires, copper wires, twisted pair to carry ground signal, wooden poles, and subterranean cables. Characterized by many independent operators. Subscribers to different service providers could not call each other even if in they were in the same town. No rules of interconnection existed, long distance "toll" calls were very rare, and the result was chaos. 1913: AT&T and the U. S.

government reached the famous Kingsbury Agreement; AT&T becoming synonomous with a national telephone network in return for regulated monopoly status and the promise to deliver "universal" telephone service. In 1910, Bell System owns 50% of the telephone access market. Competing companies exist in some large Urban areas well into 1920s/30s. Long distance interconnection withheld as a competitive weapon. By 1950, Bell System owns 84% of the local telephone access market. 1950s: Two thirds of all residential lines in US still party lines. Unified network signaling first exposed to subscribers, allowing them to make direct distance dialing (DDD) long distance telephone calls. 1950s-1970s: Rapid extension of the long-distance phone network made possible by the rise of digital, more highly automated techniques. 1980s: Deregulation 1990s: New access technologies--fiber and wireless.

Increasing Wire Capacity: Frequency and Time Division Wires and cables, especially between cities, were expensive; many of the early innovations were directed towards carrying multiple conversations on the same set of wires Frequency Division Multiplexing Multiple telephone or telegraph signals transmitted over same wire. Each sent on carrier wave of differing frequency. Receiving end uses "wave filter" tuned to carrier frequency to extract the original signals. 1875/1876: Alexander Graham Bell uses tuned vibrating reeds to demonstrate the concept for multiple simultaneous transmission of telegraph messages using mechanical rather then electronic resonance. 1890s: Michael Pupin, Columbia University, developed tuned resonating electronic circuits. Used for multichannel telephony circuits. Basic elements of the system: carrier wave: source of stable continuous high frequency electromagnetic oscillations modulation: a means for varying the amplitude of the carrier wave in sympathy with the amplitude of a voice wave or telepgraph signal wave filter: capable of selecting the modulated carrier wave from others of different frequency demodulation: extracting the desired voice or telegraph signal from the modulated carrier wave Required the invention of the triode/audion value in the 1900s before it could really become widely used.

Time Division Multiplexing 1853: Duplex circuit allowing a telegraph message to be received while one was also being sent. 1874: Thomas Edison develops duplex and quadraplex circuits--up to four messages on a single wire 1874: French Telegrapher Emile Baudot invents time division multiplexing Telegraph key replaced with 5-key keyboard. Alphabet encodes 32 different symbols, enough for every letter in the alphabet. Rotating commutators synchronized at both ends of the line. Symbols are buffered in series at each keyboard. Select next symbol for transmission from one keyboard to the next, intermixing the outputs from each key station. Reassembled ("demultiplexed") at the receiving end, one symbol from each keyboard. Mobile Telephony Soon after his electrical telephone, Bell invented a "photophone" that allowed wireless communications using reflected light beams. 1920s: Technological developments coming together to make mobile communications possible. Driven by military and police applications, design challenges imposed by the size and power constraints of mobile transmitters, and the rise of frequency modulation (FM). 1921: Detroit first to experiment with police car dispatch via radio.

Initially the system operated in one way only, with transmission from a centralized transmitter to the police cars. Transmission from vehicles was difficult: need to make transmitters small enough with small enough power demands to be transportable. 1930s: development of 2-way police radio systems. First deployed in Bayonne, N.J. Half-duplex ("push to talk") communications to compensate for high power transmitter in close proximity to highly sensitive receiver in the vehicle. 1934: Federal Communications Commission founded. First crisis: allocating sufficient bandwidth for law enforcement users. 1935: Armstrong invented frequency modulation. Virtually eliminated background static and required much less transmission power, thus enabling lower powered vehicular transmitters and receivers. FM also has ability to "capture" or lock on to the stronger signal in the same band, and is more tolerant of mobile propagation problems like fast fading. World War II: rapid development of mobile radio technology. The need for hundred of thousands of portable communicators accelerated advances in system packaging, reliability improvements, and cost reductions. The war played a critical role in stimulating the development of a commercial FM manufacturing ability. 1946: AT&T received first mobile telephone license, for St. Louis.

