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Alexander Graham Bell and Mr. Watson his assistant

 

In 2007 we visited the Alexander Graham Bell Museum in Baddeck, Nova Scotia. It is a historical site in Canada and one of the finest museums I have seen. The Bell family donated all the items that are artfully displayed in the museum. There is a 15 minute video presentation that depicts the accomplishments of this great man.




The painting shown above illustrates Alexander Graham Bell working with his assistant, Mr. Watson on the invention of the telephone. Bell had the idea for a speaking device for a long time, but it was just by accident they found a way to realize that dream. They developed the idea and Bell filed the patent paperwork on February 14, 1876, just hours before Elisha Gray was ready to file his patent for the telephone. Some people say Elisha Gray is really the inventor of the telephone because his patent was for a better working model than the one Bell had filed.

The first words heard over the telephone were, "Mr. Watson - Come here- I want to see you." Then they switched places and Mr. Watson said, "Mr. Bell, do you understand what I say?"

His fiancee, Mabel insisted he show his new telephone at the Centennial celebration in Philadelphia. When Dom Pedro the emperor of Brazil heard Bell reciting Shakespeare over the transmitter, he was astounded. Such a crowd gathered around the exhibition the police were summoned. Later President Rutherford B. Hayes was quoted as saying, "That's an amazing invention, but who would ever want to use one of them?" Later on he had one installed and called it "the greatest invention since the creation". His first call was to Alexander Graham Bell.

They approached Western Union about using their telegraph wires, but the officials there thought it was just a toy and turned them down. It was a bad decision they would regret. They later tried to compensate for it by partnering with Elisha Gray and Thomas Edison, and they began installing another telephone design across the country. Bell sued, and over the next twenty years was able to meet all challenges to his patent.

Bell and Watson took the show on the road, and people became interested in the telephone. The Bell Telephone Company was formed, and for a wedding gift Alexander would give his bride thirty percent share in the company. It would later become AT&T. Nineteen-year-old Mabel would be a wealthy woman.

About forty years later, by 1915 telephone lines would cross the entire North American continent.

Thomas Watson, Bell's assistant, was born in Salem, Massachusetts. When he was eighteen he started working at a machine shop. He was an excellent machinist and was just the man Bell needed when he started looking for an assistant. He was twenty years old at the time. After helping Bell invent the harmonic telegraph and the telephone he went on to other ventures. He had the largest shipbuilding business in America and became a wealthy man. He never stopped learning. He studied geology and paleontology, and later in life he even became an actor and wrote plays. He was quite a versatile man.


Work a Jigsaw Puzzle


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Biography of Alexander Graham Bell

Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site of Canada

Garden of Praise has been granted permission to present these images for your benefit.
Please do not copy or use them without permission .

You can contact the Parks Canada Agency for permissions.

The reference book for the facts on these pages was the book below by Mary Kay Carson.




Conquests of Invention online book by Mary R. Parkman, 1921
Chapter about Alexander Graham Bell begins on page 379

Beginnings of the Telephone online book chapter by Alexander Graham Bell, 1906





Biographies in this Series

Presidents of the
United States
George Washington
1st U.S. President

John Adams
2nd U.S. President


Thomas Jefferson
3rd U.S.President


James Monroe
5th U.S. President


Andrew Jackson
7th U.S. President

Abraham Lincoln
16th U.S.President

Franklin D. Roosevelt
32nd U.S. President

John F. Kennedy
35th U.S. President


James Madison
4th U.S. President

Theodore Roosevelt
26th U.S. President

American Patriots Benjamin Franklin
patriot and statesman

Francis Scott Key
Star Spangled Banner

Deborah Sampson
woman soldier
in the Revolutionary War

World Leaders Constantine
Roman Emperor

Alexander the Great
conqueror
Winston Churchill
British Prime Minister

Inventors Alexander Graham Bell
telephone

Johann Gutenberg
printing press

Cyrus McCormick
mechanical reaper

The Wright Brothers
first airplane

Henry Ford
Automaker

Thomas A. Edison
electric light bulb

Sequoyah
Cherokee alphabet

Nikola Tesla
700 patents

.
Explorers Christopher Columbus
explorer

Meriwether Lewis
explorer

Robert Peary
Arctic explorer

John Muir
Naturalist

Matthew Henson
Arctic Explorer

Sir Edmund Hillary
Mr.Everest

Kit Carson
Indian agent

"Johnny Appleseed"
orchardist

.
Women who made
a difference
Clara Barton
founder of the Red Cross

Helen Keller
overcame blindness & deafness

Florence Nightingale
founder of
nursing profession

Joan of Arc
religious and military leader

Amelia Earhart
Aviator

Annie Oakley
sharpshooter

Susan B. Anthony
Suffragette

Elizabeth Keckly
Seamstress

Harriet Tubman
deliverer of slaves

Anne Frank
Diarist

Eleanor Roosevelt
Humanitarian

.
Scientists George Washington Carver
botanist and educator

Sir Isaac Newton
explained gravity and
properties of light

Marie Curie
scientist, physicist

Louis Pasteur
Biologist

Albert Einstein
physicist, genius

Galileo
Astronomer, physicist

Educators Noah Webster
writer of dictionary

Booker T. Washington
leader and educator

Aristotle
Greek philosopher

Physicians Hippocrates
father of medicine

Walter Reed
discovered cause of yellow fever

Albert Schweitzer
humanitarian

Religious Leaders Increase Mather
Salem witch trials

.
Athletes Lou Gehrig
baseball player

Wilma Rudolph
Olympic gold medal winner

Tiger Woods
golfer

Civil Rights
Leaders
Martin Luther King
civil rights leader

Rosa Parks
bus desegregation

Sojourner Truth
Former slave

Frederick Douglass
Abolitionist

Mary Ann Shadd Cary
Civil rights leader

James Forten
Inventor, abolitionist

Composers Beethoven
composer

Artists John James Audubon
artist and naturalist

Gutzon Borglum
sculptor, Mount Rushmore

Ansel Adams
photographer







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