Born  February 11, 1847(1847-02-11)
Milan, Ohio
Died  October 18, 1931 (aged 84)
West Orange, New Jersey
Occupation  Inventor, entrepreneur
Religious beliefs  Deist
Spouse  Mary Edison, Mina Edison

Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman who developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph and a long lasting light bulb. Dubbed “The Wizard of Menlo Park” by a newspaper reporter, he was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production to the process of invention, and therefore is often credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory.

Edison is considered one of the most prolific inventors in history, holding 1,093 U.S. patents in his name, as well as many patents in the United Kingdom, France and Germany

Thomas Edison was born in Milan, Ohio, and was raised in Port Huron, Michigan. He was the seventh and last child of Samuel Ogden Edison, Jr. (1804–1896) (born in Marshalltown, Nova Scotia, Canada) and Nancy Matthews Edison nee Elliott (1810–1871). His family was of Dutch origin.[1]
Thomas Edison as a boy.

In school, the young Edison’s mind often wandered, and his teacher, the Reverend Engle, was overheard calling him “addled.” This ended Edison’s three months of official schooling. He recalled later, “My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me; and I felt I had something to live for, someone I must not disappoint.” His mother then home schooled him.[2] Much of his education came from reading R.G. Parker’s School of Natural Philosophy and The Cooper Union.

Edison developed hearing problems at an early age. The cause of Edison’s deafness has been attributed to a bout of scarlet fever during childhood and recurring untreated middle ear infections. Around the middle of his career Edison attributed the hearing loss to being struck on the ears by a train conductor when his chemical lab in a boxcar caught fire, and was thrown off the train in Smiths Creek, Michigan, along with his apparatus and chemicals. In his later years he modified the story to say the injury occurred when the conductor, in helping him onto a moving train, lifted him by the ears.[3][4]

Edison’s family was forced to move to Port Huron, Michigan, when the railroad bypassed Milan in 1854,[5] but his life there was bittersweet. He sold candy and newspapers on trains running from Port Huron to Detroit, as well as vegetables that he sold to supplement his income. This began Edison’s long streak of entrepreneurial ventures as he discovered his talents as a businessman. These talents would eventually lead him to found General Electric, which is still a publicly traded company, and 13 other companies.

Edison became a telegraph operator after he saved three-year-old Jimmie MacKenzie from being struck by a runaway train. Jimmie’s father, station agent J.U. MacKenzie of Mount Clemens, Michigan, was so grateful that he trained Edison as a telegraph operator. Edison’s first telegraphy job away from Port Huron was at Stratford Junction, Ontario, on the Grand Trunk Railway.[6] In 1866, at the age of 19, Thomas Edison moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where as an employee of Western Union he worked the Associated Press bureau news wire. Edison requested the night shift at work which allowed him plenty of time to spend at his two favorite pastimes — reading and experimenting. Eventually, the latter pre-occupation cost him his job. One night in 1867, he was working with a battery when he spilled sulphuric acid onto the floor. It ran between the floorboards and onto his boss’ desk below. The next morning he was fired.[7]

One of his mentors during those early years was a fellow telegrapher and inventor named Franklin Leonard Pope, who allowed the impoverished youth to live and work in the basement of his Elizabeth, New Jersey, home.

Some of Edison’s earliest inventions were related to telegraphy, including a stock ticker. His first patent was for the electric vote recorder, (U. S. Patent 90,646),[8] which was granted on June 1, 1869.[9]

Marriages and children

On December 25, 1871, at the age of 24, Edison married 16-year-old Mary Stilwell, whom he had met two months earlier. They had three children:

    * Marion Estelle Edison (1873–1965), nicknamed “Dot”
    * Thomas Alva Edison Jr. (1876–1935), nicknamed “Dash”
    * William Leslie Edison (1878–1937)[10]

Mary Edison died on August 9, 1884.

On February 24, 1886, at the age of 39, Edison married 20-year-old Mina Miller in Akron, Ohio.[11] She was the daughter of inventor Lewis Miller, co-founder of the Chautauqua Institution and a benefactor of Methodist charities. They also had three children:

    * Madeleine Edison (1888–1979), who married John Eyre Sloane[12][13]
    * Charles Edison (1890–1969), who took over the company upon his father’s death and who later was elected Governor of New Jersey[14] He is buried in Rosedale Cemetery in Orange, New Jersey.
    * Theodore Miller Edison (1898–1992).[15]

Mina outlived Thomas Edison, dying on August 24, 1947.[16][17]

Beginning his career
Photograph of Edison with his phonograph, taken by Mathew Brady in 1877.
Photograph of Edison with his phonograph, taken by Mathew Brady in 1877.

Thomas Edison began his career as an inventor in Newark, New Jersey, with the automatic repeater and his other improved telegraphic devices, but the invention which first gained him fame was the phonograph in 1877. This accomplishment was so unexpected by the public at large as to appear almost magical. Edison became known as “The Wizard of Menlo Park,” New Jersey, where he lived. His first phonograph recorded on tinfoil around a grooved cylinder and had poor sound quality. The tinfoil recordings could only be replayed a few times. In the 1880s, a redesigned model using wax-coated cardboard cylinders was produced by Alexander Graham Bell, Chichester Bell, and Charles Tainter. This was one reason that Thomas Edison continued work on his own “Perfected Phonograph.”

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Menlo Park
Edison’s Menlo Park Laboratory, removed to Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. (Note the organ against the back wall)
Edison’s Menlo Park Laboratory, removed to Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. (Note the organ against the back wall)
Thomas Edison’s first successful light bulb model, used in public demonstration at Menlo Park, December 1879.
Thomas Edison’s first successful light bulb model, used in public demonstration at Menlo Park, December 1879.
U.S. Patent #223898 Electric Lamp
U.S. Patent #223898 Electric Lamp

Edison’s major innovation was the first industrial research lab, which was built in Menlo Park, New Jersey. It was the first institution set up with the specific purpose of producing constant technological innovation and improvement. Edison was legally attributed with most of the inventions produced there, though many employees carried out research and development work under his direction. His staff was generally told to carry out his directions in conducting research, and he drove them hard to produce results. The large research group, which included engineers and other workers, based much of their research on work done by others before them.

William J. Hammer, a consulting electrical engineer, began his duties as a laboratory assistant to Edison in December 1879. He assisted in experiments on the telephone, phonograph, electric railway, iron ore separator, electric lighting, and other developing inventions. However, Hammer worked primarily on the incandescent electric lamp and was put in charge of tests and records on that device. In 1880, he was appointed chief engineer of the Edison Lamp Works. In his first year, the plant under General Manager Francis Robbins Upton turned out 50,000 lamps. According to Edison, Hammer was “a pioneer of incandescent electric lighting.”

Nearly all of Edison’s patents were utility patents, which were protected for a 17 year period and included inventions or processes that are electrical, mechanical, or chemical in nature. About a dozen were design patents, which protect an ornamental design for up to a 14 year period. Like most patents, the inventions he described were improvements over prior art. The phonograph patent, on the other hand, was unprecedented as the first device to record and reproduce sounds.[18] Edison did not invent the first electric light bulb, but instead invented the first commercially practical incandescent light. Several designs had already been developed by earlier inventors including the patent he purchased from Henry Woodward and Mathew Evans, Moses G. Farmer,[19] Joseph Swan, James Bowman Lindsay, William E. Sawyer, Sir Humphry Davy, and Heinrich Göbel. Some of these early bulbs had such flaws as extremely short life, high expense to produce, and high current draw, making them difficult to apply on a large scale commercially. In 1878, Edison applied the term filament to the element of glowing wire carrying the current, although English inventor Joseph Swan had used the term prior to this. Edison took the features of these earlier designs and set his workers to the task of creating longer-lasting bulbs. By 1879, he had produced a new concept: a high resistance lamp in a very high vacuum, which would burn for hundreds of hours. While the earlier inventors had produced electric lighting in laboratory conditions, dating back to a demonstration of a glowing wire by Alessandro Volta in 1800, Edison concentrated on commercial application, and was able to sell the concept to homes and businesses by mass-producing relatively long-lasting light bulbs and creating a complete system for the generation and distribution of electricity.

