Dr. Bell, Inventor of Telephone, Dies Dr. Bell, Inventor of Telephone, Dies By THE NEW YORK TIMES SYDNEY, N. S., Aug. 2.--Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, died at 2 o'clock this morning at Beinn Breagh, his estate near Baddeck. Although the inventor, who was in his seventy-sixth year, had been in failing health for several months, he had not been confined to bed, and the end was unexpected. Late yesterday afternoon, however, his condition, brought about by progressive anemia, became serious, and Dr. Ker of Washington, a cousin of Mrs. Bell, a house guest and a Sydney physician, attended him. With Mr. Bell when he died were Mrs. Bell, a daughter, Mrs. Marion Hubbard Fairchild, and her husband, David G. Fairchild of Washington. The inventor leaves another daughter, Mrs. Elise M. Grosvenor, wife of Gilbert Grosvenor of Washington, who now is with her husband in Brazil. At Sunset on Friday, on the crest of Beinn Breach Mountain, the body of Dr. Bell will be buried at a spot chosen by the inventor himself.

The grave of the venerable scientist, the immensity of whose life work was attested by scores of Telegrams which came today to the Bell estate from the world's prominent figures, is at a point overlooking the town of Baddeck, Cape Breton. The sweeping vista from the mountain top, so admired by Dr. Bell, stretches far over the Bras d'Or Lakes. Sunset, chosen as the moment when the body will be committed to the sturdy hills, gilds the waters of the lakes until they are really what their name means--"the lakes of the arm of gold." Dr. Bell asked to be buried in the countryside where he had spent the major portion of the last thirty-five years of his life. The inventor came to Cape Breton forty years ago, and five years later purchased the Beinn Breagh estate. His last experiments, dealing with flying boats, were made on Bras d'Or Lake. American specialists who were rushing to the bedside of Dr. Bell were today returning to the United States. They were told of his death while aboard fast trains bound for Baddeck, and, being too late, turned back.

Alexander Graham Bell lived to see the telephonic instrument over which he talked a distance of twenty feet in 1876 used, with improvements, for the transmission of speech across the continent, and more than that, for the transmission of speech across the Atlantic and from Washington to Honolulu without wires. The little instrument he patented less than fifty years ago, scorned then as a joke, was when he died the basis for 13,000,000 telephones used in every civilized country in the world. The Bell basic patent, the famed No. 174,465, which he received on his twenty-ninth birthday and which was sustained in a historic court fight, has been called the most valuable patent ever issued. Although the inventor of many contrivances which he regarded with as much tenderness and to which he attached as much importance as the telephone, a business world which he confessed he was often unable to understand made it assured that he would go down in history as the man who made the telephone. He was an inventor of the gramophone, and for nearly twenty years was engaged in aeronautics. Associated with Glenn H.

Curtiss and others, whose names are now known wherever airplanes fly, he pinned his faith in the efficacy for aviation of the tetrahedral cell, which never achieved the success he saw for it in aviation, but as a by-product of his study he established an important new principle in architecture. Up to the time of his death Dr. Bell took the deepest interest in aviation. Upon his return from a tour of the European countries in 1909 he reported that the continental nations were far ahead of America in aviation and urged that steps by taken to keep apace of them. He predicted in 1916 that the great war would be won in the air. It was always a theory of his that flying machines could make ever so much more speed at great heights, in rarefied atmosphere, and he often said that the transatlantic flight would be some time made in one day, a prediction which he lived to see fulfilled. A Teacher of Deaf Mutes The inventor of the telephone was born in Edinburgh, on March 3, 1847. Means of communication had been a hobby in the Bell family long before Alexander was born.

His grandfather was the inventor of a device for overcoming stammering and his father perfected a system of visible speech for deaf mutes. When Alexander was about 15 years old he made an artificial skull of guttapercha and India rubber that would pronounce weird tones when blown into by a hand bellows. At the age of 16 he became, like his father, a teacher of elocution and instructor of deaf mutes. When young Bell was 22 years old he was threatened with tuberculosis, which had caused the death of his two brothers, and the Bell family migrated to Brantford, Canada. Soon after he came to America, at a meeting with Sir Charles Wheatstone, the English inventor, Bell got the ambition to perfect a musical or multiple telegraph. His father, in an address in Boston one day not long after, mentioned his son's success in teaching deaf mutes, which led the Boston Board of Education to offer the younger Bell $500 to introduce his system in the newly opened school for deaf mutes there. He was then 24 years old, and quickly gained prominence for his teaching methods. He was soon named a professor in Boston University.

But teaching interfered with his inventing and he gave up all but two of his pupils. One of these was Mabel Hubbard of a wealthy family. She had lost her speech and hearing when a baby and Bell took the most acute interest in enabling her to hear. She later became Mrs. Bell. Works Three Years on Telephone Bell spent the following three years working, mostly at night, in a cellar in Salem, Mass. Gardiner G. Hubbard, his future father-in-law, and Thomas Sanders, helped him financially while he worked on his theory that speech could be reproduced by means of an electrically charged wire. His first success came while he was testing his instruments in new quarters in Boston. Thomas A. Watson, Bell's assistant, had struck a clock spring at one end of a wire and Bell heard the sound in another room. For forty weeks he worked on his instruments, and on March 10, 1876, Watson, who was working in another room, was started to hear Bell's voice say: "Mr. Watson, come here. I want you." On his twenty-ninth birthday Bell received his patent. At the Centennial in Philadelphia he gave the first public demonstration of his instrument.

