Alexander Graham Bell

Born: March 3, 1847

Edinburgh, Scotland


Died: August

2,

1922


Baddeck, Nova Scotia

Inventor and educator

Because of family tradition and upbringing, Alexander Graham Bell was,
perhaps, destined to create one of the world’s most commonly used
inventions today: the telephone. He came from two generations of men who
were students of speech and language and a hard-of-hearing mother who was
a musician. These influences led him to dedicate his life to science and
sound as well as to the education of the deaf.

“It is possible to connect every man’s house, office or
factory with a central station, so as to give him direct communication
with his neighbors.”

Teacher of the Deaf

Alexander Graham Bell was born on March 3, 1847, in Edinburgh, Scotland.
He was the middle of three sons born to Alexander Melville Bell and Eliza
Grace Symonds. Alexander Melville’s father, Alexander Bell, had
been an actor and later became a speech teacher. Alexander Melville
followed in his footsteps and worked for many years as a teacher of
elocution, which is the art of speaking correctly and effectively. He also
studied the way a person uses his larynx, mouth, tongue, and lips to form
sounds. After years of teaching and study, Bell invented Visible Speech, a
set of symbols based on the position
and action of the throat, tongue, and lips while making sounds. This
technique would later be used in the education of the deaf.

Eliza Grace, the daughter of a surgeon in the Royal Navy, was an
accomplished pianist despite the fact that she was hearing impaired. She
was able to hear some sounds with the use of a speaking tube. She was
Alexander Graham’s first and most important teacher.

In 1865, the Bell family moved to London where Alexander Melville
continued the work begun by his father who had recently died. In London,
Alexander Graham became his father’s assistant and studied anatomy
and physiology at University College. He also began experimenting with the
transmission of sounds using his family’s piano and tuning forks.
But his discoveries would soon be placed on hold. By 1870, both of his
brothers had died of tuberculosis, and his father persuaded his family to
move to Brantford, Ontario, Canada, where he considered the climate to be
better for their health.

Alexander Melville had become well known for his work with Visible Speech,
and when he was invited to introduce this technique to Sarah
Fuller’s School for the Deaf in Boston, he instead sent his partner
and son, Alexander Graham. From then on, Alexander Graham Bell dedicated
his life to teaching the deaf and developing new instruments for their
use. He visited various schools for the deaf in the Boston area, and in
1873, he became professor of vocal physiology and the mechanics of speech.
He presented lectures at Boston University and the University of Oxford.

When he was a teenager, Alexander Graham Bell and his older brother made
a “speaking machine” that mechanically produced vocal
sounds. A local butcher had given them a larynx from a lamb, and the
boys made a model of the lamb’s vocal organs. They attached
levers that moved the organs. When they blew into a tube, it moved the
levers which, in turn, made the organs produce sounds like human cries.

Bell also began to take private deaf students. From 1873 until 1876, Bell
had the sole responsibility of educating the five-year-old, deaf son of
Thomas Sanders in Haverhill, Massachusetts. Sanders would later become
treasurer of the Bell Telephone Company. At the same time, Bell met
another influential man, Gardiner G. Hubbard, who also had a deaf child
and was dedicated to her education. Hubbard later became
trustee of the Bell Telephone Company. On July 11, 1877, Bell, a slender,
dark-haired young man, married Hubbard’s eighteen-year-old
daughter, Mabel, who had been deaf since early childhood.

A Man of Inventions

Thomas Sanders and Gardiner Hubbard were so impressed with Bell, they
encouraged him to pursue his ideas and continue with his experiments. And
they gave him the money to do it. At that time, Bell worked mostly on
three kinds of equipment: a phonoautograph, a device that would help a
deaf person see a sound; a multiple telegraph, a device that could
transmit two or more messages over wire at the same time; and an electric
speaking telegraph, or telephone.

All of the experiences he had prior to 1876, led Bell to one of the
greatest inventions in history. He had a special ear for pitch and tones,
thanks to music lessons with his mother; he had a mind for science like
his father and grandfather; and he had knowledge gained from his
experiments with the telegraph and other sound-producing devices. Bell
developed a basic concept for the phone and worked diligently for over a
year to get it to work. Finally, he discovered that he could reproduce the
tone and overtones of the human voice through a wire.

Bell gave the plans to build the first telephone to his assistant, Thomas
A. Watson (1854-1934), and on March 10, 1876, they used the phone to
communicate for the first time. Two months later, Bell introduced the
telephone to the scientific world at the Academy of Arts and Sciences in
Boston. By July 1877, the Bell Telephone Company was formed and the first
telephone was installed in a private home.

Bell continued experimenting with communication equipment and developed
many noteworthy devices including the photophone, a device that transmits
sound on a beam of light. The photophone was the predecessor of
today’s optical fiber systems. He also worked on an audiometer, an
instrument used to measure how well a person hears, and the first
successful phonograph record.

