Give me a Bell, anytime
AHEAD OF THE CENTENARY OF PHONE PIONEER ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL’S DEATH. MARION McMULLEN LOOKS AT HOW HE RANG THE CHANGES
PHONES across America and Canada fell silent 100 years ago in tribute to the passing of Alexander Graham Bell.
The inventor of the telephone died at his home in Nova Scotia in Canada on August 2, 1922, at the age of 75 and 60,000 telephone operators stood to attention as 13 million telephones went quiet for a minute as his funeral took place.
It was a fitting tribute to the Scottish-born pioneer who revolutionised the world’s communication systems.
His first telephone call was to his assistant, electrical engineer Thomas Watson. Bell simply said: “Mr Watson, come here, I need you.”
It was a ground-breaking moment, but not everyone was convinced the new-fangled invention would catch on. Western Union already ran an extensive telegraph operation and turned down Bell’s telephone, saying: “This telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication.”
Bell was not disheartened and instead made his own fortune by setting up the Bell Telephone Company. A few days later he married Mabel Hubbard and gave her all but 10 of his 1,507 shares in the business as a wedding present.
He kept a photograph of Mabel on the desk in his study. An inscription on the back read “the girl for whom the telephone was invented”.
Bell filed the patent for his telephone on Valentine’s Day, 1876 – just hours before rival inventor Elisha Gray announced he was working on an invention along the same lines.
It was the start of hundreds of legal challenges Bell had to face during his lifetime. Five of them ended up going all the way to the US Supreme Court. None of them were successful.
Bell was a prolific inventor and got by on only three hours sleep a night. He said: “I have periods of restlessness when my brain is crowded with ideas tingling to my fingertips when I am excited and cannot stop for anybody.”
The potential of the telephone was quickly spotted and phones started to spread from country to country. The 1920s saw the “candle stick” phone while in the 1930s the black Bakelite telephone became known as the “cheese dish” phone because the sloping front resembled a dish for cheese. They remained in use until the 1960s and were exported to Australia, India, New Zealand, South Africa and many other countries.
The design was also adopted in Europe and the United States. Artist Salvador Dali was even inspired to create his famous lobster phone.
Queen Elizabeth made the first trunk call on the Bristol Telephone exchange in 1958 to the Lord Provost of Edinburgh and launched the Canadian Trans-Atlantic Telephone cable system in 1961 by making the first call from London to Ottawa to speak to Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker.
Push button phones became fashionable in the 1960s, while the prototype for the first portable cellular phone came out in 1973.
The first official UK mobile phone call was made by comedian Ernie Wise on New Year’s Day 1985 outside the Dicken’s Pub in St Catherine’s dock to Vodafone’s HQ.
But an earlier call had been made that same day to Sir Ernest Harrison, chairman of what was then Racal Vodafone, by his son Michael, who said: “Hi, it’s Mike. Happy New Year. This is the first-ever call on a UK mobile network.”
The first mobiles had a charge which lasted just 30 minutes and they weighed around 12lbs. Early models could cost more than £1,000.
James Bond actor Desmond Llewelyn, who played gadget-loving Q in the 007 movies, unveiled the world’s smallest mobile phone from Ericsson at the opening of Scottish Telecoms new shop in Edinburgh in 1998.
However, some innovations failed to catch on like the “Laryngophone”, a noise-excluding telephone, which was demonstrated at a shipping exhibition in Olympia,
London.
It only transmitted vibrations from the vocal chords when the microphone was placed against the throat or cheek.
The centenary of the death of Alexander Graham Bell was celebrated this year with a new £2 coin designed by the Royal Mint in celebration of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.
The coin, designed by Henry Gray, shows the dial of a pushbutton phone on the reverse along with the words “Pioneer of the telephone” inscribed on the buttons.
Bell also came up with the idea for a wireless phone that he called a “photophone” and predicted: “The day will come when the man at the telephone will be able to see the distant person to whom he is speaking”. However, the man who changed the way that the whole world communicates refused to have a telephone in his own study.
He said he found it too distracting when he was working.