The initial car phone systems depended upon a single centralized transmitter to cover a whole metropolitan area. The original technology encoded the 3 kHz human voice signal in 120 KHz of wireless spectrum. The Improved Mobile Telephone Service (IMTS) provided full duplex, increasingly narrow band FM, with full interoperation with the wireline telephone system. Spectrum utilization was eventually improved by a factor of four, to 30 KHz, by the 1970s. However, the result was far from able to keep up with demand. Even in 1976, the New York area could support only 543 users, with 3700 users on the wait list. Bell Labs engineers refining the design of the cellular telephone system. Many small transmitters, spread out to cover a geographical service area. System capacity improved by reusing the allocated spectrum on a cell by cell basis. However, this adds the extra implementation complexity of hand off. Competition with broadcast applications for access to spectrum. 1947: AT&T proposed to the FCC the establishment of 40 MHz of spectrum for urban mobile telephony anywhere between 100 MHz and 450 MHz. Unfortunately, no unused spectrum was available.

1949, FCC considers how to allocate the UHF spectrum from 470 - 890 MHz. AT&T proposed an allocation for mobile telephony, but the FCC decided in favor of UHF TV. 1958: AT&T proposed 75 MHz for mobile telephony in the 800 MHz region; FCC does not act. 1968: FCC considering the reallocation of UHF channels 70-84 to mobile telephony. AT&T proposed the cellular system. A number of presentations over a three year period, formal filing by AT&T in December 1971. Further deliberations by the FCC over the next twelve years did. At one point, allocations of 115 MHz (75 MHz for telephony and 40 MHz for "dispatch radio") are considered, but there were no allocations made until 1983. During this time, FCC allowed two experimental systems to be established, one by Motorola in DC area and one by AT&T in Chicago. The Motorola experimental system remained relatively small, but the Chicago experimental system grew to cover the metro area and to serve many thousands of users. 1983: FCC finally allocated the spectrum.

AT&T system in Chicago became first commercial cellular system in the U.S. Alexander Graham Bell - Wikiquote Alexander Graham Bell Jump to: navigation , search Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand . The sun 's rays do not burn until brought to a focus. Alexander Graham Bell ( 3 March 1847 – 2 August 1922 ) was an eminent scientist, inventor and innovator most noted as the inventor of the telephone . Contents Quotes[ edit ] Mr. Watson — Come here — I want to see you. There cannot be mental atrophy in any person who continues to observe , to remember what he observes, and to seek answers for his unceasing hows and whys about things. Mr. Watson — Come here — I want to see you. First intelligible words spoken over the telephone (10 March 1876), as recorded in Bell's Journal entry (10 March 1876) . These are often misquoted as "Mr. Watson, come here, I want you." Watson later recounted that Bell had spilled battery acid and had called for him over the phone with these words, but this may have been in a separate incident.

The final result of our researches has widened the class of substances sensitive to light vibrations, until we can propound the fact of such sensitiveness being a general property of all matter. Statement to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in Boston, Massachusetts (27 August 1880): published as "On the Production and Reproduction of Sound by Light" in American Journal of Sciences, Third Series, vol. XX, n°118 (October 1880), pp. 305-324. There cannot be mental atrophy in any person who continues to observe, to remember what he observes, and to seek answers for his unceasing hows and whys about things. Statement to a reporter a few months before he died, as quoted at Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers at the Library of Congress I had made up my mind to find that for which I was searching even if it required the remainder of my life. After innumerable failures I finally uncovered the principle for which I was searching, and I was astounded at its simplicity.