He had not intended to go to the exposition. He was poor and had planned to take up his teaching again. In June he went to the railroad station one day to see Miss Hubbard off for Philadelphia. She had believed he was going with her. As he put her on the train and it moved off without him, she burst into tears. Seeing this, Bell rushed ahead and caught the train, without baggage or ticket. An exhibition on a Sunday afternoon was promised to him. When the hour arrived it was hot, and the judges were tired. It looked as if there would be no demonstration for Bell, when Dom Pedro, the Emperor of Brazil, appeared, and shook Mr. Bell by the hand. He had heard some of the young man's lectures. Bell made ready for the demonstration. A wire had been strung along the room. Bell took the transmitter, and Dom Pedro placed the receiver to his ear. "My God, it talks!" he exclaimed. The Lord Kelvin took the receiver. "It does speak," he said. "It is the most wonderful thing I have seen in America." The judges then took turns listening, and the demonstration lasted until 10 o'clock that night. The instrument was the centre of interest for scientists the rest of the exposition.

The commercial development of the telephone dated from that day in Philadelphia. His Other Inventions While Alexander Graham Bell will be best remembered as the inventor of the telephone, a claim he sustained through many legal contests, he also became noted for other inventions. With Sumner Tainter he invented the gramophone. He invented a new method of lithography, a photophone, and an induction balance. He invented the telephone probe, which was used to locate the bullet that killed President Garfield. He spent fifteen years and more than $200,000 in testing his tetrahedral kite, which he believed would be the basis for aviation. The inventor was the recipient of many honors in this country and abroad. The French Government conferred on him the decoration of the Legion of Honor, the French Academy bestowed on him the Volta prize of 50,000f., the Society of Arts in London in 1902 gave him the Albert medal, and the University of Wurzburg, Bavaria, gave him a Ph. D. Dr. Bell regarded the summit of his career as reached when in January of 1915 he and his old associate, Mr.

Watson, talked to one another over the telephone from San Francisco to New York. It was nearly two years later that by a combination of telephonic and wireless telegraphy instruments the engineers of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company sent speech across the Atlantic. In 1915 Dr. Bell said that he looked forward to the day when men would communicate their thoughts by wire without the spoken word. "The possibilities of further achievement by the use of electricity are inconceivable," he said. "Men can do nearly everything else by electricity already, and I can imagine them with coils of wire about their heads coming together for communication of thought by induction." In April of 1916 he declared that land and sea power would become secondary to air power. He expressed then the opinion that the airplane would be more valuable as a fighting machine than the Zeppelin and urged that the United States build a strong aerial fleet. The inventor's last few years were spent in energetic efforts to materialize new dreams and in seeing wider and wider applications of his greatest one. In December, 1920, he was in London when that city talked by wireless with Geneva. That same year he perfected a device for cooling houses.

Always he kept working at something, more often than not a something far afield from his earlier interests. The telephone, in fact, had palled on him. There had piled up 3,000 patents atop his original basic one, and meantime he had put in some of his hardest years trying to develop flying. It was on his seventy-fifth birthday that he disclosed that he would not have a telephone in his own study, and that there was no telephone in the Cocoanut Grove home of his daughter-in-law, Mrs. Fairchild, in the Miami suburb where he was spending the Winter working toward fresh inventions. Dr. Bell went abroad the last time two years ago, paying a farewell visit to his native Edinburgh, and returning to say that he had found himself a stranger in a strange land, and that he was glad to get back to America, where he had lived most of his life. Throughout his life Dr. Bell maintained his interest in deaf mutes. He founded the American Association to Promote Teaching of Speech to the Deaf, and contributed $250,000 to its support. He was a member of many of the leading American societies of learning.

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 Alexander Graham Bell - Biography, Facts and Pictures Blog Alexander Graham Bell Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. Remarkably, he only worked on his invention because he misunderstood a technical work he had read in German. His misunderstanding ultimately led to his discovery of how speech could be transmitted electrically. Images are: A model of Bell’s very first telephone (top-left). Alexander Graham Bell in 1874, aged 26, when he became a professor at Boston University (bottom-left). Bell, aged 45, making the first call from New York to Chicago when the exchange opened in 1892 (right). Alexander Graham Bell’s Early Life, Early Inventions, and Education Alexander Graham Bell was born March 3, 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. His mother’s name was Eliza Grace Symonds. His father, Alexander Melville Bell, was a professor of speech elocution at the University of Edinburgh. His father also wrote definitive books about speech and elocution, which sold very well in the UK and North America.