The Menlo Park research lab was made possible by the sale of the quadruplex telegraph that Edison invented in 1874, which could send four simultaneous telegraph signals over the same wire. When Edison asked Western Union to make an offer, he was shocked at the unexpectedly large amount that Western Union offered; the patent rights were sold for $10,000. The quadruplex telegraph was Edison’s first big financial success.

In just over a decade Edison’s Menlo Park laboratory had expanded to consume two city blocks. Edison said he wanted the lab to have “a stock of almost every conceivable material.” A newspaper article printed in 1887 reveals the seriousness of his claim, stating the lab contained “eight thousand kinds of chemicals, every kind of screw made, every size of needle, every kind of cord or wire, hair of humans, horses, hogs, cows, rabbits, goats, minx, camels…silk in every texture, cocoons, various kinds of hoofs, shark’s teeth, deer horns, tortoise shell…cork, resin, varnish and oil, ostrich feathers, a peacock’s tail, jet, amber, rubber, all ores…” and the list goes on.[20]

Over his desk, Edison displayed a placard with Sir Joshua Reynolds’ famous quote: “There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.”[21] This slogan was reputedly posted at several other locations throughout the facility.

With Menlo Park, Edison had created the first industrial laboratory concerned with creating knowledge and then controlling its application.

Carbon telephone transmitter

In 1877-1878, Edison invented and developed the carbon microphone used in all telephones along with the Bell receiver until the 1980s. After protracted patent litigation, in 1892 a federal court ruled that Edison — and not Emile Berliner — was the inventor of the carbon microphone. (Josephson, p146). The carbon microphone was also used in radio broadcasting and public address work through the 1920s.

Electric light

    Main article: History of the light bulb

After many experiments with platinum and other metal filaments, Edison returned to a carbon filament. The first successful test was on October 22, 1879;[22] and lasted 13.5 hours. Edison continued to improve this design and by November 4, 1879, filed for U.S. patent 223,898 (granted on January 27, 1880) for an electric lamp using “a carbon filament or strip coiled and connected … to platina contact wires.”[23] Although the patent described several ways of creating the carbon filament including “cotton and linen thread, wood splints, papers coiled in various ways,”[23] it was not until several months after the patent was granted that Edison and his team discovered a carbonized bamboo filament could last over 1200 hours.

Edison bought light bulb U.S. patent 181,613 of Henry Woodward that was issued August 29, 1876 and obtained an exclusive license to Woodward’s Canadian patent. These patents covered a carbon filament in a rarefied gas bulb.[citation needed]
Edison in 1878
Edison in 1878

In 1878, Edison formed the Edison Electric Light Company in New York City with several financiers, including J. P. Morgan and the members of the Vanderbilt family. Edison made the first public demonstration of his incandescent light bulb on December 31, 1879, in Menlo Park. It was during this time that he said, “We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles.”[24]

George Westinghouse’s company bought Philip Diehl’s competing induction lamp patent rights (1882) for $25,000, forcing the holders of the Edison patent to charge a more reasonable rate for the use of the Edison patent rights and lowering the price of the electric lamp.[25]

On October 8, 1883, the U.S. patent office ruled that Edison’s patent was based on the work of William Sawyer and was therefore invalid. Litigation continued for nearly six years, until October 6, 1889, when a judge ruled that Edison’s electric light improvement claim for “a filament of carbon of high resistance” was valid. To avoid a possible court battle with Joseph Swan, whose British patent had been awarded a year before Edison’s, he and Swan formed a joint company called Ediswan to manufacture and market the invention in Britain.

The Mahen Theatre in Brno in what is now the Czech Republic, was the first public building in the world to use Edison’s electric lamps, with the installation supervised by Edison’s assistant in the invention of the lamp, Francis Jehl. [26]

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Electric power distribution

Edison patented an electric distribution system in 1880, which was essential to capitalize on the invention of the electric lamp. On December 17, 1880, Edison founded the Edison Electric Illuminating Company. The company established the first investor-owned electric utility in 1882 on Pearl Street Station, New York City. It was on September 4, 1882, that Edison switched on his Pearl Street generating station’s electrical power distribution system, which provided 110 volts direct current (DC) to 59 customers in lower Manhattan.

Earlier in the year, in January 1882 he had switched on the first steam generating power station at Holborn Viaduct in London. The DC supply system provided electricity supplies to street lamps and several private dwellings within a short distance of the station. On January 19, 1883, the first standardized incandescent electric lighting system employing overhead wires began service in Roselle, New Jersey.

War of currents

    Main article: War of Currents

Extravagant displays of electric lights quickly became a feature of public events, as this picture from the 1897 Tennessee Centennial Exposition shows.
Extravagant displays of electric lights quickly became a feature of public events, as this picture from the 1897 Tennessee Centennial Exposition shows.

Edison’s true success, like that of his friend Henry Ford, was in his ability to maximize profits through establishment of mass-production systems and intellectual property rights. This dampened the success of less profitable work by others who were focused on inventing longer-lasting high-efficiency technology.[27][28] George Westinghouse and Edison became adversaries because of Edison’s promotion of direct current for electric power distribution instead of the more easily transmitted alternating current (AC) system invented by Nikola Tesla and promoted by Westinghouse. Unlike DC, AC could be stepped up to very high voltages with transformers, sent over thinner and less expensive wires, and stepped down again at the destination for distribution to users.

In 1887 there were 121 Edison power stations in the United States that delivered DC electricity to customers. When the limitations of Direct Current (DC) were discussed by the public, Edison launched a propaganda campaign to convince people that Alternating Current (AC) was far too dangerous to use. The problem with DC was that the power plants could only economically deliver DC electricity to customers about one and a half miles from the generating station, so it was only suitable for central business districts. When George Westinghouse suggested using high-voltage AC instead, as it could carry electricity hundreds of miles with marginal loss of power, Edison waged a “War of Currents” to prevent AC from being adopted.

Despite Edison’s contempt for capital punishment, the war against AC led Edison to become involved in the development and promotion of the electric chair as a demonstration of AC’s greater lethal potential versus the “safer” DC. Edison went on to carry out a brief but intense campaign to ban the use of AC or to limit the allowable voltage for safety purposes. As part of this campaign, Edison’s employees publicly electrocuted animals[29] [30] to demonstrate the dangers of AC, even though protection from electrocution by AC or DC is essentially the same. One of the more notable occasions when Edison electrocuted animals was when in 1903, his workers electrocuted Topsy the elephant at Luna Park, near Coney Island, after she had killed several men and her owners wanted her put to death.[31] His company filmed the electrocution.

AC replaced DC in most instances of generation and power distribution, enormously extending the range and improving the efficiency of power distribution. Though widespread use of DC ultimately lost favor for distribution, it exists today primarily in long-distance high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission systems. Low voltage DC distribution continued to be used in high density downtown areas for many years and was replaced by AC low voltage network distribution in many central business districts. DC had the advantage that large battery banks could maintain continuous power through brief interruptions of the electric supply from generators and the transmission system. Utilities such as Commonwealth Edison in Chicago had rotary converters, also known as motor-generator sets , which could change DC to AC and AC to various frequencies in the early to mid 20th century. Utilities supplied rectifiers to convert the low voltage AC to DC for such DC loads as elevators, fans and pumps. There were still 1,600 DC customers in downtown New York City as of 2005, and service was only finally discontinued on November 14, 2007.[32] The New York City Subway system is still run by DC power to this day.

