Invention of the telephones

“ Mr. Watson, come here, please; I want you.” With these commonplace words a new era was ushered in. That sentence marked the achievement of a man who charged the face of the world in his lifetime. For the speaker was Bell, and the sentence was the first to be spoken over the telephone.

Alexander Bell was born on Marchv3, 1847 in Edinburgh. His genius was inherited from his father, who was a famous teacher of elocution, and an expert on phonetics. Even as a boy his mind was inventive but in 1870 Bell’s health began to fail and there were fears of consumption. So with his father he left his native country and went to Canada. Two years later he was in Boston where he set up a school for training teachers of the deaf and also gave instruction in the mechanics of speech. Here he started experimenting on a machine which he believed would make the deaf “hear”. He had been doing this for some time when accidentally came across the clue for the correct principles of telephony.

By February15, 1876, Bell had filed an application for a patent for his “improvement in telegraphy” at the United States Patent Office. Only two hours later Elisha Gray of Chicago filed an application for almost the same invention. Edison and many others were all working in the same field: all claimed the invention or part of the invention of the telephone. The great telephone war was on. There was hardly any time to spare.

Bell and his assistant, Watson, hid themselves in two rooms of a cheap Boston boarding house and worked day and night trying to transmit and receive sentences spoken by the human voice over the telephone. On the afternoon of March 10, 1876, Watson was in the basement with the receiver to his ear. Suddenly he started. Words-real distinguishable words-had come through at last. Sharply and clearly the sentence came through, “Mr. Watson, come here, please. I want you.”

Watson rushed up the stairs like a schoolboy and burst into Bell’s room, shouting, “I heard you; I could hear what you said!”

That year Bell exhibited his telephone at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.

Bell soon withdrew from active work on the telephone and settled down in a country home at Baddeck, Nova Scotia, and devoted himself to invention. He interested himself in dynamic flight, sheep breeding and universal language based on the phonetics of the English language. He perfected a hydroplane and claimed he had invented a breathing apparatus for explorers and travelers through the deserts. Although nothing has come of any of these inventions, work is still being carried out on the telephone.

Inventors have been making experiments on a telephone called Picturephone for some time. The equipment is a television screen, a television camera and the usual telephone. The camera will be able to look at the area of a room, or a close-up of a person, or focus on papers on a desk or wall. This picturephone should be useful for business situations but possibly embarrassing for special occasions sometimes.

Years after Bell’s invention, there is a story told of a woman whom he met at a social gathering. When she was introduced to the great inventor she expressed pleasure in meeting him and then said smilingly, “But often I wish you had never been born.” Bell looked startled and hurt and then he smiled and said, “I sympathize. I never use that beast myself.”

The most extraordinary thing is that Bell hated the telephone, he hardly ever used it.