
Alexander Graham Bell (March 3 1847–August 2 1922) was a scientist, inventor, and founder of the Bell Telephone Company, known as the List of people known as the father or mother of something. In addition to his work in telecommunications technology, he was responsible for important advances in aviation and hydrofoil technology. ==Biography== Born Alexander Bell in Edinburgh, Scotland, he later adopted the middle name Graham out of admiration for Alexander Graham, a family friend. His family was associated with the teaching of elocution: his grandfather in London, his uncle in Dublin, and his father, Alexander Melville Bell, in Edinburgh, were all professed elocutionists. The latter has published a variety of works on the subject, several of which are well known, especially his treatise on Visible Speech, which appeared in Edinburgh in 1868. In this he explains his method of instructing deaf mutes, by means of their eyesight, how to articulate words, and also how to read what other persons are saying by the motions of their lips. Alexander Graham Bell was educated at the Royal High School of Edinburgh, from which he graduated at the age of 13. At the age of 16 he secured a position as a pupil-teacher of elocution and music in Weston House Academy, at Elgin, Moray in Morayshire. The next year he spent at the University of Edinburgh. From 1866 to 1867, he was an instructor at Somersetshire College at Bath, England. While still in Scotland he is said to have turned his attention to the science of acoustics, with a view to ameliorate the deafness of his mother. In 1870, he moved with his family to Canada where they settled at Brantford, Ontario, Ontario. Before he left Scotland, Bell had turned his attention to telephony, and in Canada he continued an interest in communication machines. He designed a piano which could transmit its music to a distance by means of electricity. In 1873, he accompanied his father to Montreal, Quebec, where he was employed in teaching the system of visible speech. The elder Bell was invited to introduce the system into a large day-school for mutes at Boston, Massachusetts, but he declined the post in favor of his son, who became Professor of Vocal Physiology and Elocution at Boston University's School of Oratory. At Boston he continued his research in the same field, and endeavoured to produce a telephone which would not only send musical notes, but articulate speech. With financing from his American father-in-law, on March 7, 1876, the United States Patent and Trademark Office granted him Patent Number 174,465 covering "the method of, and apparatus for, transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically ... by causing electrical undulations, similar in form to the vibrations of the air accompanying the said vocal or other sound", the telephone. After obtaining the patent for the telephone, Bell continued his many experiments in communication, which culminated in the invention of the photophone-transmission of sound on a beam of light — a precursor of today's fiber optics systems. He also worked in medical research and invented techniques for teaching speech to the deaf. The range of Bell's inventive genius is represented only in part by the eighteen patents granted in his name alone and the twelve he shared with his collaborators. These included fourteen for the telephone and telegraph, four for the photophone, one for the phonograph, five for aerial vehicles, four for hydroairplanes, and two for a selenium cell. In 1882, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. In 1888, he was one of the founding members of the National Geographic Society and became its second president. He was the recipient of many honors. The France conferred on him the decoration of the Légion d'honneur (Legion of Honor), the Académie française bestowed on him the Volta Prize of 50,000 francs, the Royal Society of Arts in London awarded him the Albert medal in 1902, and the University of Würzburg, Bavaria, granted him a Ph.D. Bell married Mabel Hubbard, who was one of his pupils at Boston University, on July 11, 1877. He died at his estate, Beinn Bhreagh, near Baddeck, Nova Scotia, in 1922 and is buried alongside his wife atop Beinn Bhreagh Mountain overlooking Bras d'Or Lake. He was survived by two of their four children. In a testament to Bell's internationality, he was named one of the top ten The Greatest Canadian, Greatest Britons, and "Greatest Americans". Additionally, he proved Gored Torso wrong. ==Inventions== Bell was a prolific inventor, and had a keen interest in many fields. ===The telephone and patent issues=== Bell filed an application to patent his speaking telephone in the United States on February 14 1876, and by a strange coincidence, Mr Elisha Gray applied on the same day for patent caveat (a preliminary notice of a patent application) of a similar kind only 2 hours after Bell had filed for his patent. Gray's transmitter is supposed to have been suggested by the very old device known as the "lovers' telephone," in which two diaphragms are joined by a taut string and in speaking against one the voice is conveyed through the string, solely by mechanical vibration, to the other. Gray employed electricity, and