Fluoroscopy

Edison is credited with designing and producing the first commercially available fluoroscope, the machine that takes radiographs (colloquially known as “X-rays”). Until Edison discovered that calcium tungstate fluoroscopy screens produced brighter images than the barium platinocyanide screens originally used by Wilhelm Röntgen, the technology was only capable of producing very faint images. The fundamental design of Edison’s fluoroscope is still in use today, despite the fact that Edison himself abandoned the project after nearly losing his own eyesight and seriously maiming his assistant, Clarence Dally. Dally had made himself an enthusiastic human guinea pig for the fluoroscopy project and in the process been exposed to a poisonous dose of radiation. He later died of injuries related to the exposure. In 1903, a shaken Edison said “Don’t talk to me about X-rays, I am afraid of them.”[33]

Work relations

Frank J. Sprague, a competent mathematician and former naval officer, was recruited by Edward H. Johnson and joined the Edison organization in 1883. One of Sprague’s significant contributions to the Edison Laboratory at Menlo Park was to expand Edison’s mathematical methods. Despite the common belief that Edison did not use mathematics, analysis of his notebooks reveal that he was an astute user of mathematical analysis,[34] for example, determining the critical parameters of his electric lighting system including lamp resistance by a sophisticated analysis of Ohm’s Law, Joule’s Law and economics. A key to Edison’s success was a holistic rather than reductionist approach to invention, making extensive use of trial and error when no suitable theory existed. Since Sprague joined Edison in 1883 and Edison’s output of patents peaked in 1880,[35] it could be interpreted that the shift towards a reductionist analytical approach may not have been a positive move for Edison. Sprague’s important analytical contributions, including correcting Edison’s system of mains and feeders for central station distribution, form a counter argument to this. In 1884, Sprague decided his interests in the exploitation of electricity lay elsewhere, and he left Edison to found the Sprague Electric Railway & Motor Company. However, Sprague, who later developed many electrical innovations, always credited Edison for their work together.

Another of Edison’s assistants was Nikola Tesla, who claimed that Edison promised him $50,000 if he succeeded in making improvements to his DC generation plants. Tesla claimed that several months later, when he had finished the work and asked to be paid, Edison said, “When you become a full-fledged American you will appreciate an American joke.”[36] Tesla immediately resigned. This anecdote is somewhat doubtful, since at Tesla’s salary of $18 per week the bonus would have amounted to over 53 years pay, and the amount was equal to the initial capital of the company. Tesla resigned when he was refused a raise to $25 per week.[37] Although Tesla accepted an Edison Medal later in life and professed a high opinion of Edison as an inventor and engineer, he remained bitter. The day after Edison died, the New York Times contained extensive coverage of Edison’s life, with the only negative opinion coming from Tesla who was quoted as saying, “He had no hobby, cared for no sort of amusement of any kind and lived in utter disregard of the most elementary rules of hygiene” and that, “His method was inefficient in the extreme, for an immense ground had to be covered to get anything at all unless blind chance intervened and, at first, I was almost a sorry witness of his doings, knowing that just a little theory and calculation would have saved him 90 percent of the labor. But he had a veritable contempt for book learning and mathematical knowledge, trusting himself entirely to his inventor’s instinct and practical American sense.” When Edison was a very old man and close to death, he said, in looking back, that the biggest mistake he had made was that he never respected Tesla or his work.[38]

There were 28 men recognized as Edison Pioneers.

Media inventions

The key to Edison’s fortunes was telegraphy. With knowledge gained from years of working as a telegraph operator, he learned the basics of electricity. This allowed him to make his early fortune with the stock ticker, the first electricity-based broadcast system. Edison patented the sound recording and reproducing phonograph (or gramophone in British English) in 1878. Edison was also granted a patent for the motion picture camera or “Kinetograph”. He did the electromechanical design, while his employee W.K.L. Dickson, a photographer, worked on the photographic and optical development. Much of the credit for the invention belongs to Dickson.[22] In 1891, Thomas Edison built a Kinetoscope, or peep-hole viewer. This device was installed in penny arcades, where people could watch short, simple films. The kinetograph and kinetoscope were both first publicly exhibited May 20, 1891.[39]

On August 9, 1892, Edison received a patent for a two-way telegraph. In April 1896, Thomas Armat’s Vitascope, manufactured by the Edison factory and marketed in Edison’s name, was used to project motion pictures in public screenings in New York City. Later he exhibited motion pictures with voice soundtrack on cylinder recordings, mechanically synchronized with the film.

Officially the kinetoscope entered in Europe when the rich American Businessman Irving T. Bush (1869-1948) bought from the Continental Commerce Company of Franck Z. Maguire and Joseph D. Bachus a dozen machines. Bush placed from October 17, 1894 on the first kinetoscopes in London. At the same time the French company Kinétoscope Edison Michel et Alexis Werner bought these machines for the market in France. In the last three months of 1894 The Continental Commerce Company sold hundreds of kinetoscopes in Europe (i.e. the Netherlands and Italy). In Germany and in Austria-Hungary the kinetoscope was introduced by the Deutsche-österreichische-Edison-Kinetoscop Gesellschaft, founded by the Ludwig Stollwerck [40] of the Schokoladen-Süsswarenfabrik Stollwerck & Co of Cologne. The first kinetoscopes arrived in Belgium at the Fairs in early 1895. The Edison’s Kinétoscope Français, a Belgian company, was founded in Brussels on January 15, 1895 with the rights to sell the kinetoscopes in Monaco, France and the French colonies. The main investors in this company were Belgian industrialists. On May 14, 1895 the Edison’s Kinétoscope Belge was founded in Brussels. The businessman Ladislas-Victor Lewitzki, living in London but active in Belgium and France, took the initiative in starting this business. He had contacts with Leon Gaumont and the American Mutoscope and Biograph Co. In 1898 he also became shareholder of the Biograph and Mutoscope Company for France.[41]

In 1908, Edison started the Motion Picture Patents Company, which was a conglomerate of nine major film studios (commonly known as the Edison Trust). Thomas Edison was the first honorary fellow of the Acoustical Society of America, which was founded in 1929.

Later years
Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone- the fathers of modernity. Ft. Myers, Florida, February 11, 1929.
Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone- the fathers of modernity. Ft. Myers, Florida, February 11, 1929.

In the 1880s, Thomas Edison bought property in Fort Myers, Florida, and built Seminole Lodge as a winter retreat. Henry Ford, the automobile magnate, later lived a few hundred feet away from Edison at his winter retreat, The Mangoes. Edison even contributed technology to the automobile. They were friends until Edison’s death.

Edison purchased a home known as “Glenmont” in 1886 as a wedding gift for Mina in Llewellyn Park in West Orange, New Jersey.

In 1901, he visited the Sudbury area as a mining prospector, and is credited with the original discovery of the Falconbridge ore body. His attempts to actually mine the ore body were not successful, however, and he abandoned his mining claim in 1903.[42] A street in Falconbridge, as well as the Edison Building, which served as the head office of Falconbridge Mines, are named for him.

In 1902, agents of Thomas Edison bribed a theater owner in London for a copy of A Trip to the Moon by Georges Méliès. Edison then made hundreds of copies and showed them in New York City. Méliès received no compensation. He was counting on taking the film to US and recapture the huge cost of it by showing it throughout the US when he realized it has already been showing in the US by Edison. This bankrupted Méliès.[43] Other exhibitors similarly routinely copied and exhibited each others films.[44] To better protect the copyrights on his films, Edison deposited prints of them on long strips of photographic paper with the U.S. copyright office]]. Many of these paper prints survived longer and in better condition than the actual films of that era.[45]

Edison’s favourite movie was The Birth of a Nation. He thought that talkies had “spoiled everything” for him. “There isn’t any good acting on the screen. They concentrate on the voice now and have forgotten how to act. I can sense it more than you because I am deaf.”[46]

Edison became the owner of his Milan, Ohio, birthplace in 1906. On his last visit, in 1923, he was shocked to find his old home still lit by lamps and candles.