The young Alexander was home-schooled until he was 11, following which he attended Edinburgh’s Royal High School for four years: he enjoyed science, but did not do well academically. Although his schoolwork was poor, his mind was very active. One day, he was playing at a flour mill owned by the family of a young friend. Bell learned that de-husking the wheat grains took a lot of effort and was also very boring. He saw that it would be possible for a machine to do the work, so he built one. He was only 12 at the time. The machine he built was used at the mill for several years. Advertisements Aged 15, he joined his grandfather who had moved to London, England. His grandfather home-schooled him, which seemed to bring out the best in Bell again. When he was 16, he enrolled at Weston House Academy in Elgin, Scotland, where he learned Greek and Latin and also earned some money teaching elocution. While he was 16, he and his brother tried to build a talking robot. They built a windpipe and a realistic looking head.

When they blew air through the windpipe, the mouth could make a small number of recognizable words. For the next few years, Bell moved to a new school most years, either teaching elocution or improving his own education. To Canada While Bell moved around a lot, he continued to carry out his own research into sound and speech. He worked very hard indeed, and by the time he was 20 he was in very poor health and returned to his family home, which was now in London. By mid-1870, when Bell was 23, both of his younger brothers had died of tuberculosis. Bell’s parents were terrified that Alexander, whose health was fragile, would suffer a similar fate. He was now the only child of theirs who was still alive. Bell’s father had gone to Canada when he was younger and found that his poor health had improved dramatically. He now decided that what was left of his family should move to Canada, and by late 1870, they were living in Brentford, Ontario. Thankfully, Alexander Graham Bell’s health began to improve. While living in Brentford, Bell learned the Mohawk language and put it in writing for the first time.

The Mohawk people made him an Honorary Chief. And the United States When he was 25, Bell opened his School of Vocal Physiology and Mechanics of Speech in Boston, MA, where he taught deaf people to speak. At age 26, although he did not have a university degree, he became Professor of Vocal Physiology and Elocution at the Boston University School of Oratory. The Invention of the Telephone While he was moving jobs and locations around the UK and North America, Bell had developed an overriding desire to invent a machine that could reproduce human speech. Speech had become his life: his mother had gone deaf, and Bell’s father had developed a method of teaching deaf people to speak, which Bell taught. His research into mechanizing human speech had become a relentless obsession: in the UK it had driven him almost to collapse. When Bell was only 19 years old, he had described the work was doing in a letter to the linguistics expert Alexander Ellis. Ellis told Bell his work was similar to work carried out in Germany by Hermann von Helmholtz. A Mistake Puts Bell on the Right Track Bell eagerly read Helmholtz’s work, or tried to read it.

It was in German, which he did not understand. Instead, he tried to follow the logic of the book’s diagrams. Bell misunderstood the diagrams, believing that Helmholtz had been able to convert all of the sounds of speech to electricity. In fact, Helmholtz had not been able to do this – he had only succeeded with vowel sounds – but from then on, Bell believed it could be done! Aged 23, Bell built a workshop in the new family home in Ontario and experimented there with converting music into an electrical signal. In Boston, aged 25, Bell continued his experiments through the night while working in the day. In summer, he would return to his workshop in Ontario and continue his experiments. Financial Backing for a Voice Telegraph And now it was 1874, and Bell was 26. The first electrical telegraph lines had been built forty years earlier, in the 1830s. These allowed electrical clicks (Morse code) to be instantly transmitted over great distances. Bell wanted to transmit human speech instead of clicks, and he was getting close to doing it. He had found that human speech came in wave like patterns.

He now hoped to produce an electrical wave that would follow the same patterns as someone’s speech. And he won financial backing from Gardiner Hubbard and Thomas Sanders, two wealthy investors. Hubbard also brought in Anthony Pollok, his patent attorney. The money enabled Bell to hire Thomas Watson, a skilled electrical engineer, whose knowledge would compliment Bell’s. Patenting the Telephone Aged 27, in 1875, Bell and his investors decided the time had come to protect his intellectual property using patents. Alexander Graham Bell’s Telephone Patent. (Click to enlarge.) Bell had a patent written for transmission of speech over an electrical wire. He applied for this patent in the UK, because in those days UK patents were granted only if they had not first been granted in another country. Bell told his attorney to apply in the USA only after the patent had been granted in the UK. By 1876, things in the USA had become murkier. In February of that year, Elisha Gray applied for a US patent for a telephone which used a variable resistor based on a liquid: salt water.

In the transmitter, the liquid resistor transferred to an electric circuit the vibrations of a needle attached to a diaphragm which had been made to vibrate by sound. The electrical resistance of the circuit changed in tandem with the needle’s position in the liquid, and so sound was converted into an equivalent electrical signal. The receiver converted the electrical signal back into sound using a vibrating needle in liquid connected to a diaphragm which vibrated to recreate the sound that had been transmitted. On the same day, Bell’s attorney filed his US patent application. It was only in March 1876 that Bell actually got his invention to work, using a design similar to Gray’s. Hence Gray lay claim to have invented the telephone. On the other hand, Bell had established the concept before Gray, and in all demonstrations of a working phone Bell gave or developed commercially he used his own setup rather than a water based variable resistor. In fact, in 1875, Bell had filed a patent for a liquid mercury based variable resistor, predating Gray’s liquid variable resistor patent. Bell had to fend off around 600 lawsuits before he could finally rest in bed at night as the legally acknowledged inventor of the telephone. “Mr. Watson, come here.

