专八人文知识需知的美国名人--电话之父贝尔

专八人文知识需知的美国名人--电话之父贝尔

　　英语专八人文知识涵盖的知识面较广，考生们需要平时多积累小常识，这样在专八考试中才能游刃有余，新东方在线整理了专八人文知识需知的美国名人系列知识点供考生们参考。

　　亚历山大.格雷厄姆.贝尔

　　亚历山大•贝尔是一位美国发明家和企业家。他获得了世界上第一台可用的电话机的专利权(发明者为意大利人安东尼奥•梅乌奇)，创建了贝尔电话公司(AT&T公司的前身)。其被世界誉为“电话之父”。

　　Alexander Graham Bell (March 3, 1847 – August 2, 1922) wasan eminent scientist, inventor, engineer and innovator who iscredited with inventing the first practical telephone.

　　Bell's father, grandfather, and brother had all been associated with work on elocution and speech,and both his mother and wife were deaf, profoundly influencing Bell's life's work.[1] His research onhearing and speech further led him to experiment with hearing devices which eventuallyculminated in Bell being awarded the first U.S. patent for the telephone in 1876.In retrospect, Bellconsidered his most famous invention an intrusion on his real work as a scientist and refused tohave a telephone in his study.

　　Many other inventions marked Bell's later life, including groundbreaking work in opticaltelecommunications, hydrofoils and aeronautics. In 1888, Alexander Graham Bell became one ofthe founding members of the National Geographic Society.

　　First invention

　　As a child, young Alexander Graham Bell displayed a natural curiosity about his world, resulting ingathering botanical specimens as well as experimenting even at an early age. His best friend wasBen Herdman, a neighbour whose family operated a flour mill, the scene of many forays. YoungAleck asked what needed to be done at the mill. He was told wheat had to be dehusked through alaborious process and at the age of 12, Bell built a homemade device that combined rotatingpaddles with sets of nail brushes, creating a simple dehusking machine that was put into operationand used steadily for a number of years. In return, John Herdman gave both boys the run of asmall workshop within which to "invent"

　　From his early years, Bell showed a sensitive nature and a talent for art, poetry and music that wasencouraged by his mother. With no formal training, he mastered the piano and became thefamily's pianist. Despite being normally quiet and introspective, he reveled in mimicry and "voicetricks" akin to ventriloquism that continually entertained family guests during their occasional visits.Bell was also deeply affected by his mother's gradual deafness, (she began to lose her hearingwhen he was 12) and learned a manual finger language so he could sit at her side and tap outsilently the conversations swirling around the family parlour. He also developed a technique ofspeaking in clear, modulated tones directly into his mother's forehead wherein she would hear himwith reasonable clarity. Bell's preoccupation with his mother's deafness led him to study acoustics.

　　His family was long associated with the teaching of elocution: his grandfather, Alexander Bell, inLondon, his uncle in Dublin, and his father, in Edinburgh, were all elocutionists. His fatherpublished a variety of works on the subject, several of which are still well known, especially his TheStandard Elocutionist (1860), which appeared in Edinburgh in 1868. The Standard Elocutionistappeared in 168 British editions and sold over a quarter of a million copies in the United Statesalone. In this treatise, his father explains his methods of how to instruct deaf-mutes (as they werethen known) to articulate words and read other people's lip movements to decipher meaning.Aleck's father taught him and his brothers not only to write Visible Speech but also to identify anysymbol and its accompanying sound. Aleck became so proficient that he became a part of hisfather's public demonstrations and astounded audiences with his abilities in deciphering Latin, Gaelicand even Sanskrit symbols.

　　First experiments with sound

　　Bell's father encouraged Aleck's interest in speech and, in 1863, took his sons to see a uniqueautomaton, developed by Sir Charles Wheatstone based on the earlier work of Baron Wolfgangvon Kempelen. The rudimentary "mechanical man" simulated a human voice. Aleck was fascinatedby the machine and after he obtained a copy of von Kempelen's book, published in German, andhad laboriously translated it, he and his older brother Melville built their own automaton head. Theirfather, highly interested in their project, offered to pay for any supplies and spurred the boys onwith the enticement of a "big prize" if they were successful. While his brother constructed thethroat and larynx, Aleck tackled the more difficult task of recreating a realistic skull. His effortsresulted in a remarkably lifelike head that could "speak", albeit only a few words. The boys wouldcarefully adjust the "lips" and when a bellows forced air through the windpipe, a very recognizable"Mama" ensued, to the delight of neighbors who came to see the Bell invention.