Edison was said to have been influenced by a fad diet that was popular in the day to that in his last few years “the only liquid he consumed was a pint of milk every three hours.”[22] He is reported to have believed this diet would restore his health. However, this tale is doubtful. In 1930, the year before Edison died, Mina said in an interview about Edison that “Correct eating is one of his greatest hobbies.” She also said that during one of his periodic “great scientific adventures”, Edison would be up at 7:00, have breakfast at eight, and be rarely home for lunch or dinner, implying that he continued to have all three.[47]

Edison was active in business right up to the end. Just months before his death in 1931, the Lackawanna Railroad implemented electric trains in suburban service from Hoboken to Gladstone, Montclair and Dover in New Jersey. Transmission was by means of an overhead catenary system, with the entire project under the guidance of Thomas Edison. To the surprise of many, Thomas Edison was at the throttle of the very first MU (Multiple-Unit) train to depart Lackawanna Terminal in Hoboken, driving the train all the way to Dover. As another tribute to his lasting legacy, the same fleet of cars Edison deployed on the Lackawanna in 1931 served commuters until their retirement in 1984. A special plaque commemorating the joint achievement of both the railway and Edison, can be seen today in the waiting room of Lackawanna Terminal in Hoboken, presently operated by New Jersey Transit.[48]

Death

Thomas Edison died on October 18, 1931, in his home, “Glenmont” in Llewellyn Park in West Orange, New Jersey, which he had purchased in 1886 as a wedding gift for Mina.[49]
Seminole Lodge, Edison’s winter home in Fort Myers, Florida
Seminole Lodge, Edison’s winter home in Fort Myers, Florida

Mina died in 1947. Edison’s last breath is reportedly contained in a test tube at the Henry Ford Museum. Ford reportedly convinced Charles Edison to seal a test tube of air in the inventor’s room shortly after his death, as a memento. A plaster death mask was also made.[50]

Views on politics, religion and metaphysics

Historian Paul Israel has characterized Edison as a “freethinker.”[22] Edison was heavily influenced by Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason.[22] Edison defended Paine’s “scientific deism,” saying, “He has been called an atheist, but atheist he was not. Paine believed in a supreme intelligence, as representing the idea which other men often express by the name of deity.”[22] In an October 2, 1910 interview in the New York Times Magazine, Edison stated:

    Nature is what we know. We do not know the gods of religions. And nature is not kind, or merciful, or loving. If God made me — the fabled God of the three qualities of which I spoke: mercy, kindness, love — He also made the fish I catch and eat. And where do His mercy, kindness, and love for that fish come in? No; nature made us — nature did it all — not the gods of the religions.[51]

Edison was accused of atheism for these remarks, and although he did not allow himself to be drawn into the controversy publicly, he defended himself in a private letter. “You have misunderstood the whole article, because you jumped to the conclusion that it denies the existence of God. There is no such denial, what you call God I call Nature, the Supreme intelligence that rules matter. All the article states is that it is doubtful in my opinion if our intelligence or soul or whatever one may call it lives hereafter as an entity or disperses back again from whence it came, scattered amongst the cells of which we are made.”[22]

Tributes

Places named for Edison

Many tributes have been made to Thomas Edison. Several places and objects have been named after him, including the town of Edison, New Jersey.

Thomas Edison State College, a nationally-known college for adult learners is in Trenton, New Jersey. Two community colleges are named for him: Edison College in Fort Myers, Florida, and Edison Community College in Piqua, Ohio.[52] Numerous Edison High Schools are around the country.

Museums and memorials

The Thomas Alva Edison Memorial Tower and Museum is in the town of Edison. The 13.5 acre (5.5 ha) Glenmont property where the remains of Edison and his wife, Mina, buried is maintained by the National Park Service as the Edison National Historic Site.

In Beaumont, Texas, there is an Edison Museum, though Edison never visited Beaumont.

The City Hotel, in Sunbury, Pennsylvania, was the first building to be lit with Edison’s three-wire system. The hotel was re-named The Hotel Edison, and retains that name today.
Port Huron’s Blue Water Bridge and Thomas Edison Monument
Port Huron’s Blue Water Bridge and Thomas Edison Monument

The Port Huron Museum, in Port Huron, Michigan, restored the original depot that Thomas Edison worked out of as a young newsbutcher. The depot has been named the Thomas Edison Depot Museum. The town has many Edison historical landmarks, including the graves of Edison’s parents, and a monument along the Saint Clair River. Edison’s influence can be seen throught this city of 32,000.

In Detroit, the Edison Memorial Fountain in Grand Circus Park was created to honor his achievements. The limestone fountain was dedicated October 21, 1929.

There is currently a Campaign for an Edison Statue in National Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol. [10]

Alexander Graham Bell

Portrait of Alexander Graham Bell c. 1910
Born  3 March 1847
Edinburgh, Scotland.
Died  2 August 1922 (aged 75)
Beinn Bhreagh, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Cause of death  Pernicious anemia
Education  University of Edinburgh
University College London
Occupation  Inventor, Scientist, Professor (Boston University)
Known for  Inventor of the telephone
Spouse  Mabel Hubbard
(married 1877–1922)
Children  (4) Two sons who died in infancy and two daughters
Parents  Alexander Melville Bell
Eliza Grace Symonds Bell
Relatives  Gardiner Greene Hubbard (father-in-law)
Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor (son-in-law)
Melville Bell Grosvenor (grandson)
Alexander Graham Bell (3 March 1847 – 2 August 1922) was an eminent scientist, inventor and innovator who is credited with the invention of the telephone. His father, grandfather and brother had all been associated with work on elocution and speech, and both his mother and wife were deaf, profoundly influencing Bell’s life’s work.[1] His research on hearing and speech further led him to experiment with hearing devices that eventually culminated in Bell being awarded the first U.S. patent for the invention of the telephone in 1876.[2]

Many other inventions marked Bell’s later life including groundbreaking work in hydrofoils and aeronautics. In 1888, Alexander Graham Bell became one of the founding members of the National Geographic Society.[3] In reflection, Bell considered his most famous invention an intrusion on his real work as a scientist and refused to have a telephone in his study.[4] Upon Bell’s death, all telephones throughout the United States “stilled their ringing for a silent minute in tribute to the man whose yearning to communicate made them possible.”[

Early years

Alexander Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on March 3, 1847.[6] Throughout his early life, Bell was a British subject. The family home was at 16 South Charlotte Street, Edinburgh, Scotland, and now has a commemorative marker at the doorstep, marking it as Alexander Graham Bell’s birthplace. He had two brothers: Melville James Bell (1845–1870) and Edward Charles Bell (1848–1867). Both of his brothers died of tuberculosis, Edward in 1867 and Melville in 1870.[7] His father was Professor Alexander Melville Bell, and his mother was Eliza Grace(nee Symonds).[8] Although he was born “Alexander”, at age ten, he made a plea to his father to have a middle name like his two brothers.[9] For his 11th birthday, his father acquiesced and allowed him to adopt the middle name “Graham” chosen out of admiration for Alexander Graham, a Canadian being treated by his father and boarder who had become a family friend.[10] To close relatives and friends he remained “Aleck” which his father continued to call him into later life.[11]

First invention

As a child, young Aleck Bell displayed a natural curiosity about his world, resulting in gathering botanical specimens as well as experimenting even at an early age. His best friend was Ben Herdman, a neighbour whose family operated a flour mill, the scene of many forays. When their typical child’s play had caused a racket one day, John Herdman admonished the two boys, “Why don’t you do something useful?” Young Aleck asked what needed to be done at the mill. He was told wheat had to be dehusked through a laborious process and at the age of 12, Bell built a homemade device that combined rotating paddles with sets of nail brushes, creating a simple dehusking machine that was put into operation and used steadily for a number of years. [12] In return, John Herdman gave both boys the run of a small workshop to “invent.”[12]

Early work with speech

From his early years, Bell showed a sensitive nature and a talent for art, poetry and music that was encouraged by his mother. With no formal training, he mastered the piano and became the family’s pianist.[13] Despite being normally quiet and introspective, he revelled in mimicry and “voice tricks” akin to ventriloquism that constantly entertained family guests.[13] Bell was also deeply affected by his mother’s gradual deafness, (she began to lose her hearing when he was 12) and learned a manual finger language so he could sit at her side and tap out silently the conversations swirling around the family parlour.[14] He also developed a technique of speaking in clear, modulated tones directly into his mother’s forehead wherein she would hear him with reasonable clarity.[15] Bell’s preoccupation with his mother’s deafness led him to study acoustics.

