understood and appreciated his abilities and gave him encouragement
in his search for a new means of communication. Thomas Sanders, a
resident of Salem, had a five-year-old son named Georgie who was a
deaf mute. Mr. Sanders sought Bell's tutelage for his son, and it was
agreed that Bell should give Georgie private lessons for the sum of
three hundred and fifty dollars a year. It was also arranged that Bell
was to reside at the Sanders home in Salem. He made arrangements to
conduct his future experiments there.
Another pupil who came to him about this time was Mabel Hubbard, a
fifteen-year-old girl who had lost her hearing and consequently her
powers of speech, through an attack of scarlet fever when an infant.
She was a gentle and lovable girl, and Bell fell completely in love
with his pupil. Four years later he was to marry her and she was
to prove a large influence in helping him to success. She took the
liveliest interest in all of his experiments and encouraged him to new
endeavor after each failure. She kept his records and notes and wrote
his letters. Through her Bell secured the support of her father,
Gardiner G. Hubbard, who was widely known as one of Boston's ablest
lawyers. He was destined to become Bell's chief spokesman and
defender.
Hubbard first became aware of Bell's inventive genius when the latter
was calling one evening at the Hubbard home in Cambridge. Bell was
illustrating some mysteries of acoustics with the aid of the piano.
"Do you know," he remarked, "that if I sing the note G close to the
strings of the piano, the G string will answer me?"
This did not impress the lawyer, who asked its significance.
"It is a fact of tremendous importance," answered Bell. "It is
evidence that we may some day have a musical telegraph which will
enable us to send as many messages simultaneously over one wire as
there are notes on that piano."
From that time forward Hubbard took every occasion to encourage Bell
to carry forward his experiments in musical telegraphy.
As a young man Bell was tall and slender, with jet-black eyes and
hair, the latter being pushed back into a curly tangle. He was
sensitive and high-strung, very much the artist and the man of
science. His enthusiasms were intense, and, once his mind was filled
with an idea, he followed it devotedly. He was very little the
practical business man and paid scant attention to the small,
practical details of life. He was so interested in visible speech, and
so keenly alert to the pathos of the lives of the deaf mutes, that he
many times seriously considered giving over all experiments with the
musical telegraph and devoting his entire life and energies to the
amelioration of their condition.
XII
THE BIRTH OF THE TELEPHONE
The Cellar at Sanderses'--Experimental Beginnings--Magic Revived in
Salem Town--The Dead Man's Ear--The Right Path--Trouble and
Discouragement--The Trip to Washington--Professor Joseph Henry--The
Boston Workshop--The First Faint Twang of the Telephone--Early
Development.
Alexander Graham Bell had not resided at the Sanderses' home very long
before he had fitted the basement up as a workshop. For three years he
haunted it, spending all of his leisure time in his experiments. Here
he had his apparatus, and the basement was littered with a curious
combination of electrical and acoustical devices--magnets, batteries,
coils of wire, tuning-forks, speaking-trumpets, etc. Bell had a great
horror that his ideas might be stolen and was very nervous over any
possible intrusion into his precious workshop. Only the members of
the Sanders family were allowed to enter the basement. He was equally
cautious in purchasing supplies and equipment lest his very purchases
reveal the nature of his experiments. He would go to a half-dozen
different stores for as many articles. He usually selected the night
for his experiments, and pounded and scraped away indefatigably,
oblivious of the fact that the family, as well as himself, was sorely
in need of rest.
"Bell would often awaken me in the middle of the night," says Mr.
Sanders, "his black eyes blazing with excitement. Leaving me to go
down to the cellar, he would rush wildly to the barn and begin to send
me signals along his experimental wires. If I noticed any improvement
in his apparatus he would be delighted. He would leap and whirl around
in one of his 'war-dances,' and then go contentedly to bed. But if
the experiment was a failure he would go back to his work-bench to try
some different plan."
