Alexander Graham Bell

The Communication Revolution, personified by the information superhighway of today, would not have been possible without the telephone.And the man who gave us that fascinating instrument was Alexander Graham Bell.

Alexander Graham Bell once summed up his approach to life and invention. “Leave the beaten track occasionally and dive into the woods. Every time you do so you will be certain to find something that you have never seen before. Follow it up, explore all around it, and before you know it, you will have something worth thinking about to occupy your mind. All really big discoveries are the results of thought.”

Born in 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland, Bell moved to the US before beginning his career as an inventor. On 2 June 1875, he was able to transmit sound (not speech) electrically while experimenting on combining separate telegraph signals for transmission on a single wire. Bell’s interest in the education of deaf people played a major role in his invention of his “electrical speech machine” which we now call telephone. On 10 June the same year, Thomas Watson, Bell’s

assistant was sitting in another room to receive a test call. Bell was setting up his equipment when he accidentally spilled battery acid on his trousers and called out to his assistant, “Mr Watson, come here, I want you.” These words, however, got transmitted over the telephone. These words thus become the first historic words transmitted over the phone.

On 25 June 1876, Bell demonstrated his new invention at the Centennial

Exhibition. Bell filed for patent in 1876 slightly preceding another American inventor, Elisha Gray, who filed his patent two hours later. After a legal battle

between the two, the courts decided in Bell’s favour.

Shortly after telephone’s invention, he wrote 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.”

Bell continued his experiments in communication, which culminated in the invention of the photophone-transmission of sound on a beam of light–a

precursor of today’s optical fibre systems. He also worked in medical research and invented techniques for teaching speech to the deaf. In all, 18 patents were granted in Bell’s name alone and another 12 he shared with his collaborators. In 1888 he founded the National Geographic Society. 

In Bell’s telephone, the microphone and receiver were identical. Each consisted of a magnet surrounded by a solenoid with many windings and placed closed to an iron membrane. When the membrane picked up sound it caused changes in the magnetic field of the magnet, which in turn generated

currents in the solenoid that followed closely the sound vibrations. These currents caused fluctuations in the magnetic field of the magnet in the

receiver, causing the membrane to vibrate in turn, thus reproducing the sound wave. 

By 1878, Bell had set up the first telephone exchange in New Haven, Connecticut. By 1884 long distance connections had been established between Boston, Massachusetts, and New York City. Bell offered his patent to Western Union, the telegraph company, for $100,000.



He was a multifaceted personality. His imagination and curiosity led him into scientific experiments in such areas as sound transmission, medicine, aeronautics, marine engineering and space-frame construction. Bell can be considered an inventor, an innovator, an inspirer of others, and a humanitarian.