Beginning in 1895, Bell’s scientific interests moved into the area
of aviation. He worked with a friend, Samuel P. Langley,
on things like gunpowder rockets and the rotating blades of helicopters.
Bell eventually received five patents for aerial vehicles and four for a
system called hydrodynamics, which propels a vehicle by skimming the
surface of water.

After the Phone

Bell, his wife, and two daughters moved from Boston to Washington, D.C.,
in 1882, where he became a United States citizen. By this time, he had
become a stout man with a full, gray beard, reminiscent of Santa Claus.
And, just like Santa, his benevolent acts continued throughout his
lifetime.

Patricia F. Russo: Lucent’s New Leader

Taking over a failing company is not a job many want. After losing $16
million and 90 percent of its stock value, one of Lucent’s goals
for 2002 was to find a leader who would help them at least break even.
The company found just the person to fill the job: Patricia F. Russo

Russo was born in New Jersey, one of seven children. “In a big
family, everyone pitches in,” she said in a 2002

Wall Street journal

interview. She attended college at Georgetown University in Washington,
D.C., completed the Advanced Management Program at Harvard University,
and received an Honorary Doctorate in Entrepreneurial Studies from
Columbia College in South Carolina.

Russo began her business career in sales and marketing at IBM, one of
the leading technology companies in the world. Although she majored in
political science and history, not computer science, she was able to
successfully sell mainframes and other computer equipment. At the time,
she was one of only a few women who held this type of job. In 1981, she
joined AT&T as a manager, and from 1992 through 1996, she was
president of AT&T’s Business Communications Systems
division.

In 1996, Russo was one of the founding executives who helped launch
Lucent Technologies. She remained at Lucent for the next five years.
From 2001 to 2002, Russo was president and chief operating officer (COO)
of

Eastman Kodak Company

(see entry). She returned to Lucent in January 2002, as president and
CEO.

After it was announced that Russo would fill the job as leader of
Lucent, she said that she would focus on employee morale and building
customer relationships. In a 2002

Wall Street journal

article, the authors said, “The fact that Ms. Russo has played
golf since she was a teenager probably doesn’t hurt her sales
pitch. Nor does the fact that she knows her customers extremely
well.” Russo was named one of the “50 Most Powerful Women
in American Business” by

Fortune

magazine in 1998, 1999, and 2001.

He was partly responsible for ensuring the advancement of science and Bell
continued research to benefit the deaf. He helped develop the journal

Science

in 1880, became president
of the American Association for the Promotion of the Teaching of Speech
to the Deaf in 1890, joined the board of the Smithsonian Institution in
1898, served as president of the National Geographic Society from 1898 to
1903, succeeding his father-in-law, Gardiner Hubbard, who was founder of
the society, and organized the Aerial Experiment Association in 1907.

During most of his later years, Bell and his family spent increasingly
more time at a Baddeck, Nova Scotia, summer home they had purchased in
1886. Eventually they lived there year-round. Bell continued his work,
often working and studying past midnight, enjoying the solitude of the
quiet hours when everyone else was asleep. He died there at the age of
seventy-five.

Alexander Graham Bell will always be remembered as the inventor of the
telephone. But his life and works reached far beyond that. For his two
daughters, nine grandchildren, and
the countless numbers of deaf and hearing children who crossed his path,
perhaps he was also remembered as a kind soul and a good teacher.

For More Information

Books

Adams, Stephen B., and Orville R. Butler.

Manufacturing the Future: A History of Western Electric.

Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Grosvenor, Edwin S., and Morgan Wesson.

Alexander Graham Bell: The Life and Times of the Man Who Invented the
Telephone.

New York: Harry Abrams, Inc., 1997.

Periodicals

Berman, Dennis K., and Joann S. Lublin. “Russo’s Goal as
Lucent’s New Chief: Restore Luster.”

The Wall Street Journal

(January 8, 2002): pBl.

Bruce, Robert V., and Ira Block. “Alexander Graham Bell.”

National Geographic

(September 1988): p. 358.

Chang, Kenneth. “The Precursor to Tiniest Chip is
Developed.”

New York Times

(October 18, 2001): p. A22.

Peraino, Kevin. “An Earlier ATT Spinoff Sputters: Once a High
Flier, Lucent Hits a Downdraft.”

Newsweek

(November 6, 2000): p 53.

“Telecom: $3-billion Stock Offering, Part of Plan to Split
AT&T, Gives Equipment Firm a Value of About $15 million.”

Los Angeles Times

(April 4, 1996): p. D-1.

“Telephones in the United States.”

Popular Mechanics

(March 2002): pS6.

Web Sites

“The Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers in the Library of
Congress 1862-1939” [On-line]

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/bellhtml/bellhome.html

(accessed on August 15, 2002).

AT&T. [On-line]

http://www.att.com

(accessed on August 15, 2002).

Lucent Technologies. [On-line]

http://www.lucent.com

(accessed on August 15, 2002).