I was still more astounded to discover the principle I had revealed not only beneficial in the construction of a mechanical hearing aid but it served as well as means of sending the sound of the voice over a wire. Another discovery which came out of my investigation was the fact that when a man gives his order to produce a definite result and stands by that order it seems to have the effect of giving him what might be termed a second sight which enables him to see right through ordinary problems. What this power is I cannot say; all I know is that it exists and it becomes available only when a man is in that state of mind in which he knows exactly what he wants and is fully determined not to quit until he finds it. As quoted in Making a Habit of Success: How to Make a Habit of Succeeding, How to Win With High Self-Esteem (1999) by MacK R. Douglas, p. 45. Unsourced variant: What this power is, I cannot say. All I know is that it exists... and it becomes available only when you are in that state of mind in which you know exactly what you want...and are fully determined not to quit until you get it.

Before anything else, preparation is the key to success. As quoted in Sophia's Fire (2005) by Sango Mbella, p. 133. Neither the Army nor the Navy is of any protection, or very little protection, against aerial raids. As quoted in The Military Quotation Book by James Charlton, p. 37. The inventor...looks upon the world and is not contented with things as they are. He wants to improve whatever he sees, he wants to benefit the world; he is haunted by an idea. The spirit of invention possesses him, seeking materialization. As appears on plaque in the entrance to the Alexander Graham Bell Museum in Baddeck, Nova Scotia, Canada. Bell Telephone Talk (1901)[ edit ] Perseverance must have some practical end , or it does not avail the man possessing it. A person without a practical end in view becomes a crank or an idiot . Such persons fill our asylums Interview with Bell published in How They Succeeded (1901) by Orison Swett Marden, Ch. 2. A man , as a general rule , owes very little to what he is born with — a man is what he makes of himself.

I begin my work at about nine or ten o'clock in the evening and continue until four or five in the morning. Night is a more quiet time to work. It aids thought. Perseverance must have some practical end, or it does not avail the man possessing it. A person without a practical end in view becomes a crank or an idiot. Such persons fill our asylums. I am a believer in unconscious cerebration. The brain is working all the time, though we do not know it. At night it follows up what we think in the daytime. When I have worked a long time on one thing, I make it a point to bring all the facts regarding it together before I retire; I have often been surprised at the results... We are thinking all the time; it is impossible not to think. You cannot force ideas . Successful ideas are the result of slow growth . Ideas do not reach perfection in a day, no matter how much study is put upon them. Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand . The sun 's rays do not burn until brought to a focus. Man is the result of slow growth; that is why he occupies the position he does in animal life.

What does a pup amount to that has gained its growth in a few days or weeks, beside a man who only attains it in as many years. The most successful men in the end are those whose success is the result of steady accretion. That intellectuality is more vigorous that has attained its strength gradually. It is the man who carefully advances step by step, with his mind becoming wider and wider — and progressively better able to grasp any theme or situation — persevering in what he knows to be practical, and concentrating his thought upon it, who is bound to succeed in the greatest degree. If a man is not bound down, he is sure to succeed. A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with — a man is what he makes of himself. T. A. Watson Dead; Made First Phone T. A. Watson Dead; Made First Phone By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ST. PETERSBURG, FLA., Dec. 14 -- Thomas A. Watson, manufacturer of the first telephone instrument and first to hear a human voice over the device, that of its inventor, Alexander Graham Bell, died suddenly of heart disease here last night at his Winter home on Pass-Grille Key.

He was 80 years old. Mr. Watson came here three weeks ago from his home on Beacon Street, Boston. He had been a Winter visitor here since 1918. In an interview here several years ago Mr. Watson described how an accident, involving spilled acid, resulted in the first actual reception of a human voice over a wire on March 10, 1876. Professor Bell and Mr. Watson had arranged wires leading from a room on the top floor of a Boston boarding house to a room on the floor below. The apparatus was arranged for transmission of the voice in one direction only. A Historic Shout. Watson was waiting tensely in the room below, with the reception apparatus held against his ear. Suddenly he heard Dr. Bell shout excitedly: "Mr. Watson! Come here; I want--!" Struck with the realization that he had actually heard Professor Bell over the wire, Watson dashed jubilantly upstairs. "I heard you! I heard you!" he gasped. Then he noticed Professor Bell brushing frantically at his arms and clothing. He had accidentally spilled a bottle of acid upon himself.

