Bell's willingness to search out the path less taken resulted
in some of the world's most important inventions. It has been said that
Bell invented the telephone by searching for it in places where other inventors
would never think to look. Bell's ability to believe in the impossible
has served the world well.

Sunday, June 25, 1876, was the day of the Battle of the Little
Big Horn, or Custer's Last Stand. Far away, in Philadephia, it was also the
day when Bell demonstrated his new invention at the Centennial Exhibition.
The Exhibition was organized to celebrate the 100th anniversary of
the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
The telephone was its star attraction.
Having entered at the last moment, Bell failed to obtain
a booth in the electrical section. Instead, he was located far away,
in a corner of the educational exhibit. It was a hot day and the judges did
not relish the long trip down the corridor and up a flight of stairs.

Their fatigue vanished with the first words that came crackling
over the telephone wire. Pandemonium broke out as these distinguished
scientists raced to see if Bell's voice in another room had
indeed produced the sounds. Kings and ordinary citizens alike
sat transfixed before this new wonder.
Bell himself had no doubts about the importance of his new
discovery. Shortly after the telephone's invention, he had written
to his father, "The day is coming when telegraph wires will be laid
on to houses just like water or gas -- and friends will converse
with each other without leaving home."
For Alexander Graham Bell, it was the first of many glimpses
into the world of the future. In retrospect, every step on the path of Bell's early
life seemed a step closer to the telephone. Young Aleck Bell was born
into a family of learning and scholastic achievement. The whole
family was enthralled with the idea of sound and its possibilities.
Aleck's grandfather, Alexander Bell, was an eminent elocutionist. His
father Melville developed the first international phonetic alphabet.
Not surprisingly, young Aleck's first memory was of sitting in a wheatfield,
trying to hear the wheat grow.
Aleck's mother, Eliza Bell, was almost totally deaf. Aleck
soon discovered that by pressing his lips against his mother's forehead,
he could make the bones resonate to his voice. His mother became the
first person to have her world expanded by the genius
of Alexander Graham Bell. Aleck was a gifted pianist, who learned early to
descriminate pitch. As a teenager, he noticed that a chord struck on
one piano would be echoed by a piano in another room. He realized that whole
chords could be transmitted through the air, vibrating at the other end
at exactly the same pitch. In the years to come, this simple observation would
eventually lead him to the telephone.
Aleck also benefitted from his father's special qualities
as a teacher . Melville Bell encouraged his sons Melly and
Aleck to build a speaking machine. Thereafter, visitors to the Bell home
were surprised to hear the sound "ma ma" emanating from the upper floors.
There were no babies in the Bell household.

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."





THOMAS HARDY (1840-1928)