I want to see you.” The first words spoken in a telephone call: Alexander Graham Bell Inventor By summer 1876, Bell was transmitting telephone voice messages over a line several miles long in Ontario. Making Money Near the end of 1876, Bell and his investors offered to sell their patent to Western Union for $100,000. Western Union ran America’s telegraph wires, and its top people believed the telephone was just a fad. They thought it would not be profitable. How spectacularly wrong they were! By 1878, Western Union’s opinion had altered dramatically. They now thought that if they could offer $25 million to get the patent, they would have gotten it cheaply. Unfortunately for Western Union, in 1877, the Bell Telephone Company had been launched. And the rest, as they say, is history. Not Just the Telephone Alexander Graham Bell had a restless mind. The telephone made him wealthy and famous, but he wanted new challenges, and he continued inventing and innovating. The Photophone, or Optical Telephone Today, it is standard practice to transmit huge amounts of data using photons of light through optical fiber.

In 1880, Bell and his assistant Charles Summer Tainter transmitted wireless voice messages a distance of over 200 meters in Washington D.C. The voice messages were carried by a light beam, and Bell patented the photophone. This was two decades before the first radio messages were sent without wires and a century before optic fiber communications became commercially viable. The receiver of Bell’s photophone. In Bell’s opinion, the photophone was his best invention. The Metal Detector In 1881, after President James Garfield was shot, Bell invented the metal detector to locate the bullet precisely. The rudimentary metal detector worked in tests, but the bullet in the President’s body was too deep to be detected by the early detecting equipment. National Geographic Society In 1888 Bell was one of the founders of the National Geographic Society. In 1897, he became its second president. The End Alexander Graham Bell died aged 75 on August 2, 1922 in Nova Scotia, Canada. He had been ill for some months with complications from diabetes. He was survived by his wife, Mabel, and two daughters – Elsie and Marian.

Every phone in North America was silenced during his funeral in his honor. The unit of sound intensity, the bel, more usually seen as the smaller unit, the decibel, was named after Bell: it was conceived of in the Bell Laboratories. Advertisements Alexander Graham Bell | American inventor | Britannica.com Alexander Graham Bell Anne Sullivan Macy Alexander Graham Bell, (born March 3, 1847, Edinburgh, Scotland —died August 2, 1922, Beinn Bhreagh, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia , Canada ), Scottish-born American inventor, scientist, and teacher of the deaf whose foremost accomplishments were the invention of the telephone (1876) and the refinement of the phonograph (1886). Alexander Graham Bell. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Overview of the invention of the telephone, with a focus on the work by Alexander Graham Bell. Contunico © ZDF Enterprises GmbH, Mainz Alexander (“Graham” was not added until he was 11) was born to Alexander Melville Bell and Eliza Grace Symonds. His mother was almost deaf, and his father taught elocution to the deaf, influencing Alexander’s later career choice as teacher of the deaf.

At age 11 he entered the Royal High School at Edinburgh , but he did not enjoy the compulsory curriculum, and he left school at age 15 without graduating. In 1865 the family moved to London. Alexander passed the entrance examinations for University College London in June 1868 and matriculated there in the autumn. However, he did not complete his studies, because in 1870 the Bell family moved again, this time immigrating to Canada after the deaths of Bell’s younger brother Edward in 1867 and older brother Melville in 1870, both of tuberculosis . The family settled in Brantford , Ontario, but in April 1871 Alexander moved to Boston, where he taught at the Boston School for Deaf Mutes. He also taught at the Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton , Massachusetts, and at the American School for the Deaf in Hartford , Connecticut. One of Bell’s students was Mabel Hubbard , daughter of Gardiner Greene Hubbard, a founder of the Clarke School. Mabel had become deaf at age five as a result of a near-fatal bout of scarlet fever .

Bell began working with her in 1873, when she was 15 years old. Despite a 10-year age difference, they fell in love and were married on July 11, 1877. They had four children, Elsie (1878–1964), Marian (1880–1962), and two sons who died in infancy. While pursuing his teaching profession, Bell also began researching methods to transmit several telegraph messages simultaneously over a single wire—a major focus of telegraph innovation at the time and one that ultimately led to Bell’s invention of the telephone. In 1868 Joseph Stearns had invented the duplex, a system that transmitted two messages simultaneously over a single wire. Western Union Telegraph Company , the dominant firm in the industry, acquired the rights to Stearns’s duplex and hired the noted inventor Thomas Edison to devise as many multiple-transmission methods as possible in order to block competitors from using them. Edison’s work culminated in the quadruplex, a system for sending four simultaneous telegraph messages over a single wire.