His summons over the wire, made with little hope it would be heard, was really one for assistance. Mr. Watson said Professor Bell forgot about the acid when he learned his voice had been heard over the wire by his associate. Partner of Bell. Bell and Watson became acquainted during the apprenticeship of Watson in a machine shop at Boston, where experimental machinery was being made for Professor Bell. The latter at that time was a teacher of deaf mutes in Boston. It was while experimenting with the vibration of the drum of a deaf man's ear that he first became convinced of the possibility of conveying the human voice by wire. After two years' employment in the machine shop Mr. Watson formed a partnership with Professor Bell. They rigged up a secret laboratory in a cellar at Salem, Mass., and Watson agreed to devote all his time to perfecting the Bell inventions in consideration of a share in the Bell patents. On Oct. 9, 1876, they had so perfected the telephone that they held a conversation between Boston and Cambridge over a two-mile wire. Nearly forty years after their first telephone conversation, Dr. Bell and Mr. Watson had the honor of being the first persons to talk by telephone across the American continent.

Meanwhile, they had seen their invention grow steadily until more than 13,000,000 telephones were in use throughout the world. In 1920 Mr. Watson visioned telephone conversations across the Atlantic Ocean as "only the beginning of modern development in this method of communication." Six years later he predicted that in the future "man will speak to man by mental telepathy." How we stopped communicating like animals: 15 ways phones have evolved – BGR Tweet Telephones have changed dramatically since Alexander Graham Bell spoke the first words into a telephone on March 10, 1876. Overall, they’ve improved since then, but the road wasn’t always smooth. Here’s a look back at the most important advances in telephone technology and some of the worst. The original phone On March 10, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell spoke into his device and said to his assistant, “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.” In doing so, Bell launched the telephone era with the first bi-directional electronic transmission of the spoken word. At least that is how the story typically goes.

While Bell received the first patent for a telephone, the origin of the telephone is complicated and inconclusive, with Elisha Gray, Antonio Meucci of Italy, and Innocenzo Manzetti each claiming to be the phone’s true inventor. Candlestick Popular from the 1890s to the 1930s, the candlestick phone was separated into two pieces. The mouth piece formed the candlestick part, and the receiver was placed by your ear during the phone call. This style died out in the ’30s when phone manufacturers started combining the mouth piece and receiver into a single unit. Thankfully. Rotary The rotary phone became popular. To dial, you would rotate the dial to the number you wanted, and then release. Based on my limited interaction with rotary dial phones, this must have been incredibly tedious. As push-button phones gained popularity in the 1960s and ’70s, the rotary dial phone thankfully began its slow death. Push-button In 1963, AT&T introduced Touch-Tone, which allowed phones to use a keypad to dial numbers and make phone calls. Each key would transmit a certain frequency, signaling to the telephone operator which number you wanted to call.

While much better than the rotary dial, these dial tones were subject to spoofing by what were called “ blue boxes .” Using a blue box, you could make free long-distance phone calls. Answering machine The answering machine transformed phone behavior, allowing callers to leave a message if no one was on the other end. Not popular until the 1960s, these phone accessories originally used cassette tapes to record messages. In the past 15 years, digital answering machines replaced the miniature cassette tapes, and in the past 10 years, we all just use our cell phones voicemail. Portable phones Portable, or cordless, phones were the phone equivalent of the TV remote. You were no longer physically attached to your phone’s base station. Beginning in the 1980s, portable phones were like a small-scale cell phone. You could talk on your phone anywhere in your house. Now that you can talk on your phone anywhere in the world, portable phones seem quaint. But at the time, a well-placed portable phone could save you a trip across the house. Motorola DynaTAC Released in 1984, the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X was the first commercially available mobile phone.

In 1973, Martin Cooper made the first cell phone call ever with a predecessor of this beast. At 1.75 pounds, this phone had 30 minutes of talk time and cost a not-so-modest $3,995. Nokia 5110 One of many classic Nokia candybar-style phones, the Nokia 5110 was rugged and had a long battery life. More importantly, you could play Snake on its 47 × 84 pixel screen. The 5110 was also customizable, with replaceable face plates. Caller ID There was a time when you had to remember people’s telephone numbers. And then came Caller ID. You could now decide whether that phone call was worth answering or whether you could just send them to voicemail. Now standard, Caller ID changed the way we used telephones. Motorola StarTAC The Motorola StarTAC was the first successful flip phone, and in many ways, the first successful consumer cell phone. Introduced in 1996, Motorola eventually sold 60 million StarTACs.

