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FOTO , S VAN INTERNET ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL
16 • JAARGANG 4 • NUMMER 3 • JANUARI 2010
Physicist, born in Edinburgh, Scotland, 3 March 1847. He is a son of Alexander
Melville Bell, mentioned below, and was educated at the Edinburgh high school
and Edinburgh University, receiving special training in his father’s system for
removing impediments in speech. He removed to London in 1867, and entered
the University there, but left on account of his health, and went to Canada with his
father in 1870. In 1872 he took up his residence in the United States, introducing
with success his father’s system of deaf-mute instruction, and became professor of
vocal physiology in Boston University.
He had been interested for many years in the transmission of sound by electricity,
and had devised many forms of apparatus for the purpose, but the fi rst public
exhibition of his invention was at Philadelphia in 1876. Its complete success has
made him wealthy. His invention of the “photophone,” in which a vibratory beam
of light is substituted for a wire in conveying speech, has also attracted much
attention, but has never been practically used. It was fi rst described by him before
the American association for the advancement of science in Boston, 27 August 1880.
After the shooting of President Garfi eld, Professor Bell, together with Sumner
Tainter, experimented with an improved form of Hughes’s induction balance, and
endeavored to fi nd the exact location of the ball, but failed. Professor Bell has put
forth the theory that the present system of educating deaf-mutes is wrong, as it
tends to restrict them to one another’s society, so that marriages between the deaf
are common, and therefore the number of deaf-mute children born is on the increase.
His latest experiments relate to the recording of speech by means of photographing
the vibrations of a jet of water. He is a member of various learned societies, and
has published many scientifi c papers. He has lived for some time in Washington,
District of Columbia. Alexander Graham Bell died 2 August 1922.
Bron: www.alexandergrahambell.org