Give Me a Call Sometime

1875

Alexander Graham Bell was an inventor. He was the first person to make many things. This story is about his invention—the telephone.

“Mr Watson, come here. I want to see you.” These are the famous first words ever said on the telephone, spoken by it's inventor Alexander Graham Bell, to his assistant,Thomas Watson.

Although Alexander was born in Scotland, his family moved to Canada when he was 23 years old. It was in Ontario, Canada, at the age of 27, where Alexander invented the telephone.

Alexander was born into a family of experts with sound. His grandfather, father,uncle, and brother all taught people how to speak well. His father wrote some books about how to speak. Alexander grew up in a family that loved the sound that voices made. He loved to play with sound. Alexander would make his voice do tricks to make people laugh.

When Alexander was 12, his mother started to lose her hearing. Alexander invented a way to talk to her so she could hear him. He would talk very slowly and clearly on her forehead. She could hear him when he did this. As she got older, Alexander's mother became deaf and could not hear any more. Alexander learned how to talk to her with his fingers and hands. He wanted to help his mother so much that he began to study sound waves.

Alexander loved to invent things. When he was 16, he and his brother tried to invent a talking robot. They put a pipe into the robot's throat and lips on the robot's mouth.When the boys blew air into the robot, the lips moved and the robot said “mama.”

Alexander's family members were not physically healthy. Both of his brothers died of lung disease. Once, when Alexander's father was younger, he had been sick. He had gotten better when he went to Canada for a time. When Alexander also got sick,his father and mother were very worried that he would die like his brothers had. They decided to move to Canada to see if this would help Alexander's health. There, in Ontario, Canada, Alexander got better.

ALEXANDER

When Alexander was 25 years old,he opened a school for the deaf. He researched hearing and speaking.Alexander's father had found a way to teach deaf people to speak. Alexander wanted to invent something that would help deaf people hear.

Before, when Alexander was 19years old, he had told an expert in language about the work he was doing.That man told Alexander that a German man, called Hermann von Helmholtz,was also doing the same type of work.Alexander got Hermann's book, but it was written in German and he could not understand it. Alexander tried to understand by looking at the diagrams.Alexander thought these pictures showed that sound from talking could be made into electricity. Hermann wrote that he had not been able to do this, but Alexander could not read the German words so he misunderstood. Alexander's mistake made him believe it could be done. It seems that Alexander's strong belief was the reason the telephone got invented.

Alexander worked at his school for the deaf during the day. At night, he worked on his sound invention ideas. Alexander now understood that talking came in waves. He wanted to find an electrical wave that would make the same patterns as speech patterns.His research was so interesting that two rich men gave him money. With this money, he got an assistant, called Thomas Watson.

Thomas was an electrician. Thomas understood about electricity. At that time,people had started to use the electrical telegraph. There were electrical telegraph lines everywhere built by Western Union. Messages were being sent on these lines with Morse code. Alexander wanted these lines to carry people's voices, not just clicking sounds.

On June 2, 1875, Alexander and Thomas were working. Thomas accidentally made a sound that Alexander heard on the end of the line. Suddenly Alexander understood how to make a telephone. He got a patent for his invention. He was the first one to make a telephone and his patent gave him the rights to do what he wanted with it, even sell it.

Alexander now understood how to make a telephone. He had drawings to show how to do it. He had a patent so he was the only one who could make his telephone. But Alexander did not yet have a working telephone.

Alexander tried to sell his telephone patent to Western Union. He said he had a dream of a future where “…friends converse ( talk ) with each other without leaving home.” Western Union thought it was stupid. They thought no one would want to use a telephone. They did not buy it. By the time Western Union realised their mistake and asked to buy Alexander's telephone patent, it was too late. Alexander had already started his own company called Bell Telephone Company. In 1876, Alexander began sending telephone voice messages in Ontario, down a line about 5 km long.

Alexander Graham Bell created many more inventions. He invented the first wireless telephone. This sent sound on a beam of light, not electricity. This was called fiber-optics. It was the first cordless phone. Fiber-optics is how 80% of the cell phones work that we use today.

Today almost everyone has a phone. Some people have more than one. There are telephones in homes, in offices, in people's pockets, and even public ones on the street.Alexander never had a telephone in his work room. He thought a telephone ringing was too distracting to his more important, scientific inventions.