History with the Cap'n- Ring my Bell

Historians love studying the unique individual. The unusual and complex person who stands out from the crowd and lives an exceptional life certainly helps keep the history books interesting. In fact some have argued that unique individuals are the only thing worth studying in history. Unfortunately the more outstanding the individual the more likely he or she is to be a little to complex to easily categorize. One person who nicely exemplifies this was born 162 years ago tomorrow on March 3rd, 1847 CE, Alexander Graham Bell. Undoubtedly Bell had an incredible mind and he certainly did some amazing work in his life. Unfortunately, most people know Bell as the inventor of the telephone, an accomplishment for which he almost certainly received too much credit. Like his friend Thomas Edison, history should probably celebrate Alexander Graham Bell as a multifaceted genius who significantly helped advance the fields of technology in several ways. Yet, again like Edison, the popular imagination remembers him only as an inventor of a modern convenience. So, once again, the Cap'n will help out all you history buffs, by debunking some myths and revealing some truths about Alexander Graham Bell.

• First, let's address the whole issue of who invented the telephone and when. According to a resolution of the U.S. Congress, the U.S. House of Representatives acknowledges Antonio Meucci for his work in the invention of the telephone. Meucci has a strong claim to fathering the telephone. He was a poor, struggling Italian immigrant who could have legally prevented Bell from patenting his telephone if he only had enough money to cover the proper fees. Meucci sued Bell over who had the proper legal claim to the invention. Attempting to prove his complaint Meucci sent his working models to the labs at Western Union. In what can only be described as the opposite of serendipity for Meucci, he sent his models to the very same lab where Bell worked. The models would later mysteriously disappear, sort of in the same way that the grass would mysteriously stay green. Critics of Meucci have derided his claims. They argue his design would not function if tested and appeared to defy the basic physics involved with telecommunications. Even if you dismiss Meucci, Elisha Gray can challenge Bell as father of the telephone. Gray had designed an apparatus which appears to have been technologically superior to Bell's. He went to the patent office to legally stake his claim the field of telephone technology, but would actually miss out because Bell had patented his telephone mere hours before. Gray sued Bell, who probably spent as much time litigating as he did inventing. The courts would name Bell the inventor of the telephone, but who wants to win like that.
  

• Truthfully, the question of who invented the telephone is at best a nebulous issue with only debatable answers. Many people had worked on devices similar to Bell's invention. Bell simply had the luck to land the legal rights, the dedication to make the phone a practical tool, and the business sense to envision the telephone as a commercially viable item. In fact Bell was so confident in the telephone's chances of success, he boldly predicted that in the future there would be at least one telephone in every city in the U.S.

• Bell had a life long interest in communication, which probably led him to experiment with telephone technology in the first place. He devised a very rudimentary telecommunications system as a child. He trained his dog to say the words (or at least a close approximation) "How are you, grandmama?" so he could greet his grandmother from a different room in the house. I haven't found any record of how his grandmother reacted to having a dog bound up and talk to her, but I just hope both she and the dog survived the first incident.
  

• As I mentioned above, Bell was what you could call a polymath. He had a brilliant mind and he took an interest in a great variety of intellectual and scientific pursuits. He had an interest in aeronautics, so he designed a kite that could carry a person. He wanted to tinker with mechanical propulsion and he helped invent a hydrofoil that would set the world-water speed record at the time. He valued geography education and as president of the National Geographic Society, he encouraged the creation of the National Geographic Magazine. His constant improvements to the telephone established the basis for the phonograph and communicating with light rays. As an amateur geneticist, he tried to breed an especially prolific line of sheep and succeeding in producing sheep with superfluous nipples (okay, so that one didn't work out so well). He even created an early metal detector that completely failed to save the life of . . . actually, I'll save that item for a later entry.
  

• Of all the things Bell did with his life beyond the phone, he took the most pride in the work he did for the deaf. Both his wife and mother were deaf. Even before he patented his telephone he opened a school for the deaf. Eventually he founded a society for the deaf that still exists today and now bears his name. He worked closely with Helen Keller and she even dedicated her autobiography to him. Bell dedicated a large part of his life to an segment of his population that at the time had no use for his most famous creation. Now almost no one hears about this side of him. Maybe that sad irony is just the karmic scales balancing out the good fortune he had in his work on the telephone.
  

• The fame and accolades lauded onto Bell for supposedly inventing the telephone put him in a special class of hero. Though few people would ever learn of his other work he stands alone as the only person to be named one of the 100 greatest Britons, Americans, and Canadians of all time. Few other people rose to such a level of success that multiple nations would compete for the right to claim them as natives.