However, if we had been boys and girls in 1875 we should have known nothing about talking over a telephone, for that was the year when the public first heard that it was possible to send sounds of the human voice along a wire from one place to another.
There was a great fair in 1876. It was held in Philadelphia and was called the Centennial because it celebrated the one-hundredth birthday of our land. Persons came from foreign countries to attend the fair. Among 31 these visitors was a famous Brazilian gentleman. He was a man of great knowledge and was interested in inventions. His name was Don Pedro, and at that time he was Emperor of Brazil. Because he was the ruler of a country, the officers of the Centennial showed him every attention, and tried to make his visit alive with interest.
Late one afternoon they took him to the room where the judges were examining objects entered for exhibits. The judges were tired and wanted to go home. They did not care to listen to a young man standing before them. This young man was telling them that he had a new invention; it was a telephone, and would carry the sounds of the human voice by electricity. The judges did not believe this, and were about to dismiss the young man without even putting the receiver to their ears and seeing if he spoke the truth. Don Pedro stood in the doorway listening. He looked at the judges; he looked at the young man, and was disgusted and angered that an invention should not receive a fair trial. He stepped forward and as he did so looked squarely at the young man. To his surprise he recognized in him an acquaintance made while visiting in Boston.
At once Don Pedro examined the new instrument and then turning to the judges asked permission to make a trial of it himself. The young inventor went to the other end of the wire, which was in another room, and spoke into the transmitter some lines from a great poem. Don Pedro heard perfectly, and his praise changed the 32 mind of the judges. They decided to enter the invention as a “toy that might amuse the public.” This toy was the Bell telephone, the young inventor was Alexander Graham Bell, and he had the satisfaction of seeing the “toy” become the greatest attraction to visitors at the Centennial. This must have brought comfort to his heart, for Mr. Bell had been trying for some time to have people see what a convenience his invention would be.
He had first thought of the telephone while searching for some way to help deaf mutes to talk. His father and grandfather had both been voice teachers in Edinburgh and London, so when young Alexander came to America to seek his fortune it was natural he should teach methods of using the voice. But his pupils were unfortunate persons who could not talk because they were unable to hear the sounds of the voice. His father had worked out a plan for teaching the deaf, that the young man improved. It was based on observation of the position of the lips and other vocal organs, while uttering each sound. One by one the pupil learned the sounds by sight. Then he learned combinations of sounds and at last came to where he could “read the lips” and tell what a person was saying by looking at his moving lips.
So you see Alexander Graham Bell knew a great deal about the way we talk. He kept studying and working in his efforts to help his pupils, and his knowledge of the human ear gave him the first idea of his remarkable invention.
He thought if the small and thin ear drum could send thrills and vibrations through heavy bones, then it should be possible for a small piece of electrified iron to make an iron ear drum vibrate. In his imagination he saw two iron ear drums far apart but connected by an electrified wire. One end of the wire was to catch the vibrations of the sound, and the other was to reproduce them. He was sure he could make an instrument of this kind, for he said, “If I can make deaf mutes talk, I can make iron talk.”
One of his pupils helped him to do this by her words of sympathy and interest. She was a young girl named Mabel Hubbard. While still a baby she had lost her hearing, and consequently her speech, through an attack of scarlet fever. She was a bright, lovable girl, and had learned to talk through the teaching of Alexander Graham Bell. Her father was a man of great public spirit and the best friend Mr. Bell had in bringing the telephone before the public. Mabel Hubbard became the wife of her teacher, and encouraged him constantly to try and try again until his telephone would work.
Professor Bell made his first instrument in odd hours after he had finished teaching for the day. You may smile when you hear he used in making it an old cigar box, two hundred feet of wire, and two magnets taken from a toy fish pond. But this was because he was very poor and had scarcely any money to spend on materials for his experiments. But he kept on working, and after 34 the Centennial he was able to found a company and put his new invention on the market. The company had little money, so Mr. Bell lectured and explained his work. By this means he not only raised money, but established his name as the inventor of the telephone. There were a number of other students who had been thinking along the same lines as Mr. Bell, but he went farther than any one else and was the first to carry the sounds of the human voice by electricity.