Alexander Graham BELL (1847-1922)

Born in Edinburgh (Scotland), his father and grandfather were dedicated to teaching speech to the deaf, a profession that he also followed (his mother and wife were deaf). He moved to London at the age of 15, and lived there with his grandfather who taught him the techniques of speech therapy. Upon returning to the School, he will continue studying the transmission of sound by vibrating tuning forks, just as the German physician Hermann VON HELMHOLTZ (1821-1894) had already developed, publishing the treatise “On the sensations of tone, as a physiological basis for the theory of music” (1863). In 1865 he moved with his family to London, where his two brothers died of tuberculosis. Alexander also contracted the disease, but his parents sold all their possessions to leave England for Canada in 1870, and where Alexander continued his studies on the transmission of sound by electricity. There he designed a “harmonic telegraph”, a kind of piano that could transmit music at a distance. In 1872 following his father, he secured a position at the Boston School for the Deaf and subsequently opened a School of Vocal Physiology and Mechanics of Speech. This gave him enough financial security to continue his research on ways to transmit articulated sounds, and speech at a distance, by means of cables and electricity. On March 10, 1876 BELL already had a telephone. With it he transmitted to his assistant, who was in another room: “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you” (Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you). That same year 1876 he presented at the Universal Exhibition in Philadelphia, celebration of the First Centenary of the Declaration of Independence of the United States. The exhibition, from May 9 to November 10, was visited by 9,789,392 people. Lord Kelvin (William Thompson), eminent physicist, present as a judge issuing reports on the precision instruments, research and illustration presented, together with Joseph HENRY, scientist. Both wrote some of the 385 reports: “Graham BELL’s Telephone and Multiple Telegraph,” “Elisha GRAY’s Electric Telegraph and Multiple Telegraph,” and “EDISON’s Automatic Telegraph.”