　　Intrigued by the results of the automaton, Bell continued to experiment with a live subject, thefamily's Skye Terrier, "Trouve". After he taught it to growl continuously, Aleck would reach into itsmouth and manipulate the dog's lips and vocal cords to produce a crude-sounding "Ow ah oo gama ma." With little convincing, visitors believed his dog could articulate "How are you grandma?"More indicative of his playful nature, his experiments convinced onlookers that they saw a "talkingdog." However, these initial forays into experimentation with sound led Bell to undertake his firstserious work on the transmission of sound, using tuning forks to explore resonance. At the age of19, he wrote a report on his work and sent it to philologist Alexander Ellis, a colleague of his father(who would later be portrayed as Professor Henry Higgins in Pygmalion). Ellis immediately wroteback indicating that the experiments were similar to existing work in Germany. Dismayed to findthat groundbreaking work had already been undertaken by Hermann von Helmholtz who hadconveyed vowel sounds by means of a similar tuning fork "contraption", he pored over theGerman scientist's book, Sensations of Tone. Working from his own errant mistranslation of theoriginal German edition, Aleck fortuitously then made a deduction that would be the underpinningof all his future work on transmitting sound, reporting: "Without knowing much about the subject,it seemed to me that if vowel sounds could be produced by electrical means so could consonants,so could articulate speech", and also later remarking: "I thought that Helmhotz had done it ... andthat my failure was due only to my ignorance of electricity. It was a valuable blunder ... If I hadbeen able to read German in those days, I might never have commenced my experiments!"

　　Work with the deaf

　　Subsequently, his father was invited by Sarah Fuller, principal of the Boston School for Deaf Mutes(which continues today as the public Horace Mann School for the Deaf), in Boston, Massachusetts,United States, to introduce the Visible Speech System by providing training for Fuller's instructors,but he declined the post, in favor of his son. Traveling to Boston in April 1871, Bell provedsuccessful in training the school's instructors. He was subsequently asked to repeat the program atthe American Asylum for Deaf-mutes in Hartford, Connecticut and the Clarke School for the Deaf inNorthampton, Massachusetts.

　　Returning home to Brantford after six months abroad, Bell continued his experiments with his"harmonic telegraph". The basic concept behind his device was that messages could be sentthrough a single wire if each message was transmitted at a different pitch, but work on both thetransmitter and receiver was needed. Unsure of his future, he first contemplated returning toLondon to complete his studies, but decided to return to Boston as a teacher. His father helpedhim set up his private practice by contacting Gardiner Greene Hubbard, the president of the ClarkeSchool for the Deaf for a recommendation. Teaching his father's system, in October 1872Alexander Bell opened his "School of Vocal Physiology and Mechanics of Speech" in Boston, whichattracted a large number of deaf pupils with his first class numbering 30 students. While he wasworking as a private tutor, one of his most famous pupils was Helen Keller, who came to him as ayoung child unable to see, hear, or speak. She was later to say that Bell dedicated his life to thepenetration of that "inhuman silence which separates and estranges."

　　Several influential people of the time, including Bell, viewed deafness as something that ought to beeradicated, and also believed that with resources and effort they could teach the deaf to speak andavoid the use of sign language, thus enabling their integration within the wider society from whichmany were often being excluded. However in several schools children were mistreated, for exampleby having their hands tied behind their backs so they could not communicate by signing —theonly language they knew— and were therefore forced to attempt oral communication.

　　Telephone

　　By 1874, Bell's initial work on the harmonic telegraph had entered a formative stage with progressit made both at his new Boston "laboratory" (a rented facility) as well as at his family home inCanada a big success. 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 bytracing their vibrations. Bell thought it might be possible to generate undulating electrical currentsthat corresponded to sound waves. Bell also thought that multiple metal reeds tuned to differentfrequencies like a harp would be able to convert the undulatory currents back into sound. But hehad no working model to demonstrate the feasibility of these ideas.