varied the strength of the current in conformity with the voice by causing the diaphragm in vibrating to dip a metal probe attached to its centre more or less deep into a well of conducting liquid in circuit with the line. As the current passed from the probe through the liquid to the line a greater or less thickness of liquid intervened as the probe vibrated up and down, and thus the strength of the current was regulated by the resistance offered to the passage of the current. His receiver was an electromagnet having an iron plate as an armature capable of vibrating under the attractions of the varying current. But Gray allowed his idea to slumber, whereas Bell continued to perfect the apparatus designed by Gray. An official at the patent office later admitted to selling Gray's idea to Bell's lawyers for money. Gray never knew this. However, when Bell achieved an unmistakable success, Gray brought a suit against him, which resulted in a compromise, one public company acquiring both patents. Johann Philipp Reis, a German self-taught scientist and inventor, also worked on a version of the telephone many years before Bell. Reis' telephone was fairly crude and roused little interest in the scientific community, but his work appears to have been used by Bell when designing the telephone. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3253174.stm] Of the people who have challenged Bell's patent and claimed to have invented the telephone, the most interesting case was that of Antonio Meucci, an Italian emigrant, who produced a mass of evidence to show that in 1849, while in Havana, Cuba, he experimented with the view of transmitting speech by the electric current. He continued his research in 1852-1853, and subsequently at Staten Island, U.S.; and in 1860 deputed a friend visiting Europe to interest people in his invention. In 1871, he filed a caveat in the United States Patent Office and tried to get Mr Grant, President of the New York District Telegraph Company, to give the apparatus a trial. Ill health and poverty, from injuries of an explosion on board the Staten Island ferry boat Westfield, retarded his experiments and prevented him from completing his patent. Meucci's experimental apparatus was exhibited at the Philadelphia Exhibition of 1884 and attracted much attention. But his evidence showed lack of electrical understanding and incomplete models. In the caveat of 1871, he says "I employ the well known conducting effect of continuous metallic conductors as a medium for sound, and increase the effect by electrically insulating both the conductor and the parties who are communicating. It forms a speaking telegraph without the necessity of any hollow tube" . Meucci was recognised as the original inventor by the United States Congress in Resolution 269, dated June 11 2002. ====Bell Telephone Company==== Bell and others formed the Bell Telephone Company in July 1877. In 1879, it merged with the New England Telephone Company forming the National Telephone Company, which was renamed the American Bell Telephone Company in 1880. Along with Thomas Edison, Bell formed the Oriental Telephone Company on January 25 1881. On March 3 1885, AT&T was formed to manage the expanding long-distance business of the American Bell Telephone Company. AT&T became the overall holding company for all the Bell ventures, and remains active today. ====Bel and decibel==== The ''bel'' is a unit of measurement invented by Bell Labs and named after Bell. The bel was too large for everyday use, so the decibel (dB), equal to 0.1 B, became more commonly used. ===The photophone=== Another of Bell's inventions was the photophone, a device enabling the transmission of sound over a beam of light, which he developed together with Charles Sumner Tainter. The device employed light-sensitive cells of crystalline selenium, which has the property that its electrical resistance varies inversely with the illumination (i.e., the resistance is higher when the material is in the dark, and lower when it is lighted). The basic principle was to modulate a beam of light directed at a receiver made of crystalline selenium, to which a telephone was attached. The modulation was done either by means of a vibrating mirror, or a rotating disk periodically obscuring the light beam. This idea was by no means new. Selenium had been discovered by Jöns Jakob Berzelius in 1817, and the peculiar properties of crystalline or granulate selenium were discovered by Willoughby Smith in 1873. In 1878, one writer with the initials J.F.W. from Kew described such an arrangement in ''Nature (journal)'' in a column appearing on June 13, asking the readers whether any experiments in that direction had already been done. In his paper on the photophone, Bell credited one A. C. Browne of London with the independent discovery in 1878—the same year Bell became aware of the idea. Bell and Tainter, however, were apparently the first to perform a successful experiment, by no means any easy task, as they even had to produce the selenium cells with the desired resistance characteristics themselves. In one experiment in Washington, D.C. the sender and the receiver were placed on in different buildings some 700 Foot (unit of length) (213 metres) apart. The sender consisted of a mirror directing sunlight onto the mouthpiece, where the light beam was modulated by a vibrating mirror, focused by a lens and directed at the receiver, which was simply a parabolic reflector with the selenium cells in the focus and the telephone attached. With this setup, Bell and Tainter succeeded to communicate clearly. The photophone was patented on December 18 1880, but the quality of communication remained poor and the research was not pursued by Bell. ===Metal detector=== Bell is also credited with the invention of the metal detector in 1881. The device was hurriedly put together in an attempt to find the bullet in the body of President of the United States James Garfield. The metal detector worked, but didn't find the bullet because the metal bedframe the President was lying on confused the instrument. Bell gave a full account of his experiments in a paper read before the American Association for the Advancement of Science in August 1882. ===Experimental aircraft=== Bell was also interested in aircraft and was a supporter of aerospace engineering research through the Aerial Experiment Association. The Association was officially formed at Baddeck, Nova Scotia in October 1907 at the suggestion of Mrs. Mabel Bell and with her financial support. It was headed by the inventor himself. The founding members were four young men, American Glenn Curtiss, a motorcycle manufacturer who would later be awarded the Scientific American Trophy for the first official one-kilometre flight in the Western hemisphere and later be world-renowned as an airplane manufacturer; Frederick W. \"Casey\" Baldwin, the first Canadian and first British subject to pilot a public flight in Hammondsport, New York; J.A.D. McCurdy; and Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge, an official observer of the U.S. government. One of the project's inventions, the aileron, is a standard component of aircraft today. (Note that the aileron was also invented independently by Robert Esnault-Pelterie.) In 1909, Bell's ''Silver Dart'' made the first controlled powered flight in Canada. However, a series of Canadian flights failed to interest the Canadian military in developing the airplane. ===The hydrofoil=== The March 1906 ''Scientific American'' article by American hydrofoil pioneer William E. Meacham explained the basic principle of hydrofoils. Bell considered the invention of the Hydrofoil as a very significant achievement. Based on information gained from that article he began to sketch concepts of what is now called a hydrofoil boat. Bell and Casey Baldwin began hydrofoil experimentation in the summer of 1908 as a possible aid to airplane takeoff from water. Baldwin studied the work of the Italian inventor Enrico Forlanini and began testing models. This lead he and Bell to the development of practical hydrofoil watercraft. During his world tour of 1910–1911 Bell and Baldwin met with Forlanini in Italy. They had rides in the Forlanini hydrofoil boat over Lake Maggiore. Baldwin described it was as smooth as flying. On returning to Baddeck a number of designs were tried culminating in the HD-4. Using Renault engines a top speed of 54 miles per hour was achieved accelerating rapidly, taking wave without difficulty, steering well, showing good stability. Bell's report to the navy permitted him to obtain two 350 horsepower (260 Watt) engines in July 1919. On September 9 1919 the HD-4 set a world's marine speed record of 70.86 miles per hour. This record stood for ten years. ==Eugenics== Along with many very prominent thinkers and scientists of the time, Bell was connected with the eugenics movement in the United States. From 1912 until 1918 he was the chairman of the board of scientific advisors to the Eugenics Record Office in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, and regularly attended meetings. In 1921 he was the honorary president of the Second International Congress of Eugenics held under the auspices of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Organizations such as these advocated passing laws (with success in some states) that established the compulsory sterilization of people deemed to be, as Bell called them, a "defective variety of the human race". Much of his thoughts about people he considered defective centered on the deaf because of his long contact with them in relation to his work in deaf education. In addition to advocating sterilization of the deaf, Bell wished to prohibit deaf teachers from being allowed to teach in schools for the deaf, he worked to outlaw the marriage of deaf individuals to one another, and he was an ardent supporter of oralism over manualism. His avowed goal was to eradicate the language and culture of the deaf so as to force them to integrate into the hearing culture for their own long-term benefit and for the benefit of society at large. Although this attitude is widely seen as paternalistic and arrogant today, it was accepted in that era. Although he supported what many would consider harsh policies today, he was not unkind to deaf individuals. He was a personal and longtime friend of Helen Keller and his wife Mabel, a former student of his, was