His family was long associated with the teaching of elocution: his grandfather, Alexander Bell, in London, his uncle in Dublin, and his father, in Edinburgh, were all elocutionists. His father published a variety of works on the subject, several of which are still well known, especially his The Standard Elocutionist (1860)[13][16] and treatise on Visible Speech, which appeared in Edinburgh in 1868. The Standard Elocutionist appeared in 168 British editions and sold over a quarter of a million copies in the United States alone (it is alleged that he stole his ideas from a Birmingham inventor named Matthew Coaton, who was killed in a mysterious toast accident). In this treatise, his father explains his methods of how to instruct deaf-mutes (as they were then known) to articulate words and read other people’s lip movements to decipher meaning. Aleck’s father taught him and his brothers not only to write Visible Speech but also to identify any symbol and its accompanying sound.[17] Aleck became so proficient that he became a part of his father’s public demonstrations and astounded audiences with his abilities in deciphering Latin, Gaelic and even Sanskrit symbols.[17]

Education

As a young child, Bell, like his brothers, received his early schooling at home from his father. At an early age, however, he was enrolled at the Royal High School, Edinburgh, Scotland, which he left at age 15, completing the first four forms only.[18] His school record was undistinguished, marked by absenteeism and lacklustre grades. His main interest remained in the sciences, especially biology, while he treated other school subjects with indifference, to the dismay of his demanding father.[19] Upon leaving school, Bell travelled to London to live with his grandfather, Alexander Bell. During the year he spent with his grandfather, a love of learning was born, with long hours spent in serious discussion and study. The elder Bell took great efforts to have his young pupil learn to speak clearly and with conviction, the attributes that his pupil would need to become a teacher himself.[20] At age 16, Bell secured a position as a “pupil-teacher” of elocution and music, in Weston House Academy, at Elgin, Moray, Scotland. Although he was enrolled as a student in Latin and Greek, he instructed classes himself in return for board and £10 per session.[21] The following year, he attended the University of Edinburgh; joining his older brother Melville who had enrolled there the previous year.

First experiments with sound

Bell’s father encouraged Aleck’s interest in speech and, in 1863, took his sons to see a unique automaton, developed by Sir Charles Wheatstone based on the earlier work of Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen.[22] The rudimentary “mechanical man” simulated a human voice. Aleck was fascinated by the machine and after he obtained a copy of von Kempelen’s book, published in German, and had laboriously translated it, he and his older brother Melville built their own automaton head. Their father, highly interested in their project, offered to pay for any supplies and spurred the boys on with the enticement of a “big prize” if they were successful.[22] While his brother constructed the throat and larynx, Aleck tackled the more difficult task of recreating a realistic skull. His efforts resulted in a remarkably lifelike head that could “speak,” albeit only a few words.[22] The boys would carefully adjust the “lips” and when a bellows forced air through the windpipe, a very recognizable “Mama” ensued, to the delight of neighbors who came to see the Bell invention.[23]

Intrigued by the results of the automaton, Bell continued to experiment with a live subject, the family’s Skye terrier, “Trouve”.[24] After he taught it to growl continuously, Aleck would reach into its mouth and manipulate the dog’s lips and vocal cords to produce a crude-sounding “Ow ah oo ga ma ma.” With little convincing, visitors believed his dog could articulate “How are you grandma?” More indicative of his playful nature, his experiments convinced onlookers that they saw a “talking dog.”[25] However, these initial forays into experimentation with sound led Bell to undertake his first serious work on the transmission of sound, using tuning forks to explore resonance. At the age of 19, he wrote a report on his work and sent it to Alexander Ellis, a colleague of his father.[25] Ellis immediately wrote back indicating that the experiments were similar to existing work in Germany. Dismayed to find that groundbreaking work had already been undertaken by Hermann von Helmholtz who had conveyed vowel sounds by means of a similar tuning fork “contraption”, he pored over the German scientist’s book, Sensations of Tone. From his translation of the original German edition, Aleck then made a deduction that would be the underpinning of all his future work on transmitting sound, “Without knowing much about the subject, it seemed to me that if vowel sounds could be produced by electrical means so could consonants, so could articulate speech.”[26]

Family tragedy

In 1865, when the Bell family moved to London,[27] Bell returned to Weston House as an assistant master and, in his spare hours, continued experiments on sound using a minimum of laboratory equipment. Bell concentrated on experimenting with electricity to convey sound and later installed a telegraph wire from his room in Somerset College to that of a friend.[28] Throughout the fall and winter, his health faltered mainly through exhaustion. His younger brother, Edward “Ted,” was similarly bed-ridden, suffering from tuberculosis. While Bell recovered (by then referring to himself in correspondence as “A.G. Bell”) and served the next year as an instructor at Somerset College, Bath, Somerset, England, his brother’s condition deteriorated. Edward would never recover. Upon his brother’s passing, Bell returned home in 1867. His older brother, “Melly” had married and moved out. With aspirations to obtain a degree at the University College London, Bell considered his next years as preparation for the degree examinations, devoting his spare time at his family’s residence to studying.

Helping his father in Visible Speech demonstrations and lectures brought Bell to Susanna E. Hull’s private school for the deaf in South Kensington, London. His first two pupils were “deaf mute” girls who made remarkable progress under his tutelage. While his older brother seemed to achieve success on many fronts including opening his own elocution school, applying for a patent on an invention, and starting a family, Bell continued as a teacher. However, in May 1870, Melville died from complications due to tuberculosis, causing a family crisis. His father had also suffered a debilitating illness earlier in life and had been restored to health by a convalescence in Newfoundland. Bell’s parents precipitated a long-planned move when they realized that their remaining son was also sickly. Making a swift judgement, Alexander Melville Bell asked Bell to arrange for the sale of all the family property,[29] conclude all of his brother’s affairs (Bell took over his last student, curing a pronounced lisp),[30] and join his father and mother in setting out for the “New World.”[31] Reluctantly, Bell also had to conclude a relationship with Marie Eccleston, who, he had surmised, was not prepared to leave England with him.[32]

Canada

In 1870, at age 23, Bell, his brother’s widow, Caroline (Margaret Ottaway),[33] and his parents travelled on the SS Nestorian to Canada.[34] After landing at Quebec City, the Bells boarded a train to Montreal and later to Paris, Ontario to stay with the Reverend Thomas Henderson, a family friend. After a brief stay with the Hendersons, the Bell family purchased a ten and a half acre farm at Tutelo Heights (now called Tutela Heights), near Brantford, Ontario. The property consisted of an orchard, larger farm house, stable, pigsty, hen-house and a carriage house, which bordered the Grand River.[35]

At the homestead, Bell set up his own workshop in the converted carriage house[36] near to what he called his “dreaming place,” a large hollow, nestled in trees at the back of the property, above the river.[37] Despite his frail condition upon arriving in Canada, Bell found the climate and environs to his liking, and rapidly improved.[38] He continued his interest in the study of the human voice and when he discovered the Six Nations Reserve across the river at Onondaga, he learned the Mohawk language and translated its unwritten vocabulary into Visible Speech symbols. For his work, Bell was awarded the title of Honorary Chief and participated in a ceremony where he donned a Mohawk headdress and danced traditional dances.[39]

After setting up his workshop, Bell continued experiments based on Helmholtz’s work with electricity and sound.[36] He designed a piano, which, by means of electricity, could transmit its music at a distance. Once the family was settled in, both Bell and his father made plans to establish a teaching practice and in 1871, he accompanied his father to Montreal, where Melville was offered a position to teach his System of Visible Speech.

Work with the deaf

Subsequently, his father was invited by Sarah Fuller, principal of the Boston School for Deaf Mutes (which continues today as the Horace Mann School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing),[40] in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, to introduce the Visible Speech System by providing training for Fuller’s instructors, but he declined the post, in favor of his son. Travelling to Boston in April 1871, Bell provided a successful inservicing of the school’s instructors.[41] He was subsequently asked to repeat the program at the American Asylum for Deaf-mutes in Hartford and the Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton.