In common with other experimenters who were searching for the
telephone, Bell was experimenting with a sort of musical telegraph.
Eagerly and persistently he sought the means that would replace the
telegraph with its cumbersome signals by a new device which would
enable the human voice itself to be transmitted. The longer he worked
the greater did the difficulties appear. His work with the deaf and
dumb was alluring, and on many occasions he seriously considered
giving over his other experiments and devoting himself entirely to the
instruction of the deaf and dumb and to the development of his system
of making speech visible by making the sound-vibrations visible to the
eye. But as he mused over the difficulties in enabling a deaf mute to
achieve speech nothing else seemed impossible. "If I can make a deaf
mute talk," said Bell, "I can make iron talk."
One of his early ideas was to install a harp at one end of the wire
and a speaking-trumpet at the other. His plan was to transmit
the vibrations over the wire and have the voice reproduced by the
vibrations of the strings of the harp. By attaching a light pencil
or marker to a cord or membrane and causing the latter to vibrate by
talking against it, he could secure tracings of the sound-vibrations.
Different tracings were secured from different sounds. He thus sought
to teach the deaf to speak by sight.
At this time Bell enjoyed the friendship of Dr. Clarence J. Blake, an
eminent Boston aurist, who suggested that the experiments be conducted
with a human ear instead of with a mechanical apparatus in imitation
of the ear. Bell eagerly accepted the idea, and Doctor Blake provided
him with an ear and connecting organs cut from a dead man's head. Bell
soon had the ghastly specimen set up in his workshop. He moistened the
drum with glycerine and water and, substituting a stylus of hay for
the stapes bone, he obtained a wonderful series of curves which showed
the vibrations of the human voice as recorded by the ear. One can
scarce imagine a stranger picture than Bell must have presented in the
conduct of those experiments. We can almost see him with his face the
paler in contrast with his black hair and flashing black eyes as he
shouted and whispered by turns into the ghastly ear. Surely he must
have looked the madman, and it is perhaps fortunate that he was not
observed by impressionable members of the public else they would have
been convinced that the witches had again visited old Salem town to
ply their magic anew. But it was a new and very real and practical
sort of magic which was being worked there.
His experiments with the dead man's ear brought to Bell at least one
important idea. He noted that, though the ear-drum was thin and light,
it was capable of sending vibrations through the heavy bones that
lay back of it. And so he thought of using iron disks or membranes to
serve the purpose of the drum in the ear and arrange them so that
they would vibrate an iron rod. He thought of connecting two such
instruments with an electrified wire, one of which would receive the
sound-vibrations and the other of which would reproduce them after
they had been transmitted along the wire. At last the experimenter
was on the right track, with a conception of a practicable method of
transmitting sound. He now possessed a theoretical knowledge of what
the telephone he sought should be, but there yet remained before him
the enormous task of devising and constructing the apparatus which
would carry out the idea, and find the best way of utilizing the
electrical current for this work.
Bell was now at a critical point in his career and was confronted by
the same difficulty which assails so many inventors. In his constant
efforts to achieve a telephone he had entirely neglected his school of
vocal physiology, which was now abandoned. Georgie Sanders and
Mabel Hubbard were his only pupils. Though Sanders and Hubbard were
genuinely interested in Bell and his work, they felt that he was
impractical, and were especially convinced that his experiments with
the ear and its imitations were entirely useless. They believed that
the electrical telegraph alone presented possibilities, and they told
Bell that unless he would devote himself entirely to the improvement
of this instrument and cease wasting time and money over ear toys
that had no commercial value they would no longer give him financial
support. Hubbard went even further, and insisted that if Bell did not
abandon his foolish notions he could not marry his daughter.