Inventors then sought methods that could send more than four; some, including Bell and his great rival Elisha Gray , developed designs capable of subdividing a telegraph line into 10 or more channels. These so-called harmonic telegraphs used reeds or tuning forks that responded to specific acoustic frequencies. They worked well in the laboratory but proved unreliable in service. Britannica Stories Scientists Ponder Menopause in Killer Whales A group of investors led by Gardiner Hubbard wanted to establish a federally chartered telegraph company to compete with Western Union by contracting with the Post Office to send low-cost telegrams. Hubbard saw great promise in the harmonic telegraph and backed Bell’s experiments. Bell, however, was more interested in transmitting the human voice. Finally, he and Hubbard worked out an agreement that Bell would devote most of his time to the harmonic telegraph but would continue developing his telephone concept. From harmonic telegraphs transmitting musical tones, it was a short conceptual step for both Bell and Gray to transmit the human voice. Bell filed a patent describing his method of transmitting sounds on February 14, 1876, just hours before Gray filed a caveat (a statement of concept) on a similar method.

On March 7, 1876, the Patent Office awarded Bell what is said to be one of the most-valuable patents in history. It is most likely that both Bell and Gray independently devised their telephone designs as an outgrowth of their work on harmonic telegraphy. However, the question of priority of invention between the two has been controversial from the very beginning. Alexander Graham Bell’s sketch of a telephone. He filed the patent for his telephone at the U.S. … © Photos.com/Jupiterimages Listen: Thomas A. Watson describing invention of the telephone Thomas A. Watson, assistant to Alexander Graham Bell, discussing the birth of the telephone, … Despite having the patent, Bell did not have a fully functioning instrument. He first produced intelligible speech on March 10, 1876, when he summoned his laboratory assistant, Thomas A. Watson , with words that Bell transcribed in his lab notes as “Mr. Watson—come here—I want to see you.” Over the next few months, Bell continued to refine his instrument to make it suitable for public exhibition.

In June he demonstrated his telephone to the judges of the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, a test witnessed by Brazil’s Emperor Pedro II and the celebrated Scottish physicist Sir William Thomson . In August of that year, he was on the receiving end of the first one-way long-distance call, transmitted from Brantford to nearby Paris, Ontario, over a telegraph wire. Alexander Graham Bell, inventor who patented the telephone in 1876, lecturing at Salem, … © Photos.com/Jupiterimages Editor Picks: Exploring 10 Types of Basketball Movies Gardiner Hubbard organized a group that established the Bell Telephone Company in July 1877 to commercialize Bell’s telephone. Bell was the company’s technical adviser until he lost interest in telephony in the early 1880s. Although his invention rendered him independently wealthy, he sold off most of his stock holdings in the company early and did not profit as much as he might have had he retained his shares. Thus, by the mid-1880s his role in the telephone industry was marginal.

Alexander Graham Bell, who patented the telephone in 1876, inaugurating the 1,520-km (944-mile) … Photos.com/Thinkstock By that time, Bell had developed a growing interest in the technology of sound recording and playback. Although Edison had invented the phonograph in 1877, he soon turned his attention to other technologies, especially electric power and lighting, and his machine, which recorded and reproduced sound on a rotating cylinder wrapped in tinfoil, remained an unreliable and cumbersome device. In 1880 the French government awarded Bell the Volta Prize, given for achievement in electrical science . Bell used the prize money to set up his Volta Laboratory, an institution devoted to studying deafness and improving the lives of the deaf, in Washington, D.C. There he also devoted himself to improving the phonograph. By 1885 Bell and his colleagues (his cousin Chichester A. Bell and the inventor Charles Sumner Tainter ) had a design fit for commercial use that featured a removable cardboard cylinder coated with mineral wax. They called their device the Graphophone and applied for patents, which were granted in 1886.

The group formed the Volta Graphophone Company to produce their invention. Then in 1887 they sold their patents to the American Graphophone Company, which later evolved into the Columbia Phonograph Company. Bell used his proceeds from the sale to endow the Volta Laboratory. The vertical “hill-and-dale” groove, as played by a Columbia Graphophone, c. 1902. … Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Facebook Twitter YouTube Instagram Pinterest Bell undertook two other noteworthy research projects at the Volta Laboratory. In 1880 he began research on using light as a means to transmit sound. In 1873 British scientist Willoughby Smith discovered that the element selenium , a semiconductor , varied its electrical resistance with the intensity of incident light. Bell sought to use this property to develop the photophone, an invention he regarded as at least equal to his telephone. He was able to demonstrate that the photophone was technologically feasible , but it did not develop into a commercially viable product. Nevertheless, it contributed to research into the photovoltaic effect that had practical applications later in the 20th century. Bell’s other major undertaking was the development of an electrical bullet probe for surgical use.

The origin of this effort was the shooting of U.S. President James A. Garfield in July 1881. A bullet lodged in the president’s back, and doctors were unable to locate it through physical probing. Bell decided that a promising approach was to use an induction balance, a by-product of his research on canceling out electrical interference on telephone wires. Bell determined that a properly configured induction balance would emit a tone when a metal object was brought into proximity with it. At the end of July, he began searching for Garfield’s bullet, but to no avail. Despite Garfield’s death in September, Bell later successfully demonstrated the probe to a group of doctors. Surgeons adopted it, and it was credited with saving lives during the Boer War (1899–1902) and World War I (1914–18). Trending Topics Open Door policy In September 1885 the Bell family vacationed in Nova Scotia, Canada, and immediately fell in love with the climate and landscape.