Weighing in at just 3.1 ounces, and combined with its innovative clamshell design, the StarTAC was a milestone in the trend toward smaller and smaller cell phones. Sanyo SCP–5300 Released in 2003, the Sanyo SCP–5300 was one of the first phones to include a camera. It was already clear that digital cameras would replace film cameras, but it wasn’t clear that a camera could fit in a phone. By today’s standards, the SCP–5300’s camera is pathetic. The SCP–5300 could take 640 × 480 pixel photos and store 10 to 15 of them. It had a built-in flash with a range of only three feet. Still, this phone broke ground, and today it is clear how central cameras are to our phones. Palm Treo With the Treo, Palm expanded its popular PDA line to become one of the first smartphones. The Treo looked very similar to Blackberry’s phones, with a tiny keyboard at the bottom.

The Treo ran Palm OS, and like many leading phones at the time, began to lose its appeal after the introduction of touchscreen smartphones. In 2009, the Treo was replaced with the Palm Pre, Palm’s failed response to the iPhone. Motorola RAZR The Motorola RAZR represented the culmination of the flip phone. Unable or unwilling to experiment with new designs, mobile phone companies continued their push for smaller and smaller phones. With the RAZR, Motorola perfected the flip phone design. At just 0.54 inches thin, the RAZR was as much a fashion device as a cell phone. Announced in 2004, Motorola would eventually sell 130 million RAZRs. However, the RAZRs popularity rapidly declined in the face of a new generation of touchscreen smartphones. BlackBerry Canadian-based Research in Motion, now BlackBerry, was by far the leading smartphone manufacturer in the 2000s. With their advanced email capabilities, BlackBerry Messenger, and physical keyboards, BlackBerry smartphones were the ultimate business phone. When the iPhone was announced in 2007, many BlackBerry fans scoffed at its lack of a physical keyboard.

Now that touchscreen smartphones have proved themselves worthy, BlackBerry has fallen rapidly, with many failed attempts at touchscreen smartphones, and is currently struggling to survive. iPhone and Android When the iPhone was introduced in 2007, Apple brought the smartphone to the masses. With its intuitive touchscreen, intelligent sensors, and sleek design, the iPhone has been an incredible success. The iPhone quickly showed just how clunky previous smartphones and flip phones were. While initially lacking some basic features such as copy-and-paste, the iPhone has consistently improved with annual updates to both its hardware and software and runs a mobile-optimized version of OS X, the company’s desktop computing operating system. Then a year later, the Android juggernaut would begin its climb to the top. Founded in 2003 by Andy Rubin, Android sought to create a modern operating system that would compete with Windows Mobile, Symbian, and BlackBerry. Google bought Android in 2005, and in November 2007, unveiled the Android operating system. The first Android phone, the HTC Dream , was launched almost a year later in October 2008. Android has adapted to its competition, developing an app-based operating system for touchscreens.

Android has certainly improved since its clunky early days and is now the leading alternative to Apple’s iOS. Alexander Graham Bell On invention: "Leave the beaten track occasionally and dive into the woods. Every time you do so you will be certain to find something that you have never seen before. Follow it up, explore all around it, and before you know it, you will have something worth thinking about to occupy your mind. All really big discoveries are the results of thought." -- Alexander Graham Bell On the telephone: "The day is coming when telegraph wires will be laid on to houses just like water or gas -- and friends will converse with each other without leaving home." -- Alexander Graham Bell in a letter to his father in 1876 Alexander Graham Bell Edinburgh, Scotland; March 1847 Alexander Graham Bell is most well known for inventing the telephone. He came to the U.S as a teacher of the deaf, and conceived the idea of "electronic speech" while visiting his hearing-impaired mother in Canada. This led him to invent the microphone and later the "electrical speech machine" -- his name for the first telephone. Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on March 3, 1847.