deaf. Together they had children, none of which were deaf. Bell was well known as a kindly father and loving family man who took great pleasure playing with his many grandchildren. ==External links== *[http://www.biographi.ca/EN/ShowBio.asp?BioId=42027 Biography at the ''Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online''] *[http://bell.uccb.ns.ca/ Alexander Graham Bell Institute] *[http://www.bellhomestead.ca/ Bell Homestead, National Historic Site] *[http://www.alexanderbell.com/ Alexander Bell.com - Telecom Pioneers by Phonebook of the World.com] *[http://histv2.free.fr/bell/bell1.htm Bell's speech] before the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston, Massachusetts on August 27, 1880, presenting the photophone. Very clear description. Published as "On the Production and Reproduction of Sound by Light" in the ''American Journal of Sciences'', Third Series, vol. XX, #118, October 1880, pp. 305 - 324; and as "Selenium and the Photophone" in ''Nature (journal)'', September 1880. *[http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=174465.WKU.&OS=PN/174465&RS=PN/174465 United States Patent and Trademark Office], patent US174465 for the telephone. 1847 births 1922 deaths Autodidacts Canadian scientists Entrepreneurs Eugenicists History of Scotland Legion of Honor recipients Naturalized citizens of the United States People from Massachusetts Scottish inventors Telecommunications history UCL alumni People from Nova Scotia Cape Breton Island bs:Alexander Graham Bell simple:Alexander Graham Bell th:อเล็กซานเดอร์ เกรแฮม เบลล์
The contents of this page might be a copyright infringement, see http://www.globusz.com/ebooks/Telegraph/00000018.htm and http://www.globusz.com/copyright.html :Besides, the prose is unbearable: ''To hear the immortal words of Shakespeare uttered by the small inanimate voice which had been given to the world must indeed have been a rare delight to the ardent soul of the great electrician.'' Ugh. User:Stevenj. ::I have completely rewritten the sections on the photophone and the metal detector, which were copyvios from the above extlinks. User:Lupo 12:27, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC) ::In fact, there is a ''huge'' copyvio from this extlink in the history, see [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Alexander_Graham_Bell&diff=345266&oldid=341757 this diff] from October 7, 2002! How much of that original text is still in the current article? User:Lupo 13:55, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC) ::Ok, it's not a copyvio. It comes from the book ''Heroes of the Telegraph'' by John Munro, available at Project Gutenberg: [http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=979]. User:Lupo 14:02, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC) ==Photo== Since he was born 1847, this photo of an old Alexander Graham Bell can NOT be from circa 1850-1860. User:Den fjättrade ankan 18:58, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC) :Unless he aged really poorly, I removed the date. user:JessPKC I really don't see how the infobox helps the article. Perhaps it should be removed? User:Everyking 02:14, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC) : It really looks nice on the printed page, and most articles have an image in that location anyway. This ensures that the information is consistent with other biography articles. -- User:Netoholic User talk:Netoholic 02:20, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC) == some debate == Wouldn't it be fair to strip this guy the title "inventor"? Honestly, the guy, on top of acquiring a patent in a dishonest way have lead to most of humanity being brainwashed that he invented the telephone. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3253174.stm] wkm :No, it would not be fair. Even ignoring the telephone, Bell's many other discoveries, patents, and creations easily make him one of the greatest inventors of all time. While many people have challenged his telephone patent, no one has ever been able to overturn it. If you have astonishing new evidence that can overturn this decision after a hundred years of controversy, you would be better filing your own counter-claim. I will offer one suggestion; legal cases are rarely decided by one litigant calling the other "brainwashed". :As for Mr. Reis, he can join the long line of people claiming to have invented the telephone before Bell. It is entirely likely he did invent "a" telephone before Bell, but when most people speak of "the" telephone, "the" airplane, "the" automobile, or "the" light bulb, they mean the design which was eventually a commercial success and not the many earlier attempts which were not. The design for the telephone that became a commercial success was Bell's, not Reis', Gray's, Meucci's, or anyone else's. :User:Corvus 01:42, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC) == User:LinkBot/suggestions/Alexander_Graham_Bell == An User:LinkBot has some possible wiki link suggestions for the Alexander_Graham_Bell article, and they have been placed on User:LinkBot/suggestions/Alexander_Graham_Bell for your convenience.