Bell was almost without funds, his closest friends now seemed to turn
upon him, and altogether he was in a sorry plight. Of course Sanders
and Hubbard meant the best, yet in reality they were seeking to drive
their protégé in exactly the wrong direction. As far back as 1860 a
German scientist named Philipp Reis produced a musical telephone
that even transmitted a few imperfect words. But it would not talk
successfully. Others had followed in his footsteps, using the musical
telephone to transmit messages with the Morse code by means of long
and short hums. Elisha Gray, of Chicago, also experimented with the
musical telegraph. At the transmitting end a vibrating steel tongue
served to interrupt the electric current which passed over the wire
in waves, and, passing through the coils of an electro-magnet at the
receiving end, caused another strip of steel located near the magnet
to vibrate and so produce a tone which varied with the current.
All of these developments depended upon the interruption of the
current by some kind of a vibrating contact. The limitations which
Sanders and Hubbard sought to impose upon Bell, had they been obeyed
to the letter, must have prevented his ultimate success. In a letter
to his mother at this time, he said:
I am now beginning to realize the cares and anxieties of being
an inventor. I have had to put off all pupils and classes, for
flesh and blood could not stand much longer such a strain as I
have had upon me.
But good fortune was destined to come to Bell along with the bad. On
an enforced trip to Washington to consult his patent attorney--a trip
he could scarce raise funds to make--Bell met Prof. Joseph Henry.
We have seen the part which this eminent scientist had played in the
development of the telegraph. Now he was destined to aid Bell, as he
had aided Morse a generation earlier. The two men spent a day over the
apparatus which Bell had with him. Though Professor Henry was fifty
years his senior and the leading scientist in America, the youth was
able to demonstrate that he had made a real discovery.
"You are in possession of the germ of a great invention," said
Henry, "and I would advise you to work at it until you have made it
complete."
"But," replied Bell, "I have not got the electrical knowledge that is
necessary."
"Get it," was Henry's reply.
This proved just the stimulus Bell needed, and he returned to Boston
with a new determination to perfect his great idea.
Bell was no longer experimenting in the Sanderses' cellar, having
rented a room in Boston in which to carry on his work. He had also
secured the services of an assistant, one Thomas Watson, who received
nine dollars a week for his services in Bell's behalf. The funds
for this work were supplied by Sanders and Hubbard jointly, but they
insisted that Bell should continue his experiments with the musical
telegraph. Though he was convinced that the opportunities lay in the
field of telephony, Bell labored faithfully for regular periods with
the devices in which his patrons were interested. The remainder of his
time and energy he put upon the telephone. The basis of his telephone
was still the disk or diaphragm which would vibrate when the
sound-waves of the voice were thrown against it. Behind this
were mounted various kinds of electro-magnets in series with the
electrified wire over which the inventor hoped to send his messages.
For three years they labored with this apparatus, trying every
conceivable sort of disk. It is easy to pass over those three years,
filled as they were with unceasing toil and patient effort, because
they were drab years when little of interest occurred. But these were
the years when Bell and Watson were "going to school," learning how
to apply electricity to this new use, striving to make their apparatus
talk. How dreary and trying these years must have been for the
experimenters we may well imagine. It requires no slight force of will
to hold oneself to such a task in the face of failure after failure.
By June of 1875 Bell had completed a new Instrument. In this the
diaphragm was a piece of gold-beater's skin, which Bell had selected
as most closely resembling the drum in the human ear. This was
stretched tight to form a sort of drum, and an armature of magnetized
iron was fastened to its middle. Thus the bit of iron was free to
vibrate, and opposite it was an electro-magnet through which flowed
the current that passed over the line. This acted as the receiver. At
the other end of the wire was a sort of crude harmonica with a clock
spring, reed, and magnet. Bell and Watson had been working upon their
crude apparatus for months, and finally, on June 2d, sounds were
actually transmitted. Bell was afire with enthusiasm; the first great
step had been taken. The electric current had carried sound-vibrations
along the wire and had reproduced them. If this could be done a
telephone which would reproduce whole words and sentences could be
attained.
