ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL

       Ø  Alexander Graham Bell was an influential scientist, engineer and inventor.

Ø   He was born on March 3, 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He died on August 2, 1922 at the age of 75.

Ø   He is widely credited with the invention of the first practical telephone.

Ø  When he was 23, Bell and his parents moved to Canada.

Ø   Bell studied the human voice and worked with various schools for the deaf.

Ø  Bell experimented with sound, working with devices such as a ‘harmonic telegraph’ (used to send multiple messages over a single wire) and a ‘phonautograph’ (used to record sound).

Ø  He worked on acoustic telegraphy with his assistant, an electrical designer named Thomas Watson.

Ø  On February 14, 1876, Bell and an American electrical engineer named Elisha Gray both filed patents with the U.S. Patent Office covering the transmission of sounds telegraphically. There is debate about who got there first but the patent was awarded to Bell. A few days later he succeeded in getting his telephone to work using elements similar to those of Gray’s water transmitter.

Ø  Bell improved on the design and by 1886 more than 150000 people owned telephones in the United States.

Ø  Bell also had a strong interest in other scientific fields, conducting medical research, searching for alternative fuel sources, experimenting with metal detectors, developing hydrofoil watercraft and much more.

Ø  “A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with – a man is what he makes of himself.”