He enrolled in the University of London to study anatomy and physiology, but his college time was cut short when his family moved to Canada in 1870. His parents had lost two children to tuberculosis, and they insisted that the best way to save their last child was to leave England. When he was eleven, Bell invented a machine that could clean wheat. He later said that if he had understood electricity at all, he would have been too discouraged to invent the telephone. Everyone else "knew" it was impossible to send voice signals over a wire. While trying to perfect a method for carrying multiple messages on a single wire, he heard the sound of a plucked spring along 60 feet of wire in a Boston electrical shop. Thomas A. Watson, one of Bell's assistants, was trying to reactivate a telegraph transmitter. Hearing the sound, Bell believed that he could solve the problem of sending a human voice over a wire. He figured out how to transmit a simple current first, and received a patent for that invention on March 7, 1876. Five days later, he transmitted actual speech.

Sitting in one room, he spoke into the phone to his assistant in another room, saying the now famous words: "Mr. Watson, come here. I need you." The telephone patent is one of the most valuable patents ever issued. Bell had other inventions as well -- his own home had a precursor to modern day air conditioning, he contributed to aviation technology, and his last patent, at the age of 75, was for the fastest hydrofoil yet invented. Bell was committed to the advancement of science and technology. As such he took over the presidency of a small, almost unheard-of, scientific society in 1898: the National Geographic Society. Bell and his son-in-law, Gilbert Grosvenor, took the society's dry journal and added beautiful photographs and interesting writing -- turning National Geographic into one of the world's best-known magazines. He also is one of the founders of Science magazine. Bell died on August 2, 1922. On the day of his burial, all telephone service in the US was stopped for one minute in his honor.

Resources: Alexander Graham Bell - Inventions - HISTORY.com Alexander Graham Bell A+E Networks Introduction Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922), the Scottish-born American scientist best known as the inventor of the telephone, worked at a school for the deaf while attempting to invent a machine that would transmit sound by electricity. Bell was granted the first official patent for his telephone in March 1876, though he would later face years of legal challenges to his claim that he was its sole inventor, resulting in one of history’s longest patent battles. Bell continued his scientific work for the rest of his life, and used his success and wealth to establish various research centers nationwde. Google Bell owes his immortality to his having been the first to design and patent a practical device for transmitting the human voice by means of an electric current. But Bell always described himself simply as a “teacher of the deaf,” and his contributions in that field were of the first order. Did You Know? Though he is credited with its invention, Alexander Graham Bell refused to have a telephone in his study, fearing it would distract him from his scientific work. Bell, who was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, was educated there and at the University of London.

He also studied under his grandfather, Alexander Bell, a noted speech teacher. He taught elocution, assisted his father, also a speech teacher and noted phonetician, and taught at a school for the deaf in England, using his father’s methods. In 1870, Bell immigrated with his parents to Canada. Two years later he established a school for the deaf in Boston, Massachusetts , and the following year became a professor in speech and vocal physiology at Boston University. While teaching he experimented with a means of transmitting several telegraph messages simultaneously over a single wire and also with various devices to help the deaf learn to speak, including a means of graphically recording sound waves. In 1874 the essential idea of the telephone formed in his mind. As he later explained it, “If I could make a current of electricity vary in intensity precisely as the air varies in density during the production of sound, I should be able to transmit speech telegraphically.” Two years later he applied for a patent, which was granted on March 7, 1876. On March 10, the first coherent complete sentence—the famous “Mr. Watson, come here; I want you”—was transmitted in his laboratory.