[Illustration: ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL]
[Illustration: THOMAS A. WATSON]
So great was Bell's enthusiasm over this achievement that he succeeded
in convincing Sanders and Hubbard that his idea was practical, and
they at last agreed to finance him in his further experiments with the
telephone. A second membrane receiver was constructed, and for many
more weeks the experiments continued. It was found that sounds were
carried from instrument to instrument, but as a telephone they were
still far from perfection. It was not until March of 1876 that Bell,
speaking into the instrument in the workroom, was heard and understood
by Watson at the other instrument in the basement. The telephone had
carried and delivered an intelligible message.
The telephone which Bell had invented, and on which he received a
patent on his twenty-ninth birthday, consisted of two instruments
similar in principle to what we would now call receivers. If you will
experiment with the receiver of a modern telephone you will find
that it will transmit as well as receive sound. The heart of the
transmitter was an electro-magnet in front of which was a drum-like
membrane with a piece of iron cemented to its center opposite the
magnet. A mouthpiece was arranged to throw the sounds of the voice
against the diaphragm, and as the membrane vibrated the bit of iron
upon it--acting as an armature--induced currents corresponding to the
sound-waves, in the coils of the electro-magnet.
Passing over the line the current entered the coils of the tubular
electro-magnet in the receiver. A thin disk of soft iron was fastened
at the end of this. When the current-waves passed through the coils
of the magnet the iron disk was thrown into vibration, thus producing
sound. As it vibrated with the current produced by the iron on
the vibrating membrane in the transmitter acting as an armature,
transmitter and receiver vibrated in unison and so the same sound was
given off by the receiver and made audible to the human ear as was
thrown against the membrane of the transmitter by the voice.
The patent issued to Bell has been described as "the most valuable
single patent ever issued." Certainly it was destined to be of
tremendous service to civilization. It was so entirely new and
original that Bell found difficulty in finding terms in which to
describe his invention to the patent officials. He called it "an
improvement on the telegraph," in order that it might be identified as
an improvement in transmitting intelligence by electricity. In reality
the telephone was very far from being a telegraph or anything in the
nature of a telegraph.
As Bell himself stated, his success was in large part due to the fact
that he had approached the problem from the viewpoint of an expert
in sound rather than as an electrician. "Had I known more about
electricity and less about sound," he said, "I would never have
invented the telephone." As we have seen, those electricians who
worked from the viewpoint of the telegraph never got beyond the
limitations of the instrument and found that with it they could
transmit signals but not sounds. Bell, with his knowledge of the laws
of speech and sound, started with the principles of the
transmission of sound as a basis and set electricity to carrying the
sound-vibrations.
XIII
THE TELEPHONE AT THE CENTENNIAL
Boll's Impromptu Trip to the Exposition--The Table Under the
Stairs--Indifference of the Judges--Enter Don Pedro, Emperor of
Brazil--Attention and Amazement--Skepticism of the Public--The Aid
of Gardiner Hubbard--Publicity Campaign.
The Philadelphia Centennial Exposition--America's first great
exposition--opened within a month after the completion of the first
telephone. The public knew nothing of the telephone, and before it
could be made a commercial success and placed in general service
the interest of investors and possible users had to be aroused.
The Centennial seemed to offer an unusual opportunity to place the
telephone before the public. But Bell, like Morse, had no money with
which to push his invention. Hubbard was one of the commissioners of
the exposition, and exerted his influence sufficiently so that a small
table was placed in an odd corner in the Department of Education for
the exhibition of the apparatus. The space assigned was a narrow strip
between the stairway and the wall.
But no provision was made to allow Bell himself to be present. The
young inventor was almost entirely without funds. Sanders and Hubbard
had paid nothing but his room rent and the cost of his experiments. He
had devoted himself to his inventions so entirely that he had lost all
of his professional income. So it was that he was forced to face
the prospect of staying in Boston and allowing this opportunity of
opportunities to pass unimproved. His fiancée, Miss Hubbard, expected
to attend the exposition, and had heard nothing of Bell's inability to
go. He went with her to the station, and as the train was leaving she
learned for the first time that he was not to accompany her. She burst
into tears at the disappointment. Seeing this, Bell dashed madly after
the train and succeeded in boarding it. Without money or baggage, he
nevertheless succeeded in arriving in Philadelphia.
