BIOGRAPHY

Alexander Graham Bell was a Scottish-born American inventor and scientist. Bell was born on March 3, 1847, in Edinburgh, Scotland. In 1870 Bell and his family emigrated to Canada. A year later Bell moved to the United States, where he taught speech to deaf students. While in the U.S. Bell invented and/or improved a number of electrical technologies. He is best remembered as the inventor of the telephone (1876).

What did Alexander Graham Bell discover?

Although Alexander Graham Bell is best remembered as the inventor of the telephone, he also invented other devices. Bell developed several sonic technologies, including the photophone (1880) and the graphophone (1886). He also developed medical technology. After the shooting of the US President. James A. Garfield in July 1881, Bell teamed up with professor Simon Newcomb of the US Nautical Almanac Office to develop an electric bullet probe. The pair demonstrated the probe in the fall of 1881. Bell then turned his attention to aerial technology. He founded the Aerial Experiment Association in 1907.

The first telephones had two parts: a transmitter and a receiver. The transmitter consists of three parts — a drum-like device (a cylinder with closed ends), a needle, and a battery. The closed end of the drum-like device is attached to the needle. The needle is connected by a cable to the battery, and the battery is connected by a cable to the receiver. When Bell spoke into the open end of the drum-like device, the sound made the paper and needles vibrate. The vibrations are then converted into an electric current which flows along the cable to the receiver.