Alexander Bell was born in Edinburgh,
Scotland, on March 3, 1847. The family home was at 16 South Charlotte Street,
and has a stone inscription marking it as Alexander Graham Bell's birthplace.
He had two brothers: Melville James Bell (1845–70) and Edward Charles Bell
(1848–67), both of whom would die of tuberculosis. His father was Professor
Alexander Melville Bell, a phonetician, and his mother was Eliza Grace (née
Symonds). Born as just "Alexander Bell", at age 10 he made a plea to
his father to have a middle name like his two brothers.[N 6] For his 11th
birthday, his father acquiesced and allowed him to adopt the name
"Graham", chosen out of respect for Alexander Graham, a Canadian
being treated by his father who had become a family friend. To close relatives
and friends he remained "Aleck".
As a child, young Bell displayed a natural
curiosity about his world, resulting in gathering botanical specimens as well
as experimenting even at an early age. His best friend was Ben Herdman, a
neighbor whose family operated a flour mill, the scene of many forays. Young
Bell asked what needed to be done at the mill. He was told wheat had to be
dehusked through a laborious process and at the age of 12, Bell built a
homemade device that combined rotating paddles with sets of nail brushes,
creating a simple dehusking machine that was put into operation and used steadily
for a number of years. In return, John Herdman gave both boys the run of a
small workshop in which to "invent".
Telephone: By 1874, Bell's initial work on
the harmonic telegraph had entered a formative stage, with progress made both
at his new Boston "laboratory" (a rented facility) and at his family
home in Canada a big success.[N 14] While working that summer in Brantford,
Bell experimented with a "phonautograph", a pen-like machine that
could draw shapes of sound waves on smoked glass by tracing their vibrations.
Bell thought it might be possible to generate undulating electrical currents
that corresponded to sound waves. Bell also thought that multiple metal reeds
tuned to different frequencies like a harp would be able to convert the
undulating currents back into sound. But he had no working model to demonstrate
the feasibility of these ideas.
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