176 years ago today, an inventor was born. Even though we all know he's awesome, he can still be a great guy that's grossly underrated.
He is just --
Alexander Graham Bell.
In everyone's impression, is he the only impression that he is the "father of the telephone"?
A cold knowledge, the standard unit of volume is "bell", but the volume of "1 bell" is too large, and we often use "decibels". The relationship between "decibel" and "bell" is like the relationship between "decimeter" and "meter".
This is just one small example of Bell's underestimation.
Let's look at Bell's most brief experience: he was born in Scotland, studied in England as a young man, but did not finish school, then moved his family to Canada, later developed a career in the United States and became an American citizen, and returned to Canada in his later years.
But in every country he lived in, Bell was considered one of the greatest citizens his country had ever seen.
His country of birth, Scotland: named "Scotland's Ten Greatest Scientists";
England, which has only lived for a few years in his youth: 57th among the "100 greatest Englishmen of all time";
Canada who has lived the longest but has not been naturalized: Named one of the "10 greatest Canadians";
The United States, a naturalized and business-oriented country, is ranked 57th among the "100 greatest Americans of all time."
It is not countries that coy to stick the gold of the "father of the telephone".
Although the telephone was his most famous and wealthiest invention, it was only a minor of his many contributions to the benefit of mankind in his lifetime.
Or rather, the phone was just a byproduct of his deaf-mute career.
Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1847. His grandfather and father were both engaged in oratory, teaching people to speak, so Bell also practiced the correct speech from a young age, and he was particularly persuasive when speaking.
Before the age of 12, Bell was a relatively normal Scottish ordinary little Zhengtai, who liked to tinker with some small improvements, such as helping his friends' granaries transform the shelling machine, smart, but did not show much talent.
Bell's mother suffered from childhood and had a hearing loss for 30 years from childhood to mother of three.
Growing up, he found that he needed to speak louder and louder at home for his mother to hear.
In order to be able to talk to my mother, the whole family is working hard.
Because people with weak hearing cannot hear their own pronunciation, the words spoken can be very strange. Bell's father invented a "Visible Speech" that instructed patients to use their mouth and tongue correctly and make standard sounds through symbols.
Little Bell also worked hard, in order to make his mother hear, he feverishly learned acoustic knowledge, lighting up a unique skill tree - he pressed his mouth to his mother's forehead, spoke to his mother in as low a voice as possible, and his mother's cranial cavity would resonate, and heard the love and coquettishness poured out by his beloved second son.
It wasn't until he was 12 years old that he realized that his mother couldn't hear anything at all.
He invented a Morse code-like sign language system for him and his mother, and when the family chatted, Bell would tap his finger to tell his mother about the conversation, so that her mother could chat with the family "normally".
Throughout his life, Bell was a staunch opponent of sign language, he didn't want deaf people to look like aliens in the crowd with strange gestures, he wanted deaf people to communicate with others "normally."
So, he invented hearing aids, has always been obsessed with sound technology, and also researched the technology of efficient lip reading.
When he was 15 years old, his father, a speech trainer, took him and his brother to see a brilliant new invention - the talking robot.
The principle of this early robot was to transmit the whispered voice of a real person hiding in a cabinet to the mouth of the "robot", which seemed like a "robot" could speak.
The Bell brothers, who had already clicked on the invention tree, soon built a "talking machine" at home on their own.
Bell's father set bonuses for the two brothers, and if they could perfect the machine so that it could really "talk," they would take the bonus.
For the next three years, Bell spent his spare time optimizing the machine. By the time he was 19, he had written a paper on what he had learned over the years. His father sent the paper to his good friend Alexander Ellis. Linguist Ellis poured cold water on young Bell: The principle you invented is very similar to that of the German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz. To prove his point, Ellis also sent Bell a copy of Helmholtz's treatise.
Bell finished reading the book with the help of a German dictionary, and he was dismayed to discover that Helmholtz had been able to transmit the cause of human emanation through electricity. But Bell was not convinced, "In the absence of much knowledge of the subject, it seems to me that if vowels can be produced by electricity, then so can consonants, so electricity can speak."
In fact, Bell misunderstood, Helmholtz did not actually use electricity to transmit sound.
Many years later, Bell recalled: I think Helmholtz did it... This is a valuable mistake... If I could read German at the time, I would probably never have started my experiment!
At the age of 18, Bell's father was offered the opportunity to teach speaking at the University of London, so the family moved to London.
In addition to lecturing, the father and his three sons worked part-time at the School for the Deaf in London to support their families, helping the weak learn to speak.
But London at that time was probably the most uninhabitable city in the world. After the Industrial Revolution, coal became the main energy source, homes, factories, offices burned coal, the air over London was filled with coal smoke, "foggy London" is famous all over the world.
According to statistics, after 1870, London was covered in smoke for more than 50 days a year. Each time the smoke passes, it brings an epidemic of tuberculosis.
It was that year that Bell's brother and brother both died of tuberculosis, and he also contracted it.