The following year, Bell bought 50 acres of land near the village of Baddeck on Cape Breton Island and began constructing an estate he called Beinn Bhreagh, Scots Gaelic for “Beautiful Mountain.” The Scottish-born inventor had been an American citizen since 1882, but the Canadian estate became the family’s summer retreat and later permanent home. During the 1890s Bell shifted his attention to heavier-than-air flight . Starting in 1891, inspired by the research of American scientist Samuel Pierpont Langley , he experimented with wing shapes and propeller blade designs. He continued his experiments even after Wilbur and Orville Wright made the first successful powered, controlled flight in 1903. In 1907 Bell founded the Aerial Experiment Association , which made significant progress in aircraft design and control and contributed to the career of pioneer aviator Glenn Hammond Curtiss . Throughout his life, Bell sought to foster the advance of scientific knowledge. He supported the journal Science, which later became the official publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science .

He was one of the founders of the National Geographic Society in 1888 and succeeded his father-in-law, Gardiner Hubbard, as president of the society between 1898 and 1903. In that year his son-in-law, Gilbert H. Grosvenor , became editor in chief of the National Geographic Magazine . Bell died at his Nova Scotia estate, where he was buried. Alexander Graham Bell Facts for Kids - Telephone, Inventions, Quotes Check out our fun facts for kids that feature interesting trivia, quotes and information related to a range of famous scientists. Alexander Graham Bell Facts Learn about the man credited with the invention of the first practical telephone with our Alexander Graham Bell facts for kids. Find out about his life growing up in Scotland, his move to Canada, his study of sound and his many experiments and inventions. Read on and enjoy our range of interesting facts and information related to Alexander Graham Bell. Alexander Graham Bell was an influential scientist, engineer and inventor. He was born on March 3, 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He died on August 2, 1922 at the age of 75. He is widely credited with the invention of the first practical telephone.

Bell’s mother and wife were both deaf, this had a major influence on his work. He didn’t have the middle name “Graham” until he turned 11 when his father gave it to him as a birthday present. He’d earlier asked to have a middle name like his two brothers. Bell became an excellent piano player at a young age. When he was 23, Bell and his parents moved to Canada. Bell studied the human voice and worked with various schools for the deaf. Bell experimented with sound, working with devices such as a ‘harmonic telegraph’ (used to send multiple messages over a single wire) and a ‘phonautograph’ (used to record sound). He worked on acoustic telegraphy with his assistant, an electrical designer named Thomas Watson. On February 14, 1876, Bell and an American electrical engineer named Elisha Gray both filed patents with the U.S. Patent Office covering the transmission of sounds telegraphically. There is debate about who got there first but the patent was awarded to Bell. A few days later he succeeded in getting his telephone to work using elements similar to those of Gray’s water transmitter.

Bell’s first words with the working telephone were spoken to his assistant Watson and were along the lines of “Mr Watson, come here. I want to see you.” Bell improved on the design and by 1886 more than 150000 people owned telephones in the United States. Bell also had a strong interest in other scientific fields, conducting medical research, searching for alternative fuel sources, experimenting with metal detectors, developing hydrofoil watercraft and much more. Famous Alexander Graham Bell quotes include: "Before anything else, preparation is the key to success." "A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with - a man is what he makes of himself." "The day will come when the man at the telephone will be able to see the distant person to whom he is speaking." "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." Alexander Graham Bell 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 Timeline Home > Timelines > Alexander Graham Bell Timeline Alexander Graham Bell Timeline Timeline Description: Alexander Graham Bell was a great American inventor and scientist. He is best known for his invention of the telephone. Without his genius we would not have come to where we are today. Bell was also the inventor of many other electronic devices.

Date March 3, 1847 Bell is born in Scotland. Alexander Graham Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. Alexander Graham Bell is born to Professor Alexander Melville Bell and Eliza Grace Symonds. His father was a famous elocutionist or speech expert and teacher. December, 1859 Bell invents his first machine. His first invention ever at the age of 12 was a machine that could clean wheat grains and remove the husks. His mother began to lose her hearing this year. February, 1863 Bell is interested in speech machines. His father took him to see an "automation machine" that imitated the sound of the human voice. He became interested in speech and language and translated a German book by another famous scientist so that he could build a machine with the help of his brother that would produce speech electronically. 1865 Bell family moves to England. The Bell family moved to London but Aleck, as he was called, stayed in Scotland and became a teacher of elocution and music when he was 16. 1866 Bell starts college and becomes sick. He joined his older brother Melville as a student at the University of Edinburgh.

