Heroes of the Telegraph [68]
life I call indeed say with the Holy Scriptures that it has been "labour and sorrow." But I have also to thank the Lord that He has given me His blessing in my calling and in my family, and has bestowed more good upon me than I have known how to ask of Him. The Lord has helped hitherto; He will help yet further.'
Reis was buried in the cemetery of Friedrichsdorff, and in 1878, after the introduction of the speaking telephone, the members of the Physical Society of Frankfort erected over his grave an obelisk of red sandstone bearing a medallion portrait.
CHAPTER VIII.
GRAHAM BELL.
The first to produce a practicable speaking telephone was Alexander Graham Bell. He was born at Edinburgh on March 1, 1847, and comes of a family associated with the teaching of elocution. His grandfather in London, his uncle in Dublin, and his father, Mr. Andrew Melville Bell, in Edinburgh, were all professed elocutionists. The latter has published a variety of works on the subject, several of which are well known, especially his treatise on Visible Speech, which appeared in Edinburgh in 1868. In this he explains his ingenious method of instructing deaf mutes, by means of their eyesight, how to articulate words, and also how to read what other persons are saying by the motions of their lips. Graham Bell, his distinguished son, was educated at the high school of Edinburgh, and subsequently at Warzburg, in Germany, where he obtained the degree of Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy). While still in Scotland he is said to have turned his attention to the science of acoustics, with a view to ameliorate the deafness of his mother.
In 1873 he accompanied his father to Montreal, in Canada, where he was employed in teaching the system of visible speech. The elder Bell was invited to introduce it into a large day-school for mutes at Boston, but he declined the post in favour of his son, who soon became famous in the United States for his success in this important work. He published more than one treatise on the subject at Washington, and it is, we believe, mainly through his efforts that thousands of deaf mutes in America are now able to speak almost, if not quite, as well as those who are able to hear.
Before he left Scotland Mr. Graham Bell had turned his attention to telephony, and in Canada he designed a piano which could transmit its music to a distance by means of electricity. At Boston he continued his researches in the same field, and endeavoured to produce a telephone which would not only send musical notes, but articulate speech.
If it be interesting to trace the evolution of an animal from its rudimentary germ through the lower phases to the perfect organism, it is almost as interesting to follow an invention from the original model through the faultier types to the finished apparatus.
In 1860 Philipp Reis, as we have seen, produced a telephone which could transmit musical notes, and even a lisping word or two; and some ten years later Mr. Cromwell Fleetwood Varley, F.R.S., a well-known English electrician, patented a number of ingenious devices for applying the musical telephone to transmit messages by dividing the notes into short or long signals, after the Morse code, which could be interpreted by the ear or by the eye in causing them to mark a moving paper. These inventions were not put in practice; but four years afterwards Herr Paul la Cour, a Danish inventor, experimented with a similar appliance on a line of telegraph between Copenhagen and Fredericia in Jutland. In this a vibrating tuning-fork interrupted the current, which, after traversing the line, passed through an electro-magnet, and attracted the limbs of another fork, making it strike a note like the transmitting fork. By breaking up the note at the sending station with a signalling key, the message was heard as a series of long and short hums. Moreover, the hums were made to record themselves on paper by turning the electro-magnetic receiver into a relay, which actuated a Morse printer by means of a local battery.
Mr. Elisha Gray, of Chicago,
Reis was buried in the cemetery of Friedrichsdorff, and in 1878, after the introduction of the speaking telephone, the members of the Physical Society of Frankfort erected over his grave an obelisk of red sandstone bearing a medallion portrait.
CHAPTER VIII.
GRAHAM BELL.
The first to produce a practicable speaking telephone was Alexander Graham Bell. He was born at Edinburgh on March 1, 1847, and comes of a family associated with the teaching of elocution. His grandfather in London, his uncle in Dublin, and his father, Mr. Andrew Melville Bell, in Edinburgh, were all professed elocutionists. The latter has published a variety of works on the subject, several of which are well known, especially his treatise on Visible Speech, which appeared in Edinburgh in 1868. In this he explains his ingenious method of instructing deaf mutes, by means of their eyesight, how to articulate words, and also how to read what other persons are saying by the motions of their lips. Graham Bell, his distinguished son, was educated at the high school of Edinburgh, and subsequently at Warzburg, in Germany, where he obtained the degree of Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy). While still in Scotland he is said to have turned his attention to the science of acoustics, with a view to ameliorate the deafness of his mother.
In 1873 he accompanied his father to Montreal, in Canada, where he was employed in teaching the system of visible speech. The elder Bell was invited to introduce it into a large day-school for mutes at Boston, but he declined the post in favour of his son, who soon became famous in the United States for his success in this important work. He published more than one treatise on the subject at Washington, and it is, we believe, mainly through his efforts that thousands of deaf mutes in America are now able to speak almost, if not quite, as well as those who are able to hear.
Before he left Scotland Mr. Graham Bell had turned his attention to telephony, and in Canada he designed a piano which could transmit its music to a distance by means of electricity. At Boston he continued his researches in the same field, and endeavoured to produce a telephone which would not only send musical notes, but articulate speech.
If it be interesting to trace the evolution of an animal from its rudimentary germ through the lower phases to the perfect organism, it is almost as interesting to follow an invention from the original model through the faultier types to the finished apparatus.
In 1860 Philipp Reis, as we have seen, produced a telephone which could transmit musical notes, and even a lisping word or two; and some ten years later Mr. Cromwell Fleetwood Varley, F.R.S., a well-known English electrician, patented a number of ingenious devices for applying the musical telephone to transmit messages by dividing the notes into short or long signals, after the Morse code, which could be interpreted by the ear or by the eye in causing them to mark a moving paper. These inventions were not put in practice; but four years afterwards Herr Paul la Cour, a Danish inventor, experimented with a similar appliance on a line of telegraph between Copenhagen and Fredericia in Jutland. In this a vibrating tuning-fork interrupted the current, which, after traversing the line, passed through an electro-magnet, and attracted the limbs of another fork, making it strike a note like the transmitting fork. By breaking up the note at the sending station with a signalling key, the message was heard as a series of long and short hums. Moreover, the hums were made to record themselves on paper by turning the electro-magnetic receiver into a relay, which actuated a Morse printer by means of a local battery.
Mr. Elisha Gray, of Chicago,