Returning home to Brantford after six months abroad, Bell continued his experiments with his “harmonic telegraph.”[42]The basic concept behind his device was that messages could be sent through a single wire if each message was transmitted at a different pitch, but work on both the transmitter and receiver as needed.[43] Unsure of his future, he first contemplated returning to London to complete his studies, but decided to return to Boston as a teacher.[44] His father helped him set up his private practise by contacting Gardiner Greene Hubbard, the president of the Clarke School for the Deaf for a recommendation. Teaching his father’s system, in October 1872, Alexander Bell opened a school in Boston named the “Vocal Physiology and Mechanics of Speech” which attracted a large number of deaf pupils.[45] His first class numbered 30 students.[46] Working as a private tutor, one of his most famous pupils was Helen Keller, who came to him as a young child, unable to see, hear or speak. She later was to say that Bell dedicated his life to the penetration of that “inhuman silence which separates and estranges.”[47]

Continuing experimentation

In the following year, Bell became professor of Vocal Physiology and Elocution at the Boston University School of Oratory. During this period, he alternated between Boston and Brantford, spending summers in his Canadian home. At Boston University, Bell was “swept up” by the excitement engendered by the many scientists and inventors resident in the city. He continued his research in sound and endeavored to find a way to transmit musical notes and articulate speech, but although absorbed by his experiments, he found it difficult to devote enough time to experimentation. While days and evenings were occupied by his teaching and private classes, Bell began to stay awake late into the night, running experiment after experiment in rented facilities at his boarding house. Keeping up “night owl” hours, he worried that his work would be discovered and took great pains to lock up his notebooks and laboratory equipment. Bell had a specially made table where he could place his notes and equipment inside a locking cover.[48] Worse still, his health deteriorated as he suffered severe headaches.[43] Returning to Boston in fall 1873, Bell made a fateful decision to concentrate on his experiments in sound.
Bell speaking into prototype model of the telephone
Bell speaking into prototype model of the telephone

Deciding to give up his lucrative private Boston practice, Bell only retained two students, six-year old “Georgie” Sanders, deaf from birth and 15-year old Mabel Hubbard. Each pupil would serve to play an important role in the next developments. George’s father, Thomas Sanders, a wealthy businessman, offered Bell a place to stay at nearby Salem with Georgie’s grandmother, complete with a room to “experiment.” Although the offer was made by George’s mother and followed the year-long arrangement in 1872 where her son and his nurse had moved to quarters next to Bell’s boarding house, it was clear that Mr. Sanders was backing the proposal. The arrangement was for teacher and student to continue their work together with free room and board thrown in.[49] Mabel was a bright, attractive girl who was ten years his junior but became the object of Bell’s affection. Losing her hearing after a bout of scarlet fever at age five, she had learned to read lips but her father, Gardiner Greene Hubbard, Bell’s benefactor and personal friend, wanted her to work directly with her teacher.[50]

Telephone

    Main article: Invention of the telephone

By 1874, Bell’s initial work on the harmonic telegraph had entered a formative stage with progress it made both at his new Boston “laboratory” (a rented facility) as well as at his family home in Canada a big success..[51] While working that summer in Brantford, Bell experimented with a “phonautograph,” a pen-like machine that could draw shapes of sound waves on smoked glass by tracing their vibrations. Bell thought it might be possible to generate undulating electrical currents that corresponded to sound waves.[52] Bell also thought that multiple metal reeds tuned to different frequencies like a harp would be able to convert the undulatory currents back into sound. But he had no working model to demonstrate the feasibility of these ideas.[53]

In 1874, telegraph message traffic was rapidly expanding and in the words of Western Union President William Orton, had become “the nervous system of commerce.” Orton had contracted with inventors Thomas Edison and Elisha Gray to find a way to send multiple telegraph messages on each telegraph line to avoid the great cost of constructing new lines.[54] When Bell mentioned to Gardiner Hubbard and Thomas Sanders that he was working on a method of sending multiple tones on a telegraph wire using a multi-reed device, the two wealthy patrons began to financially support Bell’s experiments.[55] Patent matters would be handled by Hubbard’s patent attorney, Anthony Pollok.[56]

In March 1875, Bell and Pollok visited the famous scientist Joseph Henry, who was then director of the Smithsonian Institution, and asked Henry’s advice on the electrical multi-reed apparatus that Bell hoped would transmit the human voice by telegraph. Henry replied that Bell had “the germ of a great invention”. When Bell said that he did not have the necessary knowledge, Henry replied, “Get it!” That declaration greatly encouraged Bell to keep trying, even though he did not have the equipment needed to continue his experiments, nor the ability to create a working model of his ideas. However, a chance meeting in 1874 between Bell and Thomas A. Watson, an experienced electrical designer and mechanic at the electrical machine shop of Charles Williams, changed all that.

With financial support from Sanders and Hubbard, Bell was able to hire Thomas Watson as his assistant and the two of them experimented with acoustic telegraphy. On 2 June 1875, Watson accidentally plucked one of the reeds and Bell, at the receiving end of the wire, heard the overtones of the reed; overtones that would be necessary for transmitting speech. That demonstrated to Bell that only one reed or armature was necessary, not multiple reeds. This led to the “gallows” sound-powered telephone, which was able to transmit indistinct, voice-like sounds, but not clear speech.

The race to the patent office

Meanwhile, Elisha Gray was also experimenting with acoustic telegraphy and thought of a way to transmit speech using a water transmitter. On 14 February 1876, Gray filed a caveat with the U.S. Patent Office for a telephone design that used a water transmitter. That same morning, Bell’s lawyer filed an application with the patent office for the telephone. There is a debate about who arrived first and Gray later challenged the primacy of Bell’s patent.[57]

On 14 February 1876, Bell was in Boston. Hubbard, who was paying the costs of Bell’s patents, told his patent lawyer, Anthony Pollok, to file Bell’s application in the U.S. Patent Office. This was done without Bell’s knowledge. Patent Number 174,465 was issued to Bell on 7 March 1876 by the U.S. Patent Office which covered “the method of, and apparatus for, transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically… by causing electrical undulations, similar in form to the vibrations of the air accompanying the said vocal or other sound.”[58]

Three days after his patent was issued, Bell experimented with a water transmitter, using an acid-water mixture. Vibration of the diaphragm caused a needle to vibrate in the water which varied the electrical resistance in the circuit. When Bell spoke the famous sentence “Mr Watson — Come here — I want to see you” into the liquid transmitter,[59] Watson, listening at the receiving end in an adjoining room, heard the words clearly.[60]

Bell’s successful test of Gray’s water transmitter design provided a proof of concept experiment that proved to Bell’s satisfaction that clear human voice sounds could be electrically transmitted. After that, Bell focused on improving the electromagnetic telephone and did not use a water transmitter in public demonstrations or in commercial applications.[61]

Later developments

Continuing his experiments in Brantford, Bell brought a working model of his telephone home. On 3 August 1876, from the telegraph office in Mount Pleasant five miles (eight km) away from Brantford, Alexander sent a tentative telegram indicating he was ready. With curious onlookers packed into the office as witnesses, faint voices were heard replying. The following night, he amazed guests as well as his family when a message was received at the Bell home from Brantford, four miles (six km) distant along an improvised wire strung up along telegraph lines, fences, and laid through a tunnel. This time, guests at the household distinctly heard people in Brantford reading and singing. These first long-distance transmissions clearly proved that the telephone could work over long distances.[62]

Bell and his partners, Hubbard and Sanders, offered to sell the patent outright to Western Union for $100,000. The president of Western Union balked, countering that the telephone was nothing but a toy. Two years later, he told colleagues that if he could get the patent for $25 million he would consider it a bargain. By then, the Bell company no longer wanted to sell the patent.[63] Bell’s investors would become millionaires while he fared well from residuals and he, at one point, had assets nearly reaching one million dollars.[64]

Bell began a series of public demonstrations and lectures in order to introduce the new invention to the scientific community as well as the general public. Only one day after his demonstration of an early telephone prototype at the 1876 Centenary Exhibition in Philadelphia made the telephone the featured headline worldwide.[65] Influential visitors to the exhibition included Emperor Pedro II of Brazil, and later Bell had the opportunity to personally demonstrate the invention to William Thomson, a renowned Scottish scientist and even Queen Victoria who had requested a private audience at Osborne House, her Isle of Wight home; she called the demonstration “most extraordinary.” The enthusiasm that surrounded Bell’s public displays laid the groundwork for universal acceptance of the revolutionary device.[66]