Bell's parents saw that only Bell was left with their three sons, and decided to move the family to the "New World" with fresh air.
In 1870, Bell's family moved to Ontario, Canada, with his brother's widow.
The air is fresh and the land is cheap. They bought a 4.2-hectare farm and built their "dream land" there.
For Bell, the fresh air of Canada brought him back to life from the brink of death, and in the wide land, he set up his own laboratory to continue to study how to use electricity to transmit consonants beyond Helmholtz, who can only transmit vowels.
After settling down, the Bells began educating the deaf in North America.
In 1872, Boston University invited Bell's father to teach oratory classes and "visible languages." But the old father preferred to stay in the "dream land" with the fresh air to accompany his wife who had lost her hearing, so he sent his son Bell.
Bell taught at Boston University while opening his own school for the deaf and mute, and continued his experiments at night, exhausted to death, but extremely energetic.
This state of work continued for 3 years until 1875, when Bell made a major breakthrough and invented the telephone.
The process of inventing the telephone may already be familiar to the little spinach, and Uncle Bo will talk about two small details.
One was the first telephone call in human history.
When Bell and his assistant Watson made a major breakthrough, they began to work day and night on the final production. At that time, in order to obtain the required current in the laboratory, the metal was often immersed in sulfuric acid. Once in an experiment, Bell accidentally splashed sulfuric acid on his leg, and he shouted into the instrument in front of him in pain: "Mr. Watson, I need you, please come to me!" , Watson, who was in another room, heard Bell's call for help, rushed over, completely ignored Bell, who was busy treating the wound, and picked him up - that call for help was the first phone call in human history.
The other is the popularity of the telephone.
There were several inventors around the world who were doing something similar to Bell's. Therefore, there was some controversy later about whether Bell was really the first to make a telephone.
On Valentine's Day, February 14, 1876, Alexander Bell and Elisha Gray, without each other's knowledge, each filed an application with the Patent Office, but Bell filed it early in the morning and Gray a few hours late. For a few hours, the patent for the telephone went to Bell.
After obtaining the patent, Bell and Watson participated in the International Exposition in Philadelphia, USA. At the meeting, not many people noticed this toy-like device. But Pedro II, the last emperor of the Brazilian Empire who went to the conference at that time, noticed Bell's invention and couldn't put it down. The phone just got a lot of attention.
In Chicago in 1892, Bell experimented with the first long-distance telephone
But at the time, Bell's interest was still in education for the deaf and mute, and he had no intention of running the new invention himself. He proposed to Western Union to sell them the patent for $100,000 (about $2.5 million today). But Western Union felt that the new toy had no future and refused.
Bell had to run his own business, and in 1877 he founded the Bell Telephone Company.
Pedro II immediately bought shares in the Bell Telephone Company and set up a telephone line between his palace and his holiday villa.
By 1878, Western Union had an internal assessment that buying the Bell Telephone Company for $25 million (about $700 million today) would be a good deal. Bell was no longer for sale by then.
But Bell had no intention of continuing the company, and he resigned from the company that bore his name in 1878.
He returned to his school and continued to engage in language education for people with disabilities, benefiting countless students with disabilities.
Among his students, two are more special.
One was Mabel Gardiner Hubbard. Her father, a former lawyer, started a school for the deaf when Mabel contracted scarlet fever when she was 5 years old and lost her hearing. Everyone is a peer, who knows best who has the ability, and he hired Bell to be his daughter's teacher.
Remember what Uncle Bo said earlier, one of Bell's principles is not to regard deaf and mute people as outliers, thinking that they are ordinary people who encounter some difficulties, and his mission is to help them overcome these difficulties.
That's what Bell thinks and does. Under his education, Mabel had no barriers to communicating with ordinary people. Bell also didn't see anything wrong with Mabel's hearing loss.
So, they were in love.
But Bell didn't have the courage to propose at the time. Because he felt that his income was not high, he still ran between the school and the laboratory, and he could not afford to give Mabel a stable life.
And Mabel is a big supporter of her boyfriend's research. Remember the fair that put the phone in the spotlight? Bell was too troublesome to go to the meeting, but it was Mabel who signed him up, bought a train ticket, and then caught his boyfriend on the train.
On July 9, 1877, when Bell founded the telephone company, the company had 5,000 shares, and Mabel persuaded his father (with little effort) to buy 1,387 shares. It proved to be an extremely wise investment, and Bell Telephone's commercial success led to a steady appreciation of wealth.
Two days after the company was founded, Bell married Mabel.
Bell gave Mabel 1,487 of his 1,497 shares in the company as a wedding gift—Bell really didn't take the money seriously. After getting married, Bell took Mabel around the world.
After returning from traveling around the world, Bell, who was already financially free, continued to devote himself to deaf education and invention.
Another special student, who is probably no less famous today than Bell.
Helen Keller, author of If You Give Me Three Days of Light, is a writer who is blind and deaf.
