Ag bell biography of george st edinburgh

Dictionary of National Biography. Login to see how you relate to 33 million family members. Benjamin Bell bef. Benjamin Bell. Born before 16 Sep in Dumfries, Dumfriesshire, Scotland. Husband of Grizel Hamilton Bell — married [location unknown]. Father of George Bell F. Profile last modified 28 Sep Created 30 Jul Is Benjamin your ancestor?

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Ag bell biography of george st edinburgh: Alexander Graham Bell, the second of

Sponsored Search by Ancestry. Search Records. Have you taken a test? On February 14,Gray filed a caveat with the U. Patent Office for a telephone design that used a water transmitter. That same morning, Bell's lawyer filed Bell's application with the patent office. There is considerable debate about who arrived first and Gray later challenged the primacy of Bell's patent.

Bell was in Boston on February 14 and did not arrive in Washington until February On March 7,the U. Patent Office issued Bell patentIt covered "the method of, and apparatus for, transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically On March 10, Bell succeeded in getting his telephone to work, using a liquid transmitter similar to Gray's design. Vibration of the diaphragm caused a needle to vibrate in the water, varying the electrical resistance in the circuit.

When Bell spoke the sentence "Mr. Watson—Come here—I want to see you" into the liquid transmitter, [ 89 ] Watson, listening at the receiving end in an adjoining room, heard the words clearly. Although Bell was, and still is, accused of stealing the telephone from Gray, [ 91 ] Bell used Gray's water transmitter design only after Bell's patent had been granted, and only as a proof of concept scientific experiment, [ 92 ] to prove to his own satisfaction that intelligible "articulate speech" Bell's words could be electrically transmitted.

The examiner raised the question of priority for the variable resistance feature of the telephone before approving Bell's patent application. He told Bell that his claim for the variable resistance feature was also described in Gray's caveat. Bell pointed to a variable resistance device in his previous application in which he described a cup of mercury, not water.

He had filed the mercury application at the patent office on February 25,long before Gray described the water device. In addition, Gray abandoned his caveat, and because he did not contest Bell's priority, the examiner approved Bell's patent on March 3, Gray had reinvented the variable resistance telephone, but Bell was the first to write down the idea and test it in a telephone.

The patent examinerZenas Fisk Wilber, later stated in an affidavit that he was an alcoholic who was much in debt to Bell's lawyer, Marcellus Baileywith whom he had served in the Civil War. He said he had shown Bailey Gray's patent caveat. Wilber also said after Bell arrived in Washington D. Bell said they discussed the patent only in general terms, although in a letter to Gray, Bell admitted that he learned some of the technical details.

Ag bell biography of george st edinburgh: BELL, ALEXANDER GRAHAM, teacher of the

Bell denied in an affidavit that he ever gave Wilber any money. On March 10,Bell used "the instrument" in Boston to call Thomas Watson who was in another room but out of earshot. He said, "Mr. Watson, come here — I want to see you" and Watson soon appeared at his side. Continuing his experiments in Brantford, Bell brought home a working model of his telephone.

On August 3,from the telegraph office in Brantford, Bell sent a telegram to the village of Mount Pleasant four miles six kilometres away, indicating that he was ready. He made a telephone call via telegraph wires and faint voices were heard replying. The following night, he amazed guests as well as his family with a call between the Bell Homestead and the office of the Dominion Telegraph Company in Brantford along an improvised wire strung up along telegraph lines and fences, and laid through a tunnel.

Ag bell biography of george st edinburgh: He first introduced his telephone in

This time, guests at the household distinctly heard people in Brantford reading and singing. The third test, on August 10,was made via the telegraph line between Brantford and Paris, Ontario, eight miles thirteen kilometres away. This test is said by many sources to be the "world's first long-distance call". The first two-way reciprocal conversation over a line occurred between Cambridge and Boston roughly 2.

By then, the Bell company no longer wanted to sell the patent. Bell began a series of public demonstrations and lectures to introduce the new invention to the scientific community as well as the general public. A short time later, his demonstration of an early telephone prototype at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia brought the telephone to international attention.