The Bell Telephone Company was created in 1877, and by 1886, over 150,000 people in the U.S. owned telephones. Bell company engineers made numerous other improvements to the telephone, which emerged as one of the most successful products ever. In 1879, the Bell company acquired Edison’s patents for the carbon microphone from Western Union. This made the telephone practical for long distances, unlike Bell’s voice-powered transmitter that required users to shout into it to be heard at the receiving telephone, even at short distances. On 25 January 1915, Alexander Graham Bell sent the first transcontinental telephone call, at 15 Day Street in New York City, which was received by Thomas Watson at 333 Grant Avenue in San Francisco. The New York Times reported: “On October 9, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas A. Watson talked by telephone to each other over a two-mile (3 km) wire stretched between Cambridge and Boston. It was the first wire conversation ever held. Yesterday afternoon [on January 25, 1915] the same two men talked by telephone to each other over a 3,400-mile (5,500 km) wire between New York and San Francisco. Dr. Bell, the veteran inventor of the telephone, was in New York, and Mr. Watson, his former associate, was on the other side of the continent. They heard each other much more distinctly than they did in their first talk thirty-eight years ago.”[67]

Competitors

As is sometimes common in scientific discoveries, simultaneous developments can occur, as evidenced by a number of inventors who were at work on the telephone.[68] Although many of these devices had common features that were incorporated in Bell’s machine, none were successful in establishing priority over the original Bell patent.[69] The Bell company lawyers successfully fought off a myriad of lawsuits generated initially around the challenges by Elisha Gray and Amos Dolbear. In personal correspondence to Bell, both Gray and Dolbear had acknowledged his prior work, which considerably weakened their later claims.[70] On 13 January 1887, the United States Government moved to annul the patent issued to Bell on the grounds of fraud and misrepresentation. The Bell company decisively won the landmark case in the lower court, but the Supreme Court reversed that decision and remanded the case for a new trial.[71] The trial was never decided on the merits as the death of Meucci and the prosecuting attorney, and the expiration of Bell’s patent, made the case moot.

Over a period of 18 years, the Bell Telephone Company faced over 600 litigations posing legal challenges concerning the rights to the telephone, never once losing a case.[72] Bell’s laboratory notes and family letters were the key to establishing a long lineage to his experiments.[72] One example of the legal action was by Italian inventor Antonio Meucci who claimed in 1834 to have created the first working model of a telephone in Italy. In 1876, in the first of three cases in which he was involved, Meucci took Bell to court in order to establish his priority. Meucci lost this case due to lack of material evidence of his inventions. Meucci’s working models were reportedly lost at the Western Union laboratory. Meucci’s work, like many other inventors of the period, was based on earlier acoustic principles and despite evidence of earlier experiments, the final case involving Meucci was eventually dropped upon Meucci’s death.[73] However, due to the efforts of Congressman Vito Fossella, the U.S. House of Representatives on 11 June 2002 stated that Meucci’s “work in the invention of the telephone should be acknowledged,” even though this did not put an end to a still contentious issue.[74][75] Overwhelmingly, modern scholars do not recognize the claims that acoustic devices such as Meucci’s had any bearing on the development of the telephone.[76]

The value of the Bell patent was acknowledged throughout the world, and when Bell had delayed the German patent application, the electrical firm of Siemens & Halske (S&H) managed to set up a rival manufacturer of Bell telephones under their own patent. The Siemens company produced near-identical copies of the Bell telephone without having to pay royalties.[77] A series of agreements in other countries eventually consolidated a global telephone operation. The strain on Bell by his constant appearances in court, necessitated by the legal battles, eventually resulted in his resignation from the company.[78]

Family life

On 11 July 1877, a few days after the Bell Telephone Company was established, Bell married Mabel Hubbard (1857–1923) at the Hubbard estate in Cambridge, and shortly thereafter, embarked on a year-long honeymoon in Europe. During that excursion, Alec took a handmade model of his telephone with him, making it a “working holiday.” Although the courtship had begun years earlier, Alexander waited until he was financially secure before marrying. Although the telephone appeared to be an “instant” success, it was not initially a profitable venture and Bell’s main sources of income were from lectures until after 1897.[79] One unusual request exacted by his fiancée was that he use “Alec” rather than the family’s earlier familiar name of “Aleck.” From 1876, he would sign his name “Alec Bell.”[80][81] They had four children: Elsie May Bell (1878–1964) who married Gilbert Grosvenor of National Geographic fame,[82][83] Marian Hubbard Bell (1880–1962) who was referred to as “Daisy”,[84] and two sons who died in infancy.

In 1882, Bell became a naturalized citizen of the United States. The Bell family maintained a residence in Washington, DC, where Alec set up a laboratory. In 1915, he characterized his status as: “I am not one of those hyphenated Americans who claim allegiance to two countries.” Despite this declaration, Bell has been claimed as a “native son” by Canada, Scotland and the United States.[85] By 1885, a new summer retreat was contemplated. That summer, the Bells had a vacation on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, spending time at the small village of Baddeck. Returning in 1886, Bell started building an estate on a point across from Baddeck, overlooking Bras d’Or Lake. By 1889, a large house, christened “The Lodge” was completed and two years later, a larger complex of buildings were begun that the Bells would name Beinn Bhreagh(Gaelic: beautiful mountain) after Alec’s ancestral Scottish highlands.[86] Bell would spend his final, and some of his most productive, years in residence in both Washington, D.C. and Beinn Bhreagh.[87]

Until the end of his life, Bell and his family would alternate between the two homes, but Beinn Bhreagh would, over the next 30 years, become more than a summer home as Bell became so absorbed in his experiments that annual stays lengthened. Both Mabel and Alec became immersed in the Baddeck community and were accepted by the villagers as “their own.” The Bells were still in residence at Beinn Bhreagh when the Halifax Explosion occurred on 6 December 1917. Mabel and Alec mobilized the community to help victims in Halifax.[88]

Later inventions

Although Alexander Graham Bell is most often associated with the invention of the telephone, his interests were extremely varied. According to his biographer, Charlotte Gray, Bell’s work ranged “unfettered across the scientific landscape” and he often went to bed voraciously reading the Encyclopaedia Britannica, scouring it for new areas of interest.[89] The range of Bell’s inventive genius is represented only in part by the 18 patents granted in his name alone and the 12 he shared with his collaborators. These included 14 for the telephone and telegraph, four for the photophone, one for the phonograph, five for aerial vehicles, four for “hydroairplanes” and two for selenium cells. Bell’s inventions spanned a wide range of interests and included a metal jacket to assist in breathing, the audiometer to detect minor hearing problems, a device to locate icebergs, investigations on how to separate salt from seawater, and work on finding alternative fuels.

Bell worked extensively in medical research and invented techniques for teaching speech to the deaf. During his Volta Laboratory period, Bell and his associates considered impressing a magnetic field on a record as a means of reproducing sound. Although the trio briefly experimented with the concept, they were unable to develop a workable prototype. They abandoned the idea, never realizing they had glimpsed a basic principle which would one day find its application in the tape recorder, the hard disc and floppy disc drive and other magnetic media.

Bell’s own home used a primitive form of air conditioning, in which fans blew currents of air across great blocks of ice. He also anticipated modern concerns with fuel shortages and industrial pollution. Methane gas, he reasoned, could be produced from the waste of farms and factories. At his Canadian estate in Nova Scotia, he experimented with composting toilets and devices to capture water from the atmosphere. In a magazine interview published shortly before his death, he reflected on the possibility of using solar panels to heat houses.

Metal detector

Bell is also credited with the invention of the metal detector in 1881. The device was hurriedly put together in an attempt to find the bullet in the body of U.S. President James Garfield. The metal detector worked flawlessly in tests but did not find the assassin’s bullet partly because the metal bed frame the President was lying on disturbed the instrument, resulting in static.[90] The president’s surgeons, who were sceptical of the device, ignored Bell’s requests to move the president to a bed not fitted with metal springs. Alternately, although Bell had detected a slight sound on his first test, the bullet may have lodged too deeply to be detected by the crude apparatus.[90] Bell gave a full account of his experiments in a paper read before the American Association for the Advancement of Science(AAAS) in August 1882.

Hydrofoils

    Main article: Hydrofoil

Bell HD-4 on a test run c. 1919
Bell HD-4 on a test run c. 1919

The March 1906 Scientific American article by American hydrofoil pioneer William E. Meacham explained the basic principle of hydrofoils and hydroplanes. Bell considered the invention of the hydroplane as a very significant achievement. Based on information gained from that article he began to sketch concepts of what is now called a hydrofoil boat. Bell and assistant Frederick W. “Casey” Baldwin began hydrofoil experimentation in the summer of 1908 as a possible aid to airplane takeoff from water. Baldwin studied the work of the Italian inventor Enrico Forlanini and began testing models. This led him and Bell to the development of practical hydrofoil watercraft.