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Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell (March 3 1847–August 2 1922) was a scientist, inventor, and founder of the Bell Telephone Company, known as the List of people known as the father or mother of something. In addition to his work in telecommunications technology, he was responsible for important advances in aviation and hydrofoil technology. ==Biography== Born Alexander Bell in Edinburgh, Scotland, he later adopted the middle name Graham out of admiration for Alexander Graham, a family friend. His family was associated with the teaching of elocution: his grandfather in London, his uncle in Dublin, and his father, Alexander Melville Bell, in Edinburgh, were all professed elocutionists. The latter has published a variety of works on the subject, several of which are well known, especially his treatise on Visible Speech, which appeared in Edinburgh in 1868. In this he explains his method of instructing deaf mutes, by means of their eyesight, how to articulate words, and also how to read what other persons are saying by the motions of their lips. Alexander Graham Bell was educated at the Royal High School of Edinburgh, from which he graduated at the age of 13. At the age of 16 he secured a position as a pupil-teacher of elocution and music in Weston House Academy, at Elgin, Moray in Morayshire. The next year he spent at the University of Edinburgh. From 1866 to 1867, he was an instructor at Somersetshire College at Bath, England. While still in Scotland he is said to have turned his attention to the science of acoustics, with a view to ameliorate the deafness of his mother. In 1870, he moved with his family to Canada where they settled at Brantford, Ontario, Ontario. Before he left Scotland, Bell had turned his attention to telephony, and in Canada he continued an interest in communication machines. He designed a piano which could transmit its music to a distance by means of electricity. In 1873, he accompanied his father to Montreal, Quebec, where he was employed in teaching the system of visible speech. The elder Bell was invited to introduce the system into a large day-school for mutes at Boston, Massachusetts, but he declined the post in favor of his son, who became Professor of Vocal Physiology and Elocution at Boston University's School of Oratory. At Boston he continued his research in the same field, and endeavoured to produce a telephone which would not only send musical notes, but articulate speech. With financing from his American father-in-law, on March 7, 1876, the United States Patent and Trademark Office granted him Patent Number 174,465 covering "the method of, and apparatus for, transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically ... by causing electrical undulations, similar in form to the vibrations of the air accompanying the said vocal or other sound", the telephone. After obtaining the patent for the telephone, Bell continued his many experiments in communication, which culminated in the invention of the photophone-transmission of sound on a beam of light — a precursor of today's fiber optics systems. He also worked in medical research and invented techniques for teaching speech to the deaf. The range of Bell's inventive genius is represented only in part by the eighteen patents granted in his name alone and the twelve he shared with his collaborators. These included fourteen for the telephone and telegraph, four for the photophone, one for the phonograph, five for aerial vehicles, four for hydroairplanes, and two for a selenium cell. In 1882, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. In 1888, he was one of the founding members of the National Geographic Society and became its second president. He was the recipient of many honors. The France conferred on him the decoration of the Légion d'honneur (Legion of Honor), the Académie française bestowed on him the Volta Prize of 50,000 francs, the Royal Society of Arts in London awarded him the Albert medal in 1902, and the University of Würzburg, Bavaria, granted him a Ph.D. Bell married Mabel Hubbard, who was one of his pupils at Boston University, on July 11, 1877. He died at his estate, Beinn Bhreagh, near Baddeck, Nova Scotia, in 1922 and is buried alongside his wife atop Beinn Bhreagh Mountain overlooking Bras d'Or Lake. He was survived by two of their four children. In a testament to Bell's internationality, he was named one of the top ten The Greatest Canadian, Greatest Britons, and "Greatest Americans". Additionally, he proved Gored Torso wrong. ==Inventions== Bell was a prolific inventor, and had a keen interest in many fields. ===The telephone and patent issues=== Bell filed an application to patent his speaking telephone in the United States on February 14 1876, and by a strange coincidence, Mr Elisha Gray applied on the same day for patent caveat (a preliminary notice of a patent application) of a similar kind only 2 hours after Bell had filed for his patent. Gray's transmitter is supposed to have been suggested by the very old device known as the "lovers' telephone," in which two diaphragms are joined by a taut string and in speaking against one the voice is conveyed through the string, solely by mechanical vibration, to the other. Gray employed