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Graham Bell Invention

Alexander Graham Bell was a successful inventor and scientist known for inventing the telephone. His extensive research and papers on electrical signals and sound enabled him to conceive of transmitting multiple messages simultaneously over wires. While working on his idea for a harmonic telegraph, which could send multiple notes at once, Bell also explored transmitting speech electrically. With the assistance of his assistant Thomas Watson, Bell was able to prove that different tones changed the strength of electric currents in wires. On March 10, 1876, they achieved success by building a working transmitter and receiver that could reproduce sound variations, marking the birth of the telephone.

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48 views

Graham Bell Invention

Alexander Graham Bell was a successful inventor and scientist known for inventing the telephone. His extensive research and papers on electrical signals and sound enabled him to conceive of transmitting multiple messages simultaneously over wires. While working on his idea for a harmonic telegraph, which could send multiple notes at once, Bell also explored transmitting speech electrically. With the assistance of his assistant Thomas Watson, Bell was able to prove that different tones changed the strength of electric currents in wires. On March 10, 1876, they achieved success by building a working transmitter and receiver that could reproduce sound variations, marking the birth of the telephone.

Uploaded by

Raj Mohan
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Alexander Graham Bell as Inventor and Scientist

The large quantity of documents in Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers is a


valuable resource for the development of historical thinking skills. Through the study of
these papers, students can track the development of Bell's inventions over time and can
gain an understanding of what life was like at the time of Bell's work.

By reading the papers in the collection with a critical eye, students can discern the
point of view of the variety of authors of these papers. In considering Bell's work with
deaf people, students can investigate culture and expectations of assisting another person.
In addition, students can use the materials as a launching point into researching other
inventors and comparing the lives, inventions, and influences of these people to those of
Bell.

The telegraph and telephone are both wire-based electrical systems, and Alexander
Graham Bell's success with the telephone came as a direct result of his attempts to
improve the telegraph.

When Bell began experimenting with electrical signals, the telegraph had been an
established means of communication for some 30 years. Although a highly successful
system, the telegraph, with its dot-and-dash Morse code, was basically limited to
receiving and sending one message at a time. Bell's extensive knowledge of the nature of
sound and his understanding of music enabled him to conjecture the possibility of
transmitting multiple messages over the same wire at the same time. Although the idea of
a multiple telegraph had been in existence for some time, Bell offered his own musical or
harmonic approach as a possible practical solution. His "harmonic telegraph" was based
on the principle that several notes could be sent simultaneously along the same wire if the
notes or signals differed in pitch.

By October 1874, Bell's research had progressed to the extent that he could
inform his future father-in-law, Boston attorney Gardiner Greene Hubbard, about the
possibility of a multiple telegraph. Hubbard, who resented the absolute control then
exerted by the Western Union Telegraph Company, instantly saw the potential for
breaking such a monopoly and gave Bell the financial backing he needed. Bell proceeded
with his work on the multiple telegraph, but he did not tell Hubbard that he and Thomas
Watson, a young electrician whose services he had enlisted, were also exploring an idea
that had occurred to him that summer - that of developing a device that would transmit
speech electrically.

While Bell and Watson worked on the harmonic telegraph at the insistent urging of
Hubbard and other backers, Bell nonetheless met in March 1875 with Joseph Henry, the
respected director of the Smithsonian Institution, who listened to Bell's ideas for a
telephone and offered encouraging words. Spurred on by Henry's positive opinion, Bell
and Watson continued their work. By June 1875 the goal of creating a device that would
transmit speech electrically was about to be realized. They had proven that different tones
would vary the strength of an electric current in a wire. To achieve success they therefore
needed only to build a working transmitter with a membrane capable of varying
electronic currents and a receiver that would reproduce these variations in audible
frequencies.

Bell's great success, achieved on March 10, 1876, marked not only the birth of the
telephone but the death of the multiple telegraph as well. The communications potential
contained in his demonstration of being able to "talk with electricity" far outweighed
anything that simply increasing the capability of a dot-and-dash system could imply.

Original drawing of the telephone

[Model of Bell's telephone]


"This model of Bell's first telephone is a
Alexander Graham Bell's design
duplicate of the instrument through
sketch of the telephone.
which speech sounds were first
Sketches, undated; handwritten text top
transmitted electrically, 1875" on
and bottom of page, 1876.
phone. Created/Published between 1915
Box 273, "Subject File: The
and 1925. Reproduction Number LC-
Telephone--Drawing of the Telephone,
D420-2586. Detroit Publishing
Bell's Original."
Company,
Alexander Graham Bell Family
Prints and Photographs Division,
Papers, Manuscript Division, Library
Library of Congress.
of Congress.

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