One of the judges at the Exhibition, Sir William Thomson later Lord Kelvina renowned Scottish scientist, described the telephone as "the greatest by far of all the marvels of the electric telegraph". These were the first publicly witnessed long-distance telephone calls in the UK. The queen found the process "quite extraordinary" although the sound was "rather faint".

The Bell Telephone Company was created inand bymore thanpeople in the U. Bell Company engineers made numerous other improvements to the telephone, which emerged as one of the most successful products ever. Inthe company acquired Edison's patents for the carbon microphone from Western Union. This made the telephone practical for longer distances, and it was no longer necessary to shout to be heard at the receiving telephone.

In JanuaryBell made the first ceremonial transcontinental telephone call. The New York Times reported:. Watson talked by telephone to each other over a two-mile wire stretched between Cambridge and Boston. It was the first wire conversation ever held. Yesterday afternoon [on January 25, ], the same two men talked by telephone to each other over a 3,mile wire between New York and San Francisco.

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. As is sometimes common in scientific discoveries, simultaneous developments occurred, as evidenced by a number of inventors who were at work on the telephone. Supreme Court[ ] but none was successful in establishing priority over Bell's original patent, [ ] [ ] and the Bell Telephone Company never lost a case that had proceeded to a final trial stage.

In personal correspondence to Bell, both Gray and Dolbear had acknowledged his prior work, which considerably weakened their later claims. On January 13,the U. After a series of decisions and reversals, the Bell company won a decision in the Supreme Court, though a couple of the original claims from the lower court cases were left undecided.

With a change in administration and charges of conflict of interest on both sides arising from the original trial, the U. During a deposition filed for the trial, Italian inventor Antonio Meucci also claimed to have created the first working model of a telephone in Italy in Inin the first of three cases in which he was involved, [ N 15 ] Meucci took the stand as a witness in hope of establishing his invention's priority.

Meucci's testimony was disputed due to lack of material evidence for his inventions, as his working models were purportedly lost at the laboratory of American District Telegraph ADT of New York, which was incorporated as a subsidiary of Western Union in House of Representatives stated that Meucci's "work in the invention of the telephone should be acknowledged".

The value of Bell's patent was acknowledged throughout the world, and patent applications were made in most major countries. Siemens produced near-identical copies of the Bell telephone without having to pay royalties. The strain put on Bell by his constant appearances in court, necessitated by the legal battles, eventually resulted in his resignation from the company.

His wedding present to his bride was to turn over 1, of his 1, shares in the newly formed Bell Telephone Company. During that excursion, Bell took a handmade model of his telephone with him, making it a "working holiday". The courtship had begun years earlier; however, Bell waited until he was more 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 Fromhe would sign his name "Alec Bell".

The Bell family home was in Cambridge, Massachusetts, until when Bell's father-in-law bought a house in Washington, D. Bell was a British subject throughout his early life in Scotland and later in Canada until when he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Inhe characterized his status as: "I am not one of those hyphenated Americans who claim allegiance to two countries.

Bya new summer retreat was contemplated. He was an enthusiastic boater, and Bell and his family sailed or rowed a long series of vessels on Bras d'Or Lakeordering additional vessels from the H. In his final, and some of his most productive years, Bell split his residency between Washington, D. 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 his annual stays lengthened.

Both Mabel and Bell became immersed in the Baddeck community and were accepted by the villagers as "their own". Mabel and Bell mobilized the community to help victims in Halifax. Although Alexander Graham Bell is most often associated with the invention of the telephone, his interests were extremely varied. These included 14 for the telephone and telegraph, four for the photophoneone for the phonographfive 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 could not develop a workable prototype. They abandoned the idea, never realizing they had glimpsed a basic ag bell biography of george st edinburgh which would one day find its application in the tape recorderthe 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 article published inhe reflected on the possibility of using solar energy to heat houses. Bell and his assistant Charles Sumner Tainter jointly invented a wireless telephone, named a photophonewhich allowed for the transmission of both sounds and normal human conversations on a beam of light. On June 21,Bell's assistant transmitted a wireless voice telephone message a considerable distance, from the roof of the Franklin School in Washington, D.