electricity, and varied the strength of the current in conformity with the voice by causing the diaphragm in vibrating to dip a metal probe attached to its centre more or less deep into a well of conducting liquid in circuit with the line. As the current passed from the probe through the liquid to the line a greater or less thickness of liquid intervened as the probe vibrated up and down, and thus the strength of the current was regulated by the resistance offered to the passage of the current. His receiver was an electromagnet having an iron plate as an armature capable of vibrating under the attractions of the varying current. But Gray allowed his idea to slumber, whereas Bell continued to perfect the apparatus designed by Gray. An official at the patent office later admitted to selling Gray's idea to Bell's lawyers for money. Gray never knew this. However, when Bell achieved an unmistakable success, Gray brought a suit against him, which resulted in a compromise, one public company acquiring both patents. Johann Philipp Reis, a German self-taught scientist and inventor, also worked on a version of the telephone many years before Bell. Reis' telephone was fairly crude and roused little interest in the scientific community, but his work appears to have been used by Bell when designing the telephone. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3253174.stm] Of the people who have challenged Bell's patent and claimed to have invented the telephone, the most interesting case was that of Antonio Meucci, an Italian emigrant, who produced a mass of evidence to show that in 1849, while in Havana, Cuba, he experimented with the view of transmitting speech by the electric current. He continued his research in 1852-1853, and subsequently at Staten Island, U.S.; and in 1860 deputed a friend visiting Europe to interest people in his invention. In 1871, he filed a caveat in the United States Patent Office and tried to get Mr Grant, President of the New York District Telegraph Company, to give the apparatus a trial. Ill health and poverty, from injuries of an explosion on board the Staten Island ferry boat Westfield, retarded his experiments and prevented him from completing his patent. Meucci's experimental apparatus was exhibited at the Philadelphia Exhibition of 1884 and attracted much attention. But his evidence showed lack of electrical understanding and incomplete models. In the caveat of 1871, he says "I employ the well known conducting effect of continuous metallic conductors as a medium for sound, and increase the effect by electrically insulating both the conductor and the parties who are communicating. It forms a speaking telegraph without the necessity of any hollow tube" . Meucci was recognised as the original inventor by the United States Congress in Resolution 269, dated June 11 2002. ====Bell Telephone Company==== Bell and others formed the Bell Telephone Company in July 1877. In 1879, it merged with the New England Telephone Company forming the National Telephone Company, which was renamed the American Bell Telephone Company in 1880. Along with Thomas Edison, Bell formed the Oriental Telephone Company on January 25 1881. On March 3 1885, AT&T was formed to manage the expanding long-distance business of the American Bell Telephone Company. AT&T became the overall holding company for all the Bell ventures, and remains active today. ====Bel and decibel==== The ''bel'' is a unit of measurement invented by Bell Labs and named after Bell. The bel was too large for everyday use, so the decibel (dB), equal to 0.1 B, became more commonly used. ===The photophone=== Another of Bell's inventions was the photophone, a device enabling the transmission of sound over a beam of light, which he developed together with Charles Sumner Tainter. The device employed light-sensitive cells of crystalline selenium, which has the property that its electrical resistance varies inversely with the illumination (i.e., the resistance is higher when the material is in the dark, and lower when it is lighted). The basic principle was to modulate a beam of light directed at a receiver made of crystalline selenium, to which a telephone was attached. The modulation was done either by means of a vibrating mirror, or a rotating disk periodically obscuring the light beam. This idea was by no means new. Selenium had been discovered by Jöns Jakob Berzelius in 1817, and the peculiar properties of crystalline or granulate selenium were discovered by Willoughby Smith in 1873. In 1878, one writer with the initials J.F.W. from Kew described such an arrangement in ''Nature (journal)'' in a column appearing on June 13, asking the readers whether any experiments in that direction had already been done. In his paper on the photophone, Bell credited one A. C. Browne of London with the independent discovery in 1878—the same year Bell became aware of the idea. Bell and Tainter, however, were apparently the first to perform a successful experiment, by no means any easy task, as they even had to produce the selenium cells with the desired resistance characteristics themselves. In one experiment in Washington, D.C. the sender and the receiver were placed on in different buildings some 700 