　　In 1874, telegraph message traffic was rapidly expanding and in the words of Western UnionPresident William Orton, had become "the nervous system of commerce". Orton had contractedwith inventors Thomas Edison and Elisha Gray to find a way to send multiple telegraph messageson each telegraph line to avoid the great cost of constructing new lines. When Bell mentioned toGardiner Hubbard and Thomas Sanders that he was working on a method of sending multipletones on a telegraph wire using a multi-reed device, the two wealthy patrons began to financiallysupport Bell's experiments. Patent matters would be handled by Hubbard's patent attorney,Anthony Pollok.

　　In March 1875, Bell and Pollok visited the famous scientist Joseph Henry, who was then director ofthe Smithsonian Institution, and asked Henry's advice on the electrical multi-reed apparatus thatBell hoped would transmit the human voice by telegraph. Henry replied that Bell had "the germ ofa great invention". When Bell said that he did not have the necessary knowledge, Henry replied, "Get it!" That declaration greatly encouraged Bell to keep trying, even though he did not have theequipment needed to continue his experiments, nor the ability to create a working model of hisideas. However, a chance meeting in 1874 between Bell and Thomas A. Watson, an experiencedelectrical designer and mechanic at the electrical machine shop of Charles Williams, changed all that.

　　With financial support from Sanders and Hubbard, Bell was able to hire Thomas Watson as hisassistant and the two of them experimented with acoustic telegraphy. On 2 June 1875, Watsonaccidentally plucked one of the reeds and Bell, at the receiving end of the wire, heard theovertones of the reed; overtones that would be necessary for transmitting speech. Thatdemonstrated to Bell that only one reed or armature was necessary, not multiple reeds. This led tothe "gallows" sound-powered telephone, which was able to transmit indistinct, voice-like sounds,but not clear speech.

　　Later developments

　　Continuing his experiments in Brantford, Bell brought home a working model of his telephone. OnAugust 3, 1876, from the telegraph office in Mount Pleasant five miles (8 km) away from Brantford,Bell sent a tentative telegram indicating that he was ready. With curious onlookers packed into theoffice as witnesses, faint voices were heard replying. The following night, he amazed guests as wellas his family when a message was received at the Bell home from Brantford, four miles (six km)distant along an improvised wire strung up along telegraph lines and fences, and laid through atunnel. This time, guests at the household distinctly heard people in Brantford reading and singing.These experiments clearly proved that the telephone could work over long distances.

　　Bell and his partners, Hubbard and Sanders, offered to sell the patent outright to Western Unionfor $100,000. The president of Western Union balked, countering that the telephone was nothingbut a toy. Two years later, he told colleagues that if he could get the patent for $25 million hewould consider it a bargain. By then, the Bell company no longer wanted to sell the patent. Bell'sinvestors would become millionaires while he fared well from residuals and at one point had assetsof nearly one million dollars.

　　Bell began a series of public demonstrations and lectures in order to introduce the new invention tothe scientific community as well as the general public. Only one day after, his demonstration of anearly telephone prototype at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia made the telephonethe featured headline worldwide. Influential visitors to the exhibition included Emperor Pedro II ofBrazil, and later Bell had the opportunity to demonstrate the invention personally to WilliamThomson, a renowned Scottish scientist and even Queen Victoria who had requested a privateaudience at Osborne House, her Isle of Wight home; she called the demonstration "mostextraordinary". The enthusiasm surrounding Bell's public displays laid the groundwork for universalacceptance of the revolutionary device.

　　The Bell Telephone Company was created in 1877, and by 1886, over 150,000 people in the U.S.owned telephones. Bell company engineers made numerous other improvements to thetelephone, which emerged as one of the most successful products ever. In 1879, the Bellcompany acquired Edison's patents for the carbon microphone from Western Union. This madethe telephone practical for long distances and it was no longer necessary to shout to be heard atthe receiving telephone.

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