Alexander Graham Bell Inventor

While working for Gardiner Hubbard, Alexander Graham Bell the inventor met with Thomas Watson. Since Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor was full of ideas but short on mathematical and mechanical skills, he sought help from Thomas Watson.

Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Watson

Thomas Watson and Alexander Graham Bell hit it off immediately and became fast friends. Thomas Watson rather liked the eccentric figure of Alexander Graham Bell, To compensate for these early days of work, when the hours were long and grueling and the rewards were few, Alexander Graham Bell later gave Thomas Watson shares in his patent. But Thomas Watson's gratitude to Alexander Graham Bell extended way beyond material reward. He commented later: "The best thing Bell did for me - spiritually - was to emphasize my love for the music of the speaking voice."

Over the next years Alexander Graham Bell continued to teach the deaf and lecture about Visible Speech. Alexander Graham Bell worked on his improvements of the telegraph system, and he struggled to find the means to create the telephone. Alexander Graham Bell even borrowed a human ear from the Harvard Medical School so he could observe how sound waves affected its membranes. They were exhausting years.

Alexander Graham Bell and from the Telegraph to the telephone

The work on the telegraph was completed. It did what it was supposed to do but there were frequent breakdowns in the system and it soon became clear it wasn't commercially viable. Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Watson now focused their full attention on using the principles of the harmonic telegraph to complete work on the telephone. The magnificent instrument was completed in 1876 and Alexander Graham Bell decided to demonstrate his masterpiece at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia that summer. He sat there an entire day while thousands of people walked by, completely uninterested. Disheartened, but not discouraged, Alexander Graham Bell returned the next day. Again, no one was interested. Finally, at the end of the day the Emperor of Brazil strolled in, his retinue behind him, and the strangely shaped instrument with the many wires caught his royal eye. The Emperor asked for a demonstration and was delighted by what he heard. Then he left.

Months passed and Alexander Graham Bell couldn't seem to convince anybody that his telephone was more than just a novelty. Alexander Graham Bell even offered Western Union full rights to the telephone for only $100,000; so desperate was he for funds. The president of Western Union rejected the offer, saying he saw no reason to waste money on a passing fad. However, eventually, the idea of the telephone caught on and the Bell Telephone Company was born.

The work of Alexander Graham Bell and the deaf

With the telephone completed and on its way to the mass market, Alexander Graham Bell turned again to his work with the deaf. But even while he continued to make enormous contributions in fields of speech and hearing impairments, he was still always tinkering away at something in his lab. During these years he developed a method for locating icebergs with the use of echoes; worked on a technique for extracting water from vapor for people who were adrift at sea; and for thirty years tried to develop a breed of sheep that could bear more than one lamb at a time. As in the case of President Garfield, Alexander Graham Bell had a special ability to transform apparent tragedies into an opportunity to serve humanity. In 1881, when Mabel gave birth to a premature baby who died within a few days of lung problems, Alexander Graham Bell invented what he called a "vacuum jacket." It was an airtight cylinder that breathed artificially for patients unable to do so on their own. The vacuum jacket was a precursor of the iron lungs later developed to help polio victims. "An inventor," said Alexander Graham Bell, "is a man who looks around the world and is not contented with things the way they are. He wants to improve whatever he sees...he wants to benefit the world."