Bell (for "Future" preso)

For Chris Gulker's presentation "The Future of Publishing"

Alexander Graham Bell

Bell, Alexander Graham (1847-1922), American inventor and teacher of the deaf, most famous for his invention of the telephone.

Bell was born on March 3, 1847, in Edinburgh and educated at the universities of Edinburgh and London. He immigrated to Canada in 1870 and to the United States in 1871. In the U.S. he began teaching deaf-mutes, publicizing the system called visible speech. The system, which was developed by his father, the Scottish educator Alexander Melville Bell (1819-1905), shows how the lips, tongue, and throat are used in the articulation of sound. In 1872 Bell founded a school for deaf-mutes in Boston. The school subsequently became part of Boston University, where Bell was appointed professor of vocal physiology. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1882.

Since the age of 18, Bell had been working on the idea of transmitting speech electrically. In 1874, while working on a multiple telegraph, he developed the basic ideas for the telephone. His experiments finally proved successful on March 10, 1876, when the first complete sentence was transmitted: ìWatson, come here; I want you.î Subsequent demonstrations, notably at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, introduced the telephone to the world and led to the organization of the Bell Telephone Company in 1877.

In 1880 France bestowed on Bell the 50,000-franc Volta Prize for his invention. With this money he founded the Volta Laboratory in Washington, D.C., where, in that same year, he and his associates invented the photophone, which transmits speech by light rays. Other inventions include the audiometer, used in measuring acuity in hearing; the induction balance, developed in 1881 and used to locate metal objects in human bodies; and the first wax recording cylinder, introduced in 1886. The cylinder, together with the flat wax disc, formed the basis of the modern phonograph. In addition, Bell was one of the cofounders of the National Geographic Society, and he served as its president from 1896 to 1904.

After 1895 Bell's interest turned mostly to aeronautics; many of his subsequent inventions were first tested near his summer home at Baddeck on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia. His study of flight began with the construction of large kites, and he eventually devised (1907) a kite capable of carrying a person. With a group of associates, including the American inventor and aviator Glenn Hammond Curtiss, he developed the aileron, a movable section of an airplane wing controlling roll, and the tricycle landing gear, which first permitted takeoff from and landing on a flying field. Applying the principles of aeronautics to marine propulsion, his group started work on hydrofoil boats, which travel above the water at high speeds. His final full-sized ìhydrodrome,î developed in 1917, reached speeds in excess of 113 km/hr (70 mph) and for many years was the fastest boat in the world.

Bell's continuing studies on the causes and heredity of deafness led to experiments in eugenics, including sheep breeding, and to his book Duration of Life and Conditions Associated with Longevity (1918). He died on August 2, 1922, at Baddeck, where a museum containing many of his original inventions is maintained by the Canadian government.