To all of you who are without the luxury of a dial tone this morning:

Qwest Communications is working on the malfunctioning phone circuit. We don't 
know when the service will be reinstated; but in the meantime you can reflect 
on what life was like before the darn thing was invented.

Bell, Alexander Graham 

                b. , March 3, 1847, Edinburgh
                d. Aug. 2, 1922, Beinn Bhreagh, Cape Breton Island, Nova 
Scotia, Can.

                Scottish-born American audiologist best known as the inventor 
of
                the telephone (1876). For two generations his family had been
                recognized as leading authorities in elocution and speech 
correction,
                with Alexander Melville Bell's Standard Elocutionist passing 
through
                nearly 200 editions in English. Young Bell and his two 
brothers were
                trained to continue the family profession. His early 
achievements on
                behalf of the deaf and his invention of the telephone before 
his 30th
                birthday bear testimony to the thoroughness of his training.

                Alexander ("Graham" was not added until he was 11) was the
 second of the three sons of Alexander Melville Bell and Eliza Grace Symonds 
Bell. Apart
 from one year at a private school, two years at Edinburgh's Royal High 
School (from
 which he was graduated at 14), and attendance at a few lectures at Edinburgh
 University and at University College in London, Bell was largely family 
trained and
 self-taught. His first professional post was at Mr. Skinner's school in 
Elgin, County
 Moray, where he instructed the children in both music and elocution. In 1864 
he
 became a resident master in Elgin's Weston House Academy, where he conducted 
his
 first studies in sound. Appropriately, Bell had begun professionally as he 
would
 continue through life--as a teacher-scientist.

 In 1868 he became his father's assistant in London and assumed full charge 
while the
 senior Bell lectured in America. The shock of the sudden death of his older 
brother from
 tuberculosis, which had also struck down his younger brother, and the strain 
of his
 professional duties soon took their toll on young Bell. Concern for their 
only surviving
 son prompted the family's move to Canada in August 1870, where, after 
settling near
 Brantford, Ont., Bell's health rapidly improved.

 In 1871 Bell spent several weeks in Boston, lecturing and demonstrating the 
system of
 his father's Visible Speech, published in 1866, as a means of teaching 
speech to the
 deaf. Each phonetic symbol indicated a definite position of the organs of 
speech such
 as lips, tongue, and soft palate and could be used by the deaf to imitate 
the sounds of
 speech in the usual way. Young A. Graham Bell, as he now preferred to be 
known,
 showed, using his father's system, that speech could be taught to the deaf. 
His
 astounding results soon led to further invitations to lecture.

 Even while vacationing at his parents' home Bell continued his experiments 
with
 sound. In 1872 he opened his own school in Boston for training teachers of 
the deaf,
 edited his pamphlet Visible Speech Pioneer, and continued to study and 
tutor; in 1873
 he became professor of vocal physiology at Boston University.

 Never adept with his hands, Bell had the good fortune to discover and 
inspire Thomas
 Watson, a young repair mechanic and model maker, who assisted him 
enthusiastically
 in devising an apparatus for transmitting sound by electricity. Their long 
nightly
 sessions began to produce tangible results. The fathers of George Sanders 
and Mabel
 Hubbard, two deaf students whom he helped, were sufficiently impressed with 
the
 young teacher to assist him financially in his scientific pursuits. 
Nevertheless, during
 normal working hours Bell and Watson were still obliged to fulfill a busy 
schedule of
 professional demands. It is scarcely surprising that Bell's health again 
suffered. On
 April 6, 1875, he was granted the patent for his multiple telegraph; but 
after another
 exhausting six months of long nightly sessions in the workshop, while 
maintaining his
 daily professional schedule, Bell had to return to his parents' home in 
Canada to
 recuperate. In September 1875 he began to write the specifications for the 
telephone.
 On March 7, 1876, the United States Patent Office granted to Bell Patent 
Number
 174,465 covering "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 sounds."

