Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander G Bell
Charles Babbage
Charles Goodyear
Guglielmo Marconi
John Logie Baird
Hernry Ford
Nikola Tesla
Wright Brothers
Archimedes
Enro Rubik
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| Alexander Graham Bell never set out to invent the telephone.
Initially, he wanted to develop a multiple telegraph. Only later did he realize
that a far greater prize lay at the end of the road. In telegraphy, a current is interrupted in the pattern known as Morse Code. Bell hoped to convey several messages simultaneously, each at a different pitch. However, he could not see a way to make-and-break the current at the precise pitch required. "How," he wondered, "could pitch be conveyed along a wire? Bell knew that speech was composed of many complex sound vibrations. While on vacation in Brantford, Ontario, in 1874, he constructed an "ear phonoautograph" from a stalk of hay and a dead man's ear. When Bell spoke into the ear, the hay traced the sound waves on a piece of smoked glass. Bell began to wonder whether this wave could be converted into an electrical transmission. Suddenly, all his work with pitch, electricity and speaking machines "fused" in one sudden flash of inspiration. The sound waves, he realized, could be reproduced in a continuous, but undulating, current. This current was the missing link to the telephone. At this early point, Bell conceived the instrument as a series of reeds arranged over a long magnet. As each reed responded to the voice, it would vibrate alternately toward and away from the magnet, creating the undulating current. This "harp apparatus" (as Bell called it) was not the telephone. He did not yet realize that a single reed could convey all the elements of human speech. The breakthrough came one day in June, in 1875. Bell asked Thomas Watson to pluck a steel receiver reed with his finger to make sure it was not stuck. When Watson vibrated the reed, the receiver in Bell's room also vibrated, even though the current was turned off. Bell realized that the vibration had generated an undulating current, solely on the strength of a slight magnetic field. In that moment, the telephone was born. The telephone patent was one of the most valuable ever issued. Bell received it on March 7, 1876, four days after his 29th birthday. Speech, however, had not yet been transmitted. That would occur five days later, on March 12, when Watson heard the famous words, "Mr. Watson -- Come here -- I want to see you." |