He suffered illness from exhaustion and his health kept him bedridden most of the time. His younger brother Edward was also sick with tuberculosis. 1867 Bell comes back home and buckles down to study. After his brother Edward died, Bell returned home to Scotland. His older brother Melville married and moved away to open his own school of elocution. Aleck spent much of his spare time during these days, studying May, 1870 Bell's other brother dies and family moves to Canada. Bell's brother Melville died from tuberculosis. His father also became sick but traveled to Newfoundland to recuperate. Bell's parents decided to move to Canada. Aleck also became sick but a journey to the "New World" with a different climate saved his health. April, 1871 Bell moves to the U.S. Bell moves to Boston to teach others his method of Visible Speech System, to help the deaf and speech-impaired people. October, 1872 Bell opens his own school for the deaf. He opened a school in Boston called the "Vocal Physiology and Mechanics of Speech for deaf students. Helen Keller was one of his famous students. May, 1874 Bell invents the telephone.

He starts experimenting on the phonoautograph, a machine that helps plot sound waves. In the summer of this year he came up with the idea of a telephone. He hired an assistant named Thomas Watson. June 2, 1875 Bell proves that telephones work. Watson happens to pluck one of the metal reeds that formed Bell's phonoautograph machine. This accidental move showed that a telephone could transmit sounds. March 7, 1876 Bell patents his ideas. Bell receives The U.S. Patent Office patent number 174,465. It allowed him to have his machine transmit sound waves telegraphically without others copying his ideas. August 3, 1876 Bell gets first long-distance call. Bell received a long-distance voice message from a town called Brantford, about four miles away. After this major event, Bell began to demonstrate and speak about his new invention to the public. July 11, 1877 Bell forms first telephone company and marries. Bell Telephone Company was formed. Also this year, Bell married Mabel Hubbard of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

He started signing his name as "Alec" and not "Aleck." His major source of money was still his teaching since the telephone was not profitable for him yet. 1881 Bell has many other inventions. Bell invents the phonograph, the metal detector, a metal jacket that helped people breathe, and an audiometer that helped detect hearing problems among 18 patents given in his name. He received many honors and many awards are still given today in his name. 1897 Bell becomes famous and is involved in other organizations. Alexander Graham Bell became the President of the National Geographic Society. Bell's family members have played an important part in this organization to this day. January 25, 1915 Bell places first trans-Atlantic phone call. For the first time ever, Bell called up Watson from across the continent. 38 years before this call, Bell and Watson had talked on the phone. This one was much better and the quality was clear and crisp to hear. August 2, 1922 Alexander Graham Bell (1847 - 1922) - Find A Grave Memorial Baddeck Nova Scotia, Canada Inventor, Educator.

He is famous not only as an inventor, but also as an educator and writer of books to help people who cannot speak or hear. Born in Edinburgh Scotland, he emigrated to Canada along with his family. He was hired to teach in Boston at a school for children not being able to speak nor hear. His home remained America for the rest of his life and he became an American citizen. Through his teachings, he became interested in the sound of the human voice which led to his invention of the telephone. Along with an assistant, Thomas A. Watson, the telephone was born. Work continued on improving the invention. The first long distance, two-way telephone conversation took place in 1876 between Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts, a distance of two miles. Alexander Graham Bell lived to see millions of telephones in use all over the world. He had the experience of speaking from coast to coast by telephone. He died shortly before service across the ocean was opened. His invention brought him wealth and great honors. Living in retirement at Beinn Bhreagh, his summer estate at Baddeck, Nova Scotia, he suffered a heart attack which took his life.

He was buried in a simple graveside service on the grounds of the retreat where he regularly spent a substantial portion of each year. In tribute to Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, all service in the United States stopped for one minute in simple respect. Alexander Graham Bell - Phone and other inventions Alexander Graham Bell Vibraphone / Telephone (1875 - 1879) In 1875, Bell makes a first prototype of the vibraphone. The apparatus is actuated using mobile a metal strip, similar to those of the clarinets. In March 1876, Bell improves quality of the vibraphone by replacing the strip by a wire plunged in a container filled of water and acid. The liquid produces module the intensity of the current in the wire in a way equivalent to the sound waves of the atmosphere. Bell visits eminent scientist Joseph Henry at the Smithsonian Institution and explains to him his idea for the telephone, in march, 1975. J.Henry recognizes the significance of Bell's work and offers him encouragement. In September 1875, he began to write the specifications for the phone.

14 february 1876, Bell's telephone patent application is filed at the United States Patent Office. An actor portraying Bell for a 1926 promotional film by the American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T) Elisha Gray, American inventor of the Telegraph for Transmitting Musical Tones, files a record of caveat (notice of patent) for a phone just a few hours later. United States Patent No. 174,465 is granted on March 7, 1876 to Alexander Graham Bell, before even as his telephone does not function perfectly. Elisha Gray then brought several lawsuits, all of which result in a judgment against him. It’s in March 10, 1876, in Boston, the apparatus produced by Alexander Graham Bell, called vibraphone, succeeds for the first time remotely transmitting the voice of his inventor, when intelligible human speech is heard over the telephone for the first time when Bell calls to Watson, "Mr.

