Canada
004
Baddeck,
Nova Scotia, Canada
Alexander Graham Bell’s Summer Home
Following in the footsteps of Alexander Graham Bell isn’t easy: he moved frequently and worked on a wide variety of inventions. He was born in 1847 at 16 South Charlotte Street in Edinburgh, Scotland, and was home-schooled there until high school. He moved to England as a young man and helped his father teach deaf people to speak. He emigrated to Canada with his family in 1870. He spent years in the United States, mostly in the Boston area, and became a U.S. citizen; his parents remained in Canada in Brantford, Ontario, and Bell visited frequently and had a workshop there.
But the best place to understand Bell’s life and work is in Nova Scotia, where Bell lived from 1889 until his death in 1922.
Bell is known, of course, for the invention of the telephone, but he started out trying to invent a method of sending multiple telegraph signals down the same wire. He worked on his harmonic telegraph, which would send multiple signals—each having its own pitch—down the same wire at the same time, while continuing to teach deaf students in Boston.
In secret, because he feared that people would steal his ideas, Bell and his assistant, Thomas Watson, were also working on sending speech by wire. On March 10, 1876, Bell drew a diagram of a working telephone in his notebook (Figure 4-1).
Part of the text reads:
Mr Watson was stationed in one room with the Receiving Instrument. He pressed one ear closely against S and closed his other ear with his hand. The Transmitting Instrument was placed in another room and the doors of both rooms were closed.
I then shouted into M the following sentence: “Mr Watson—Come here—I want to see you.” To my delight he came and declared that he had heard and understood what I said.
Figure 4-1. Bell’s telephone: March 10, 1876
They changed places, with Watson shouting into the microphone. Bell’s notes continue:
and finally the sentence “Mr Bell. Do you understand what I say? DO-YOU-UNDERSTAND-WHAT-I-SAY” came quite clearly and intelligibly.
Bell quickly patented the telephone and established the Bell Telephone Company. With money from his invention, Bell was able to continue researching other ideas. He married and built a large house on Cape Breton Island. The house, near the village of Baddeck, is still owned by the Bell family.
The nearby Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site features a museum of Bell’s life and work that showcases his teaching of the deaf, his invention of the telephone, and, among his many interests, his fascination with hydrofoils. In 1919, his HD-4 hydrofoil achieved the world-record speed of almost 71 mph rising above the water. A reconstruction of the HD-4 is on display at the museum.
Bell also helped run the Aerial Experiment Association from Baddeck. The AEA was founded in 1907 with the help of engine expert Glenn Curtiss (see Chapter 112 for information on the Glenn H. Curtiss Museum). One of the AEA’s aircraft, the June Bug, won the first aeronautic prize for a 1-kilometer flight.
Practical Information
Parks Canada has information about visiting the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site at http://www.pc.gc.ca/lhn-nhs/ns/grahambell/index_e.asp.
