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
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