Watson -- Come here -- I want to see you." June 25,1976, Bell demonstrates the telephone for Sir William Thomson (Baron Kelvin) and Emperor Pedro II of Brazil at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. The first telephone exchange in the United States opens in New Haven, in 1878, under license from Bell Telephone. Within a few years, licensed telephone exchanges open in every major city in the country. January 14, 1879, Bell demonstrates the telephone for Queen Victoria. And the 12 february 1879, the Bell Telephone Company merges with the New England Telephone Company to become the National Bell Telephone Company, then the American Bell Telephone Company, the following year. By 1894, Alexander Graham Bell's second telephone patent expires, opening the telephone industry to competition Within a decade, over 6,000 companies went into the telephone business across the country.

January 25, 1915, held the opening ceremony of the transcontinental telephone line, and to give it more prestige, it is Bell in New York (Office of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company) and Watson in San Francisco, who are invited to make the first transcontinental phone call! (photo on the right). When Alexander Graham Bell dies in 1922 in his house of summer of Baddeck, thirteen million telephones are already sold. June 2002, the U.S. House of Representatives officially recognized the role of the Italian-American Antonio Meucci in the invention of the telephone. Indeed, in 1989, Basilio Catania, ex-Director General of CSELT (the research agency and development of Italian telecoms), discovers the work of Antonio Meucci. Until then, nobody had ever questioned the paternity of Bell invented the telephone. December 12, 1871, Antonio Meucci founded the Telettrofono Company with three partners and 28 December, he protects his invention (Telettrofono) by a "warning patent" formula renewable cheaper than a patent.

For lack of financial resources, Meucci is seen unable to renew it before its expiry, in 1874. Two years later, in 1876, Bell filed his patent. Convinced of having stolen his invention, Meucci suing him. The trial lasted until 1889, when the death of Meucci ends proceedings, without the inventorship of the phone is recognized in him. The U.S. House of Representatives said that "if Meucci had been able to pay the $ 10 fee to keep the promise of patent after 1874, no patent could have been issued to Bell" The word telephones car its origin of the Greek words têle and phônê, literally "remote voice". The telegraph term results from the Greek têle and graphos, for "remote writing". In the honor of Alexander Graham Bell, the measuring unit of the sound power, adopted in 1927, the name of decibel will carry Photophone (1880) In 1880 the French Government awards Bell the Volta Prize of 50,000 francs, for the invention of the electric speaking telephone.

He uses the prize money to set up the Volta Laboratory as a permanent, self-supporting experimental laboratory devoted to invention. With his young associate, Charles Sumner Tainter, he invent the photophone and he took the opportunity to present it the Meudon Observatory. The photophone can produce and reproduce sound by using the properties of selenium and has nothing in common with the transmission of pictures. December 14, 1880, they get two patents on the preparation of selenium cells. That year they deposited at the Smithsonian two sealed tin boxes containing models and documentation of a device they called a photophone, which transmitted sound over a beam of light, and other apparatus. The inventors hoped that the sealed boxes would prove their priority in invention; they did not want to file a patent for fear of giving away secrets that would help competitors. One can imagine that it could be the strategic and commercial importance of such a discovery: once perfected, it would have allowed the establishment of a optics telephone system that does not require construction of a telephone network. It is therefore not without reason that Bell considered until his death that this invention was superior to that of the electric telephone.

photophone au Smithsonian When the boxes were finally opened in 1937, long after Bell's death, the inventions inside were historical relics, not technological breakthroughs. But it will be mainly the work conducted in 1960 on the laser beams, resulting in particular in 1978 the launch of the Compact Disc Audio, which show that the hypothesis of Bell - transmit sound through the light - was no absurd Telectroscope (distance vision) Louis Figuier, great popularizer French scientist, dedicates a long article about the phone in the volume 1877 : “year of Scientific and Industrial Research”, Twenty-first year, Librairie Hachette and Co., Paris, 1878. But most astonishing is that this article is immediately followed by another article entitled "The telectroscope, a device to transmit distances images", which assigns to Graham Bell invented this device. There is no known trace Bell's contribution of telectroscope on that date. Figuier himself seemed skeptical, since it ends the article by writing "... although it would take accurate descriptions of the device to believe in this announcement ".

This attribution is only a fanciful illustrations of the movement of imagination sparked by the announcement of the arrival of the phone: if it is possible to transmit sound by electricity, it should also be possible to transmit pictures. In Europe, the two pioneers of research on this subject will, in 1878, Portugal's Adriano de Paiva and French Constantin Senlecq. Both recognize that this is the announcement of the development of the electric telephone by Bell, which stimulated their work. The term Telectroscope fell into disuse after the introduction in 1900, the word television Source : Smithsonian Institution - Fitzgerald Canada - Parks Canada - AT&T - National Geographic Magazine (Vol. XIV, No.6, June 1903) - Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site - Dictionary of American Biography Base Set. American Council of Learned Societies, 1928-1936. Photos : Library and Archives Canada - Library of Congress American Memory - Smithsonian Institution - National Geographic

Question: Inventor of the telephone Alexander Graham Bell died and was buried in which country?
Answer: CANADA