Bell believed the photophone's principles were his life's "greatest achievement", telling a reporter shortly before his death that the photophone was "the greatest invention [I have] ever made, greater than the telephone". Bell is also credited with developing one of the early versions of a metal detector through the use of an induction balance, after the shooting of U.

President James A. Garfield in According to some accounts, the metal detector worked flawlessly in tests but did not find Guiteau 's bullet, partly because the metal bed frame on which the President was lying disturbed the instrument, resulting in static. Bell's own detailed account, presented to the American Association for the Advancement of Science indiffers in several particulars from most of the many and varied versions now in circulation, by concluding that extraneous metal was not to blame for failure to locate the bullet.

Ag bell biography of george st edinburgh: Alexander Graham Bell was

Perplexed by the peculiar results he had obtained during an examination of Garfield, Bell "proceeded to the Executive Mansion the next morning It was then recollected that underneath the horse-hair mattress on which the President lay was another mattress composed of steel wires. Upon obtaining a duplicate, the mattress was found to consist of a sort of net of woven steel wires, with large meshes.

The extent of the [area that produced a response from the detector] having been so small, as compared with the area of the bed, it seemed reasonable to conclude that the steel mattress had produced no detrimental effect. 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 ag bell biography of george st edinburgh concepts of what is now called a hydrofoil boat. Bell and assistant Frederick W. 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 —11, 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 Scottish Gaelic for 'little devil'the first self-propelled Bell-Baldwin hydrofoil.

Pinaud's experience in boatbuilding enabled him to make useful design changes to the HD Bell's report to the U. Navy permitted him to obtain two horsepower kilowatt engines in July On September 9,the HD-4 set a world marine speed record of InBell had begun experiments to develop motor-powered heavier-than-air aircraft. The AEA was first formed as Bell shared the vision to fly with his wife, who advised him to seek "young" help as Bell was at the age of InBell experimented with tetrahedral box kites and wings constructed of multiple compound tetrahedral kites covered in maroon silk.

Bell was a supporter of aerospace engineering research through the Aerial Experiment Association AEAofficially formed at Baddeck, Nova Scotia, in October at the suggestion of his wife Mabel and with her financial support after the sale of some of her real estate. Curtissa motorcycle manufacturer at the time and who held the title "world's fastest man", having ridden his self-constructed motor bicycle around in the shortest time, and who was later awarded the Scientific American Trophy for the first official one-kilometre flight in the Western hemisphereand who later became a world-renowned airplane manufacturer; Lieutenant Thomas Selfridgean official observer from the U.

Federal government and one of the few people in the army who believed that aviation was the future; Frederick W. 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 Wingframed in bamboo and covered in red silk and powered by a small air-cooled engine.

One of the AEA's inventions, a practical wingtip form of the aileronwas to become a standard component on all aircraft. Bell allowed it to continue with experiments. Selfridge had also become the first person killed in a powered heavier-than-air flight in a crash of the Wright Flyer at Fort MyerVirginiaon September 17, Their final aircraft design, the Silver Dartembodied all of the advancements found in the earlier machines.

McCurdy from the frozen ice of Bras d'Or made the first aircraft flight in Canada. Bell, along with many members of the scientific community at the time, took an interest in the popular science of heredity which grew out of the ag bell biography of george st edinburgh of Charles Darwin 's book On the Origin of Species in Over the course of more than 30 years, Bell sought to produce a breed of sheep with multiple nipples that would bear twins.

Bell's research indicated that a hereditary tendency toward deafness, as indicated by the possession of deaf relatives, was an important element in determining the production of deaf offspring. He noted that the proportion of deaf children born to deaf parents was many times greater than the proportion of deaf children born to the general population.

He also criticized educational practices that segregated deaf children rather than integrated them fulling into mainstream classrooms. The paper did not propose sterilization of deaf people or prohibition on intermarriage, [ ] noting that "We cannot dictate to men and women whom they should marry and natural selection no longer influences mankind to any great extent.

