Alexander Graham Bell

Alexander Graham Bell (March 3, 1847 – August 2, 1922)

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Bell experimented with electrically reproducing sounds, first by using rapidly varying currents to turn electromagnets on and off. The magnets vibrated metal reeds tuned to match each current's frequency. When Bell replaced the metal reeds with a metal membrane, his device could transmit speech through wires. He named his device the telephone. Bell also invented the photophone, the first device to transmit messages by light, as well as metal detectors and new kinds of kites. In 1880 Bell helped found the magazine Science.Alexander Graham Bell was born on March 3, 1847, in Edinburgh. His father, Alexander Melville Bell, was an expert in vocal physiology and elocution; his grandfather, Alexander Bell, was an elocution professor.
Contesting Bell's Patent
Other inventors had been at work. Between 1867 and 1873 Professor Elisha Gray (of Oberlin College) invented an "automatic self-adjusting telegraph relay, " installed it in hotels, and made telegraph printers and repeaters. He tried to perfect a speaking telephone from his harmonic (multiple-current) telegraph. The Gray and Batton Manufacturing Company of Chicago developed into the Esternón Electric Company.

                  

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             With the words, "Mr. Watson, come here. I want you," the world was changed. Alexander Graham Bell made the first coherent telephone call on this date in 1876, three days after he got a patent for his invention. The call, made to his assistant, Thomas Watson, was the first time a distinct sentence was transmitted over wire. Two months later, Bell demonstrated the telephone to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Boston, and to the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition.

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Honorary degrees

Alexander Graham Bell, who was unable to complete the university program of his youth, received numerous Honorary Degrees from academic institutions, including:

• Gallaudet College in Washington, D.C. (PhD) in 1880^[146]
• Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts (LL.D) in 1896
• University of Würzburg in Würzburg, Bavaria (PhD) in 1902
• University of Edinburgh in Edinburgh, Scotland (LL.D) in April 1906^[147]
• Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario in 1909
• Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire (LL.D) on June 25, 1913^[148]

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Bell imagined great uses for his telephone, like this model from the 1920s, but would he ever have imagined telephone lines being used to transmit video images? Since his death in 1922, the telecommunication industry has undergone an amazing revolution. Today, non-hearing people are able to use a special display telephone to communicate. Fiber optics are improving the quality and speed of data transmission. Actually, your ability to access this information relies upon telecommunications technology. Bell's "electrical speech machine" paved the way for the Information Superhighway.