 Within a year followed the commercial application and, a few months later, 
the first of
 hundreds of legal suits. Ironically, the telephone--until then all too often 
regarded as a
 joke and its creator-prophet as, at best, an eccentric--was the subject of 
the most
 involved patent litigation in history. The two most celebrated of the early 
actions were
 the Dowd and Drawbaugh cases wherein the fledgling Bell Telephone Company
 successfully challenged two subsidiaries of the giant Western Union Telegraph
 Company for patent infringement. The charges and accusations were especially 
painful
 to Bell's Scottish integrity, but the outcome of all the litigation, which 
persisted
 throughout the life of his patents, was that Bell's claims were upheld as 
the first to
 conceive and apply the undulatory current. In 1877 Bell married Mabel 
Hubbard, 10
 years his junior.

 The Bell story does not end with the invention of the telephone; indeed, in 
many ways
 it was a beginning. A resident of Washington, D.C., Bell continued his 
experiments in
 communication, which culminated in the invention of the 
photophone--transmission of
 sound on a beam of light; in medical research; and in techniques for 
teaching speech
 to the deaf.

 In 1880 France honoured Bell with the Volta Prize; and the 50,000 francs 
(roughly
 equivalent to U.S. $10,000) financed the Volta Laboratory, where, in 
association with
 Charles Sumner Tainter and his cousin, Chichester A. Bell, Bell invented the
 Graphophone. Employing an engraving stylus, controllable speeds, and wax 
cylinders
 and disks, the Graphophone presented a practical approach to sound 
recording. Bell's
 share of the royalties financed the Volta Bureau and the American 
Association to
 Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf (since 1956 the Alexander Graham 
Bell
 Association for the Deaf ). May 8, 1893, was one of Bell's happiest days; his
 13-year-old prodigy, Helen Keller, participated in the ground-breaking 
ceremonies for
 the new Volta Bureau building--today an international information centre 
relating to
 the oral education of the deaf.

 In 1885 Bell acquired land on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia. There, in
 surroundings reminiscent of his early years in Scotland, he established a 
summer
 home, Beinn Bhreagh, complete with research laboratories.

 In 1898 Bell succeeded his father-in-law as president of the National 
Geographic
 Society. Convinced that geography could be taught through pictures, he 
sought to
 promote an understanding of life in distant lands in an age when travel was 
limited to
 a privileged few. Again he found the proper hands, Gilbert Grosvenor, his 
future
 son-in-law, who transformed a modest pamphlet into a unique educational 
journal
 reaching millions throughout the world.

 As interest in the possibility of flight increased after the turn of the 
century, he
 experimented with giant man-carrying kites. Characteristically, Bell again 
found a
 group of four willing young enthusiasts to execute his theories. Always an 
inspiration,
 Mabel Hubbard Bell, wishing to maintain the stimulating influence of the 
group, soon
 founded the Aerial Experiment Association, the first research organization 
established
 and endowed by a woman. Deafness was no handicap to the wife of Professor 
Bell. At
 Beinn Bhreagh, Bell entered new subjects of investigation, such as sonar 
detection,
 solar distillation, the tetrahedron as a structural unit, and hydrofoil 
craft, one of which
 weighed more than 10,000 pounds and attained a speed record of 70 miles per 
hour
 in 1919.

 Apart from his lifelong association with the cause of the deaf, Bell never 
lingered on
 one project. His research interests centred on basic principles rather than 
on
 refinements. The most cursory examination of his many notebooks shows 
marginal
 memos and jottings, often totally unrelated to the subject at 
hand--reminders of
 questions and ideas he wanted to investigate. It was impossible for him to 
carry each
 of his creative ideas through to a practical end. Many of his conceptions 
are only today
 seeing fruition; indeed, some undoubtedly have yet to be developed. The 
range of his
 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, 4 for the photophone, 1 for the phonograph, 5 for 
aerial
 vehicles, 4 for hydroairplanes, and 2 for a selenium cell.

 Until a few days before his death Bell continued to make entries in his 
journal. During
 his last dictation he was reassured with "Don't hurry," to which he replied, 
"I have to."