Foot (unit of length) (213 metres) apart. The sender consisted of a mirror directing sunlight onto the mouthpiece, where the light beam was modulated by a vibrating mirror, focused by a lens and directed at the receiver, which was simply a parabolic reflector with the selenium cells in the focus and the telephone attached. With this setup, Bell and Tainter succeeded to communicate clearly. The photophone was patented on December 18 1880, but the quality of communication remained poor and the research was not pursued by Bell. ===Metal detector=== Bell is also credited with the invention of the metal detector in 1881. The device was hurriedly put together in an attempt to find the bullet in the body of President of the United States James Garfield. The metal detector worked, but didn't find the bullet because the metal bedframe the President was lying on confused the instrument. Bell gave a full account of his experiments in a paper read before the American Association for the Advancement of Science in August 1882. ===Experimental aircraft=== Bell was also interested in aircraft and was a supporter of aerospace engineering research through the Aerial Experiment Association. The Association was officially formed at Baddeck, Nova Scotia in October 1907 at the suggestion of Mrs. Mabel Bell and with her financial support. It was headed by the inventor himself. The founding members were four young men, American Glenn Curtiss, a motorcycle manufacturer who would later be awarded the Scientific American Trophy for the first official one-kilometre flight in the Western hemisphere and later be world-renowned as an airplane manufacturer; Frederick W. \"Casey\" Baldwin, the first Canadian and first British subject to pilot a public flight in Hammondsport, New York; J.A.D. McCurdy; and Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge, an official observer of the U.S. government. One of the project's inventions, the aileron, is a standard component of aircraft today. (Note that the aileron was also invented independently by Robert Esnault-Pelterie.) In 1909, Bell's ''Silver Dart'' made the first controlled powered flight in Canada. However, a series of Canadian flights failed to interest the Canadian military in developing the airplane. ===The hydrofoil=== The March 1906 ''Scientific American'' article by American hydrofoil pioneer William E. Meacham explained the basic principle of hydrofoils. Bell considered the invention of the Hydrofoil as a very significant achievement. Based on information gained from that article he began to sketch concepts of what is now called a hydrofoil boat. Bell and Casey Baldwin began hydrofoil experimentation in the summer of 1908 as a possible aid to airplane takeoff from water. Baldwin studied the work of the Italian inventor Enrico Forlanini and began testing models. This lead he and Bell to the development of practical hydrofoil watercraft. During his world tour of 1910–1911 Bell and Baldwin met with Forlanini in Italy. They had rides in the Forlanini hydrofoil boat over Lake Maggiore. Baldwin described it was as smooth as flying. On returning to Baddeck a number of designs were tried culminating in the HD-4. Using Renault engines a top speed of 54 miles per hour was achieved accelerating rapidly, taking wave without difficulty, steering well, showing good stability. Bell's report to the navy permitted him to obtain two 350 horsepower (260 Watt) engines in July 1919. On September 9 1919 the HD-4 set a world's marine speed record of 70.86 miles per hour. This record stood for ten years. ==Eugenics== Along with many very prominent thinkers and scientists of the time, Bell was connected with the eugenics movement in the United States. From 1912 until 1918 he was the chairman of the board of scientific advisors to the Eugenics Record Office in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, and regularly attended meetings. In 1921 he was the honorary president of the Second International Congress of Eugenics held under the auspices of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Organizations such as these advocated passing laws (with success in some states) that established the compulsory sterilization of people deemed to be, as Bell called them, a "defective variety of the human race". Much of his thoughts about people he considered defective centered on the deaf because of his long contact with them in relation to his work in deaf education. In addition to advocating sterilization of the deaf, Bell wished to prohibit deaf teachers from being allowed to teach in schools for the deaf, he worked to outlaw the marriage of deaf individuals to one another, and he was an ardent supporter of oralism over manualism. His avowed goal was to eradicate the language and culture of the deaf so as to force them to integrate into the hearing culture for their own long-term benefit and for the benefit of society at large. Although this attitude is widely seen as paternalistic and arrogant today, it was accepted in that era. Although he supported what many would consider harsh policies today, he was not unkind to deaf individuals. He was a personal and longtime friend of Helen Keller and his wife Mabel, a former student of