Bell arrived at the exposition but a few days before the judges were
to make their tour of inspection. With considerable difficulty
Hubbard had secured their promise that they would stop and examine
the telephone. They seemed to regard it as a toy not worth their
attention, and the public generally had displayed no interest in the
device. When the day for the inspection arrived Bell waited eagerly.
As the day passed his hope began to fall, as there seemed little
possibility that the judges would reach his exhibit. The Western
Union's exhibit of recording telegraphs, the self-binding harvester,
the first electric light, Gray's musical telegraph, and other
prominently displayed wonders had occupied the attention of the
scientists. It was well past supper-time when they came to Bell's
table behind the stairs, and most of the judges were tired out and
loudly announced their intention of quitting then and there.
At this critical moment, while they were fingering Bell's apparatus
indifferently and preparing for their departure, a strange and
fortunate thing occurred. Followed by a group of brilliantly attired
courtiers, the Emperor of Brazil appeared. He rushed up to Bell
and greeted him with a warmth of affection that electrified the
indifferent judges. They watched the scene in astonishment, wondering
who this young Bell was that he could attract the attention and the
friendship of the Emperor. The Emperor had attended Bell's school for
deaf mutes in Boston when it was at the height of its success, and
had conceived a warm admiration for the young man and taken a
deep interest in his work. The Emperor was ready to examine Bell's
invention, though the judges were not. Bell showed him how to place
his ear to the receiver, and he then went to the transmitter which had
been placed at the other end of the wire strung along the room. The
Emperor waited expectantly, the judges watched curiously. Bell, at a
distance, spoke into the transmitter. In utter wonderment the Emperor
raised his head from the receiver. "My God," he cried, "it talks!"
Skepticism and indifference were at an end among the judges, and they
eagerly followed the example of the Emperor. Joseph Henry, the most
venerable savant of them all, took his place at the receiver. Though
his previous talk with Bell, when the telephone was no more than an
idea, should perhaps have prepared him, he showed equal astonishment,
and instantly expressed his admiration. Next followed Sir William
Thomson, the hero of the cable and England's greatest scientist. After
his return to England Thomson described his sensations.
"I heard," he said, "'To be or not to be ... there's the rub,'
through an electric wire; but, scorning monosyllables, the electric
articulation rose to higher flights, and gave me passages from the
New York newspapers. All this my own ears heard spoken to me with
unmistakable distinctness by the then circular-disk armature of just
such another little electro-magnet as this I hold in my hand."
Thomson pronounced Bell's telephone "the most wonderful thing he had
seen in America." The judges had forgotten that they were hungry and
tired, and remained grouped about the telephone, talking and listening
in turn until far into the evening. With the coming of the next
morning Bell's exhibit was moved from its obscure corner and given the
most prominent place that could be found. From that time forward it
was the wonder of the Centennial.
[Illustration: PROFESSOR BELL'S VIBRATING REED]
[Illustration: PROFESSOR BELL'S FIRST TELEPHONE]
[Illustration: THE FIRST TELEPHONE SWITCHBOARD USED IN NEW HAVEN,
CONN, FOR EIGHT SUBSCRIBERS]
[Illustration: EARLY NEW YORK EXCHANGE
Boys were employed as operators at first, but they were not adapted to
the work so well as girls.]
[Illustration: PROFESSOR BELL IN SALEM, MASS., AND MR. WATSON IN
BOSTON, DEMONSTRATING THE TELEPHONE BEFORE AUDIENCES IN 1877]
[Illustration: DR BELL AT THE TELEPHONE OPENING THE NEW YORK-CHICAGO
LINE, OCTOBER 18, 1892]