In later years Bell experimented with a means to detect metal in wounds and with a vacuum-jacket respirator that led to the development of the iron lung. He helped bring Thomas A. Edison’s phonograph to commercial practicality and experimented with hydrofoil boats and with airplanes as early as the 1890s. With the wealth derived from the telephone, Bell was able to assist the careers of other scientists. He also founded and helped finance the journal Science, today the premier American scientific journal, and the National Geographic Society. While constantly engaged in scientific experiments, Bell crusaded tirelessly on behalf of the deaf, encouraging their integration into society with the help of lip-reading and other techniques. In 1890 he founded the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf. He died in 1922 at his summer home on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. People throughout North America were urged to refrain from making phone calls during his burial so that telephones would remain silent as a tribute. Robert V. Bruce, Bell: Alexander Graham Bell and the Conquest of Solitude (1973). John Steele Gordon The Reader’s Companion to American History. Eric Foner and John A. Garraty, Editors.

Copyright © 1991 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved. Tags Garden of Praise: Alexander Graham Bell Biography Alexander Graham Bell Born 1847 - Died 1922 Alexander Graham Bell was born in Scotland. His mother, who was deaf, was a musician and a painter of portraits. His father, who taught deaf people how to speak, invented "Visible Speech". This was a code which showed how the tongue, lips, and throat were positioned to make speech sounds. Graham, or "Aleck", as his family called him, was interested in working with the deaf throughout his life. He only attended school for five years; from the time he was ten until he was fourteen, but he never stopped learning. He read the books in his grandfather's library and studied tutorials.* When he was a teenager, he and his brother Melly used the voice box of a dead sheep to make a speaking machine that cried, "Mama!" This created even more interest in human speech and how it worked.

When he was in his early 20's, his two brothers died of tuberculosis.* Bell himself had the disease and his father moved the family to Canada looking for a better climate in which to live. Bell recovered from the disease. Two years later he went to Boston to open a school for teachers of the deaf and then became a professor at Boston University. It was at this time that he met Mabel Hubbard, one of his students who was 10 years younger than he. Mabel had become deaf at the age of four due to scarlet fever. Five years after their meeting they were married. Bell and his family At the wedding ceremony he gave her a gift of all but 10 shares of the stock in the newly formed company called Bell Telephone Company. They had two daughters and two sons. Their sons both died at a young age. Thomas Watson became an associate of Bell. He made parts and built models of Bell's inventions. One day while they were working Bell accidently heard the sound of a plucked reed* coming over the telegraph wire. Watson had been tuning the metal reeds in the next room. Bell drew up a plan for the telephone and they continued to experiment.

The next day he transmitted the famous words, "Mr. Watson, come here. I want you!" A few months later on Feb. 14, 1876, he applied for a patent on his telephone. He knew he would have to work quickly to get the patent* because other people were also trying to make an invention to transmit the human voice. Elisha Gray claims he too invented the telephone, but Bell got to the patent office an hour or so before he did. It is said that Antonio Meucci also succeeded with the invention before Bell. Because Bell had the patent, he had the right to be the only one to produce telephones in the U.S. for the next 19 years. He showed the invention to Queen Victoria of England and she wanted lines to connect her castles. By 1917, nearly all of the United State had telephone service. He continued to invent other things. He developed a method of making phonograph* records on a wax disc. He made an iron breathing lung, and a device for locating icebergs at sea. He experimented with sheep.

He was interested in kites that could lift a man, and he invented a hydrofoil* which set a world speed record of over 70 miles per hour. He along with others started the National Geographic Society and he served as its president for several years. He and Enrico Forlanini built a hydrofoil and named it HD for "hydrodome". The first one glided across the water at 30 mph, then later they developed one that would go 50 mph and finally by the time they got to HD4 they were going 70.86 mph! It was the fastest hydrofoil in the world, and that record would stand for ten years. Bell's hydrofoil Bell liked making kites. His favorite kite was the tetrahedral, a four-sided object whose sides and base are all triangles. The massive kite shown in the photograph above is made of silk and wood. He called it the Frost King. One day one of the workers was accidently lifted forty feet into the air. When he saw this Bell knew he was getting closer to realizing his dream. He became a U.S. citizen, but he died in Canada at the age of 75.

This biography by Patsy Stevens, a retired teacher, was written in 2003.

Question: Who said, at a critical time in the history of inventions, "Mr Watson, come here - I want you"?
Answer: Alexander Graham Bell