Helen was only 6 years old when she became Bell's student.
Probably many spinach know that Helen had a caring and patient teacher who taught her to study and write, and cultivated her into a world-famous writer.
But when the textbook mentions Helen, it always rushes through her early childhood, as if she had just lost her sight and hearing when she turned her head and met her mentor, Anne Sullivan, and since then she has overcome her unfortunate fate and become the embodiment of light and hope.
However, the reality is far more bumpy, and the world kisses her mercilessly. Helen grew up chaotically in darkness and silence, and her small heart was filled with anger and fear of the world.
Helen, like Bell's wife, Mabel, contracted scarlet fever and was disabled in childhood.
At this time, Helen was just beginning to learn to say a few simple words.
Many people are afraid of the darkness, afraid of excessive silence, and Helen is thrown into the endless night before she is self-conscious.
Will her life be desperate before it even begins? What is there to look forward to in such a life?
She has endless fears and suffering, but there is no way to express them.
She is not a good child, on the contrary, loneliness and loss make her a famous wild child.
In the next second, she may be thunderous
She behaves extremely rudely and has a withdrawn and irritable personality. She never eats with utensils, only reaches out to grab food and stuffs it into her mouth, and can't sit still when eating, often lying on the table to smell other people's food, and take it directly when she smells what she likes. Any of her requests needs to be met, or she will roll on the floor, kick the babysitter, or drop things everywhere.
In order to allow their daughter to live a normal life, Helen's parents found Bell, who invented the telephone, and returned to deaf education.
Helen vividly remembers the first time she met Bell.
Belle warmly and passionately held Helen, who had just turned 6, on her lap, and took her small hand and placed a pocket watch in the palm of her hand. Bell took her hand and motioned for her to feel the tremor of the mechanical parts inside.
The slight vibration under the cold shell of the pocket watch was the first time she could perceive the real world outside after she was deaf.
Bell, a voice expert and expert in deaf education, knows that the power of sound can be perceived.
For the next 36 years, until Bell's death, he was Helen's most trusted teacher.
Bell recommended 20-year-old Anne Sullivan as Helen's tutor from the students he had trained, and has been guiding Helen's "normalized" education.
Young Sullivan
It was on the typewriter that Bell gave her that Helen tried to write her first autobiography, The Story of My Life.
After its publication in 1903, the book became a national sensation and was hailed as "an unparalleled masterpiece in the history of world literature".
In the foreword, Helen resigned to Bell:
Dedicated to Alexander Graham Bell, who taught the deaf to speak and made human voices travel from across the Atlantic to the Rocky Mountains.
Helen and Bell for a group photo
This person, whom Helen had never seen before, had never heard a voice, was her lifelong father, mentor, best friend, and idol.
And Bell did such a good deed, without a trace of selfishness, all sincerity. He would not have imagined that his help would bring the world such an outstanding writer, and that Helen's story would spread around the world and inspire thousands of readers.
Bell (right) takes Helen (center) on a trip
After graduating, Helen followed in Bell's footsteps and dedicated her life to the welfare and education of the disabled.
Two great people, a warm and precious friendship, Uncle Bo thought, when the new year is coming, it should be remembered even more.
Acts of kindness lead to acts of kindness, which in turn inspires more acts of kindness – this is a beautiful transmission.
Back to the inventor Bell.
By the time he died of diabetes in 1922, Bell had obtained 18 exclusive patents and 14 cooperative patents in his lifetime, including: fax, improved gramophone, flying machine, seaplane, biotechnology, hearing aid, iceberg locator, air conditioning, metal detector, clean energy...
Many people may not realize that Bell has only worked for Bell Telephone Company for one year.
But Bell Telephone went on to grow into a formidable business behemoth.
In 1899, 22 years after the company's founding, a subsidiary AT&T reversed the acquisition of assets that had been renamed Bell System, becoming the actual owner of Bell Systems.
In 1925, after Bell's death, AT&T founded Bell Labs, named after Bell and guided by Bell's spirit, specializing in scientific research.
By 1984, Bell Labs had 250 million patents, an average of more than 3 patents per day, making it the institution that has achieved the most research and development results in the human world to date. A total of 13 people in Bell Labs shared 8 Nobel Prizes (7 physics prizes, 1 chemistry prize).
By 1984, Bell Systems, with a market value of $150 billion (equivalent to $400 billion today), monopolized the telecommunications business in the United States, Canada, and Japan, and was finally legally spun off into eight companies after 74 years of efforts by the antitrust department starting in 1910.
For more than 100 years, inspired by Bell's spirit, Bell Systems and Bell Labs have contributed to humanity:
First fax machine
Touchtone phone
Digital Modem (MODEM)
Cellular (cell phone)
communications satellite
High-speed wireless data system
solar cell
Charge-coupled devices
Digital signal processor
optical fiber
HDTV
UNIX operating system
C and C++ languages
……
You say, is Bell a grossly underrated man?