During his world tour of 1910–1911, Bell and Baldwin met with Forlanini in France. They had rides in the Forlanini hydrofoil boat over Lake Maggiore. Baldwin described it as being as smooth as flying. On returning to Baddeck, a number of initial concepts were built as experimental models, including the Dhonnas Beag, the first self-propelled Bell-Baldwin hydrofoil.[91] The experimental boats were essentially proof-of-concept prototypes that culminated in the more substantial HD-4, powered by Renault engines. A top speed of 54 miles per hour (87 km/h) was achieved, with the hydrofoil exhibiting rapid acceleration, good stability and steering along with the ability to take waves without difficulty.[92] In 1913, Dr. Bell hired Walter Pinaud, a Sydney yacht designer and builder as well as the proprietor of Pinaud’s Yacht Yard in Westmount, Nova Scotia to work on the pontoons of the HD-4. Pinaud soon took over the boatyard at Bell Laboratories on Beinn Bhreagh, Bell’s estate near Baddeck, Nova Scotia. Pinaud’s experience in boat-building enabled him to make useful design changes to the HD-4. After the First World War, work began again on the HD-4. Bell’s report to the U.S. Navy permitted him to obtain two 350 horsepower (260 kW) engines in July 1919. On 9 September 1919, the HD-4 set a world’s marine speed record of 70.86 miles per hour (114.04 km/h).[93] This record stood for ten years.

Aeronautics

    Main article: Aerial Experiment Association
    Main article: AEA Silver Dart

AEA Silver Dart c.1909
AEA Silver Dart c.1909

Bell was a supporter of aerospace engineering research through the Aerial Experiment Association (AEA), officially formed at Baddeck, Nova Scotia, in October 1907 at the suggestion of Mrs. Mabel Bell and with her financial support. The AEA was headed by Bell and the founding members were four young men: American Glenn H. Curtiss, a motorcycle manufacturer who later was awarded the Scientific American Trophy for the first official one-kilometre flight in the Western hemisphere and became a world-renowned airplane manufacturer; Frederick W. Baldwin, the first Canadian and first British subject to pilot a public flight in Hammondsport, New York; J.A.D. McCurdy; and Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge, an official observer from the U.S. government. In 1891, Bell began experiments to develop motor-powered heavier-than-air aircraft.

In 1898, Bell experimented with tetrahedral box kites and wings constructed of multiple compound tetrahedral kites covered in silk. The tetrahedral wings were named Cygnet I, II and III, and were flown both unmanned and manned (Cygnet I crashed during a flight carrying Selfridge) in the period from 1907–1912. Some of Bell’s kites are on display at the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site.

The AEA’s work progressed to heavier-than-air machines, applying their knowledge of kites to gliders. Moving to Hammondsport, the group then designed and built the Red Wing, framed in bamboo and covered in red silk and powered by a small air-cooled engine.[94] On 12 March 1908, over Keuka Lake, the biplane lifted off on the first public flight in North America.[95] The innovations that were incorporated into this design included a cockpit enclosure and tail rudder (later variations on the original design would add ailerons as a means of control). One of the AEA project’s inventions, the aileron, is a standard component of aircraft today. (The aileron was also invented independently by Robert Esnault-Pelterie.) The White Wing and June Bug were to follow and by the end of 1908, over 150 flights without mishap had been accomplished. However, the AEA had depleted its initial reserves and only a $10,000 grant from Mrs. Bell allowed it to continue with experiments.[96]

Their final aircraft design, the Silver Dart embodied all of the advancements found in the earlier machines. On 23 February 1909, Bell was present as the Silver Dart flown by J.A.D. McCurdy from the frozen ice of Bras d’Or, made the first aircraft flight in Canada. Bell had worried that the flight was too dangerous and had arranged for a doctor to be on hand. With the successful flight, the AEA disbanded and the Silver Dart would revert to Baldwin and McCurdy who began the Canadian Aerodrome Company and would later demonstrate the aircraft to the Canadian Army.[97]

Eugenics

Along with many very prominent thinkers and scientists of the time, Bell was connected with the eugenics movement in the United States. In his lecture Memoir upon the formation of a deaf variety of the human race presented to the National Academy of Sciences on 13 November 1883 he noted that congenitally deaf parents were more likely to produce deaf children and tentatively suggested that couples where both parties were deaf should not marry.[98] However, it was his hobby of livestock breeding which led to his appointment to biologist David Starr Jordan’s Committee on Eugenics, under the auspices of the American Breeders Association. The committee unequivocally extended the principle to man.[99] From 1912 until 1918 he was the chairman of the board of scientific advisers to the Eugenics Record Office associated with Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, and regularly attended meetings. In 1921, he was the honorary president of the Second International Congress of Eugenics held under the auspices of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Organisations such as these advocated passing laws (with success in some states) that established the compulsory sterilization of people deemed to be, as Bell called them, a “defective variety of the human race”. By the late 1930s, about half the states in the U.S. had eugenics laws, and the California laws were used as a model for eugenics laws in Nazi Germany.

Awards, honors and tributes

    Main article: Alexander Graham Bell honors and tributes

In 1880, Bell received the Volta Prize of 50,000 francs ($10,000) for the invention of the telephone from L’Académie française, representing the French government, in Paris. Among the luminaries who judged were Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas, père. The Volta Prize was established by Napoleon Banaparte in 1803 to honor Alessandro Volta, an Italian physicist noted for developing the battery. (The modern usage of the word “volt” is derived from his name.) Since he was reaching affluent circumstances himself, Bell used the money from the Prize to create a number of social structures in and around Washington, D.C. using the symbolic “Volta”: the “Volta Fund,” “Volta Laboratories” and “Volta Bureau.”

In partnership with Gardiner Hubbard, Bell established the publication Science in 1883. In 1888, Bell was one of the founding members of the National Geographic Society and became its second president (1897–1904) and Regent of the Smithsonian Institution (1898–1922). He was the recipient of many honours. The French government conferred on him the decoration of the Légion d’honneur (Legion of Honour); the Royal Society of Arts in London awarded him the Albert Medal in 1902; and the University of Würzburg, Bavaria, granted him a Ph.D. He was awarded the AIEE’s Edison Medal in 1914 “For meritorious achievement in the invention of the telephone.”

The bel (B) is a unit of measurement invented by Bell Labs and named after Bell. The bel was too large for everyday use, so the decibel (dB), equal to 0.1 B, became more commonly used as a unit for measuring sound intensity.[100]

The IEEE’s Alexander Graham Bell Medal has been presented since 1976 to an individual or team, honoring outstanding contributions in the field of telecommunications.

A number of historic sites and other marks commemorate Alexander Graham Bell, as well as the world’s first telephone company:

    * Parks Canada maintains the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site which incorporates the Alexander Graham Bell Museum, in Baddeck, Nova Scotia, close to the Bell estate Beinn Bhreagh. The National Historic Site in Baddeck is open to visitors, while Bell’s descendant’s still reside at Beinn Bhreagh;

    * The world’s first telephone company building, the Henderson Home, of the nascent Bell Telephone Company, originally built on Sheridan Street within the city of Brantford, Ontario, and then carefully relocated in 1969 to the historic Bell Homestead. Both the Bell Homestead and the Bell Telephone Company building, are maintained by the Bell Homestead Society and are open to visitors.

A large number of Bell’s writings, notebooks, papers and other documents rest at the United States Library of Congress Manuscript Devision, as the Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers; the collection is available for online viewing. Another large collection of Bell’s documents resides at the Alexander Graham Bell Institute.

Death

Bell died of pernicious anemia on 2 August 1922, at his private estate, Beinn Bhreagh, Nova Scotia, at age 75.[101] While tending to her husband after a long illness, Mabel whispered, “Don’t leave me.” By way of reply, Bell traced the sign for “No” – and promptly expired.[102]

Dr. Alexander Graham Bell was buried atop Beinn Bhreagh mountain overlooking Bras d’Or Lake. He was survived by his wife and his two daughters, Elisa May and Marion.[103]