Born in March 1847 in Edinburgh Scotland, Alexander Graham Bell is well pronounced and known as an engineer, scientist, inventor and an innovator. Being born in Scotland to Melville Alexander Bell and Grace Eliza Symonds, his mother was deaf, and his father taught elocution to the deaf (Burt, 28). At the age of eleven, Graham attended Royal High School at Edinburgh. He dropped out of school at the age of fifteen because he felt that he was not enjoying the compulsory curriculum. In 1865, his family relocated to England, and it was there that he passed university entry exams enabling him to be admitted to the University of London (Burt, 28). In 1870, his parents again relocated and moved to Canada because of his older brother Melville and younger brother Bells death forcing him to drop out of the university (Carson, 4). The family settled in Branford Ontario and in 1871 Graham move to the United States where he was able to get a teaching job at Boston School for the Deaf in Northampton and the American School or the Deaf in Hartford.
Graham owes his immortality to be documented as the first person to patent and design a practical device that applied electrical current principal to transmit human voice (Carson, 16). Throughout history, Graham was known to describe himself as a teacher of the deaf. With his continuity in teaching, Graham started taking more interest in researching methods to transmit several telegraph messages simultaneously over a single wire. During this time, Joseph Stearns in 1986 had already invented a duplex which was transmitted two messages on a single wire. Thomas Edison also was able to come up with a quadruplex that sent four simultaneous messages on a single wire. At this time, Graham sort to invent a system that sent multiple messages on a single wire. In 1875, Graham invented the first prototype of the vibraphone. This apparatus was actuated using mobile a metal strip that resembled the ones for clarinets. In March 1876, Graham improved the superiority of the vibraphone by substituting the stripe by a wire plunged in a container filled with acid and water (Carson 54). The liquid which was acid and water molded the strength of the current in the wire comparable to the sound waves of the atmosphere.
Graham's grandfather, father, and his brother were all involved with the work on speech and elocution. Since his father taught elocution for the deaf, this greatly influenced his aspiration and inspired him to teach. Graham got married to Mabel who was deaf from the age of five after they worked together at Clarke School (Pasachoff, 94). Since his mother was also deaf, this inspired him profoundly influencing his life works. His research on speech and hearing expeditiously led him to experiment with hearing devices. These experiments were the ones that led him to be awarded in 1876 as the first United States patent for telephone (Carson 24). Even though this was accredited to him, he considered the invention an interference on his career as a scientist resulting to him refusing to have the telephone (Pasachoff, 94).
In his life, Graham was a significant influence on the advancement of scientific knowledge more importantly in telecommunication, aviation, and geography. He was in support of Journal science that later transformed to the official publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He also founded the National Geographic Society in 1888 succeeding his father in law Hubbard Gardiner as the president of the society from 1898 to 1903. He died in 1922 and on the day of the burial, the United States telephone services stopped for one minute in his honor.
Works cited
Burt, Daniel S. The Biography Book: A Reader's Guide to Nonfiction, Fictional, and Film
Biographies of More Than 500 of the Most Fascinating Individuals of All Time. Westport, Conn: Oryx, 2001. Print.
Carson, Mary K. Alexander Graham Bell: Giving Voice to the World. New York: Sterling, 2007.
Print.
Fisher, Leonard E. Alexander Graham Bell. New York, N.Y: Atheneum Books for Young
Readers, 1999. Print.
Pasachoff, Naomi E. Alexander Graham Bell: Making Connections. New York [u.a.: Oxford
Univ. Press, 1998. Print.
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