Bell does not advocate legislative interference with the marriages of the deaf for several reasons one of which is that the results of such marriages have not yet been sufficiently investigated. Bell has so admirable begun until the laws of the transmission of the tendency to deafness are fully understood, and then by explaining those laws to the pupils of our schools to lead them to choose their partners in marriage in such a way that deaf-mute offspring will not be the result.

Historians have noted that Bell explicitly opposed laws regulating marriage, and never mentioned sterilization in any of his writings. Even after Bell agreed to engage with scientists conducting eugenic research, he consistently refused to support public policy that limited the rights or privileges of the deaf. Bell's interest and research on heredity attracted the interest of Charles Davenporta Harvard professor and head of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

InDavenport, who was also the founder of the American Breeder's Associationapproached Bell about joining a new committee on eugenics chaired by David Starr Jordan. To give the organization scientific credibility, Davenport set up a Board of Scientific Directors naming Bell as chairman. New York. Another of Bell's inventions was the photophone, a device enabling the transmission of sound over a beam of light, which he developed together with Charles Sumner Tainter.

The device employed light-sensitive cells of crystalline seleniumwhich has the property that its electrical resistance varies inversely with the illumination the resistance is higher when the material is in the dark, and lower when it is lit. The basic principle was to modulate a beam of light directed at a receiver made of crystalline selenium, to which a telephone was attached.

The modulation was done either by means of a vibrating mirror, or a rotating disk periodically obscuring the light beam. This idea was by no means new. Inone writer with the initials J. In his paper on the photophone, Bell credited A. Browne of London with the independent discovery in —the same year Bell became aware of the idea.

Bell and Tainter, however, were apparently the first to perform a successful experiment, by no means any easy task, as they even had to produce the selenium cells with the desired resistance characteristics themselves. In one experiment in Washington, D. The sender consisted of a mirror directing sunlight onto the mouthpiece, where the light beam was modulated by a vibrating mirror, focused by a lens and directed at the receiver, which was a parabolic reflector with the selenium cells in the focus and the telephone attached.

With this setup, Bell and Tainter succeeded to communicate clearly. The photophone was patented on December 18,but the quality of communication remained poor, and the research was not pursued by Bell. Later on, this helped in the discovery of fiber optics and laser communication systems. Bell is also credited with the invention of the metal detector in The device was hurriedly put together in an attempt to find the bullet in the body of U.

President James Garfield. The metal detector worked but did not find the bullet because the metal bed frame the President was lying on confused the instrument. Bell gave a full account of his experiments in a paper read before the American Association for the Advancement of Science in August Meacham explained the basic principle of hydrofoils. 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 Casey Baldwin began hydrofoil experimentation in the summer ofas 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 —, 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, several designs were tried culminating in the HD-4, using Renault engines. InDr. Pinaud's experience in boat building enabled him to make useful design changes to the HD Bell's report to the navy permitted him to obtain two horsepower kW engines in July On September 9,the HD-4 set a world's marine speed record of Bell was a supporter of aerospace engineering research through the Aerial Experiment Association, officially formed at Baddeck, Nova Scotia, in Octoberat the suggestion of Mrs.

Mabel Bell and with her financial support. It was headed by Bell. 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-kilometer flight in the Western hemisphere and became a world-renowned airplane manufacturer; Frederick W.

One of the project's inventions, the aileron, is a standard component of aircraft today. The aileron was also invented independently by Robert Esnault-Pelterie. Bell experimented with box kites and wings constructed of multiple compound tetrahedral kites covered in silk. He was one of the commissioners of the poor law of which reformed poor relief in Scotland.

In addition to having medical qualifications, George was also interested in social reform. He published two pamphlets describing the wretched condition of children in the city's wynds:. InGeorge was appointed as an Examiner of Registers of births, deaths and marriages for the District of Edinburgh and Glasgow. He was also appointed as the Registrar General's Special Investigator, dealing with registrars whose work fell below the level that was expected.

He resigned from the post beforedue to ill health. His health had begun to decline in the s and as he now suffered repeated attacks of paralysis, he spent time visiting spa towns in England, benefiting from the mineral springs and warmer climate.