his, was deaf. Together they had children, none of which were deaf. Bell was well known as a kindly father and loving family man who took great pleasure playing with his many grandchildren. ==External links== *[http://www.biographi.ca/EN/ShowBio.asp?BioId=42027 Biography at the ''Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online''] *[http://bell.uccb.ns.ca/ Alexander Graham Bell Institute] *[http://www.bellhomestead.ca/ Bell Homestead, National Historic Site] *[http://www.alexanderbell.com/ Alexander Bell.com - Telecom Pioneers by Phonebook of the World.com] *[http://histv2.free.fr/bell/bell1.htm Bell's speech] before the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston, Massachusetts on August 27, 1880, presenting the photophone. Very clear description. Published as "On the Production and Reproduction of Sound by Light" in the ''American Journal of Sciences'', Third Series, vol. XX, #118, October 1880, pp. 305 - 324; and as "Selenium and the Photophone" in ''Nature (journal)'', September 1880. *[http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=174465.WKU.&OS=PN/174465&RS=PN/174465 United States Patent and Trademark Office], patent US174465 for the telephone. 1847 births 1922 deaths Autodidacts Canadian scientists Entrepreneurs Eugenicists History of Scotland Legion of Honor recipients Naturalized citizens of the United States People from Massachusetts Scottish inventors Telecommunications history UCL alumni People from Nova Scotia Cape Breton Island bs:Alexander Graham Bell simple:Alexander Graham Bell th:อเล็กซานเดอร์ เกรแฮม เบลล์
Alexander Graham Bell
The contents of this page might be a copyright infringement, see http://www.globusz.com/ebooks/Telegraph/00000018.htm and http://www.globusz.com/copyright.html :Besides, the prose is unbearable: ''To hear the immortal words of Shakespeare uttered by the small inanimate voice which had been given to the world must indeed have been a rare delight to the ardent soul of the great electrician.'' Ugh. User:Stevenj. ::I have completely rewritten the sections on the photophone and the metal detector, which were copyvios from the above extlinks. User:Lupo 12:27, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC) ::In fact, there is a ''huge'' copyvio from this extlink in the history, see [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Alexander_Graham_Bell&diff=345266&oldid=341757 this diff] from October 7, 2002! How much of that original text is still in the current article? User:Lupo 13:55, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC) ::Ok, it's not a copyvio. It comes from the book ''Heroes of the Telegraph'' by John Munro, available at Project Gutenberg: [http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=979]. User:Lupo 14:02, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC) ==Photo== Since he was born 1847, this photo of an old Alexander Graham Bell can NOT be from circa 1850-1860. User:Den fjättrade ankan 18:58, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC) :Unless he aged really poorly, I removed the date. user:JessPKC I really don't see how the infobox helps the article. Perhaps it should be removed? User:Everyking 02:14, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC) : It really looks nice on the printed page, and most articles have an image in that location anyway. This ensures that the information is consistent with other biography articles. -- User:Netoholic User talk:Netoholic 02:20, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC) == some debate == Wouldn't it be fair to strip this guy the title "inventor"? Honestly, the guy, on top of acquiring a patent in a dishonest way have lead to most of humanity being brainwashed that he invented the telephone. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3253174.stm] wkm :No, it would not be fair. Even ignoring the telephone, Bell's many other discoveries, patents, and creations easily make him one of the greatest inventors of all time. While many people have challenged his telephone patent, no one has ever been able to overturn it. If you have astonishing new evidence that can overturn this decision after a hundred years of controversy, you would be better filing your own counter-claim. I will offer one suggestion; legal cases are rarely decided by one litigant calling the other "brainwashed". :As for Mr. Reis, he can join the long line of people claiming to have invented the telephone before Bell. It is entirely likely he did invent "a" telephone before Bell, but when most people speak of "the" telephone, "the" airplane, "the" automobile, or "the" light bulb, they mean the design which was eventually a commercial success and not the many earlier attempts which were not. The design for the telephone that became a commercial success was Bell's, not Reis', Gray's, Meucci's, or anyone else's. :User:Corvus 01:42, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC) == User:LinkBot/suggestions/Alexander_Graham_Bell == An User:LinkBot has some possible wiki link suggestions for the Alexander_Graham_Bell article, and they have been placed on User:LinkBot/suggestions/Alexander_Graham_Bell for your convenience.
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