The Telephone Gambit: Chasing Alexander Graham Bell's Secret (v5) (21 page)

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5 Exeter Place:
Bell moved to two rooms (Ns. 13 and 15) at this location in mid-January 1876. See Alexander Graham Bell (AGB) to Mabel Hubbard, January 17, 1876, his first letter from the new location. Unless otherwise noted, letters come from the vast digitized collection called the Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers, Library of Congress (LOC), available online at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/bellhtml/bellhome.html.

a metal cone:
Bell’s diagram and specifications are available in AGB, “Laboratory Notebook, 1875–1876” (cited hereafter as Laboratory Notebook, 1875–1876), LOC, pp. 40–41. Watson explains much later that the original liquid transmitter does not survive as it was used for parts in successive adaptations—See Thomas A. Watson, “The Birth and Babyhood of the Telephone: An Address Delivered Before the Third Annual Convention of the Telephone Pioneers of American at Chicago, October 17, 1913” (New York: American Telephone & Telegraph Co., 1936).

the “undulations” created:
See, e.g., AGB, U.S. Patent 174,465, “Improvements in Telegraphy,” filed Feb. 14, 1876; issued March 7, 1876. Bell claimed, among other things, a “method of producing undulations in a continuous voltaic circuit by the vibration or motion of bodies capable of inductive action.”

“I then shouted”:
AGB, Laboratory Notebook, 1875–1876, LOC, pp. 40–41.

Watson’s notes:
Watson’s notebook is part of the AT&T Historical Collection, NY. The page in question is printed in a full-scale color reproduction in H. M. Boettinger,
The Telephone Book: Bell, Watson, Vail and American Life 1876–1976
(Croton-on-Hudson, NY: Riverwood Publishers, 1977), p. 67.

“I feel that I have at last found”:
AGB to Alexander Melville Bell, March 10, 1876.

“This wire”:
Reprinted in Thomas A. Watson,
Exploring Life
(New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1926), pp. 126–27.

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“wizard of Menlo Park”:
According to one of Edison’s biographers, Matthew Josephson, the appellation was first given in an article entitled “An Afternoon with Edison,”
New York Daily Graphic,
April 2, 1878. See Matthew Josephson,
Edison: A Biography
(New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1959), p. 170.

born just twenty days apart:
Edison was born on February 11, 1847; Bell on March 3, 1847.

just three months of formal schooling:
See Neil Baldwin,
Edison: Inventing the Century
(New York: Hyperion, 1995), p. 25.

slavishly long hours:
Ibid., p. 323.

punch a time clock:
See, e.g., Seth Shulman, “Unlocking the Legacies of the Edison Archives,”
Technology Review
(February–March 1997).

His 1,093 patents set a record:
Between 1869 and 1933, the U.S. Patent Office issued 1,093 patents to Thomas Edison, and the number still stands as the record for patents issued to a single individual. A complete accounting of Edison’s patents is available online at http://edison.rutgers.edu/patents.htm.

introduced Helen Keller:
See Helen Keller,
The Story of My Life
(New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1905), pp. 18–19.

launch the journal
Science
:
Bell’s early support of
Science
is detailed in Robert V. Bruce,
Bell: Alexander Graham Bell and the Conquest of Solitude
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1973), pp. 376–78. In addition to his close personal involvement in the selection of editors, etc., Bruce estimates that Bell spent a total of some $60,000 to help keep the journal afloat in the 1880s and early 1890s.

president of the National Geographic Society:
The always energetic Gardiner Hubbard played the lead in founding the National Geographic Society in 1888; in 1897, after Hubbard’s death, Bell became its president—See Bruce,
Bell,
pp. 422–23.

first successful airplanes:
For more on Bell’s role, see Seth Shulman,
Unlocking the Sky
(New York: HarperCollins, 2002).

the eugenics movement:
See, e.g., “Frontispiece: Alexander Graham Bell as Chairman of the Board of Scientific Directors of the Eugenics Record Office,”
Eugenical News: Current Record of Race Hygiene,
vol. 14, no. 8 (August 1929), describing Bell as a “pioneering eugenicist.” See also AGB to Charles Davenport, Eugenics Record Office, December 27, 1912. Both documents are available online at http://www.eugenicsarchive.org.

women’s rights:
See, e.g., AGB to Mabel Hubbard, October 5, 1875. At the end of a long, tongue-in-cheek disquisition on the subject, Bell writes his fiancée: “I suppose it will not be long before we have a woman wanting to be President of the United States! Well it is not for me to say her ‘Nay’—seeing that I am a subject of Queen Victoria—a woman-sovereign—and one of the best the world has seen—so my best wishes go with her.”

“Mr. Bell was tall”:
David Fairchild,
The World Was My Garden: Travels of a Plant Explorer
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1939), p. 290.

Bern Dibner:
For an interesting biographical sketch, see I. Bernard Cohen, “Award of the 1976 Sarton Medal to Bern Dibner,”
Isis,
vol. 68, no. 244 (1977), pp. 610–15.

Bohr-Rosenfeld paper:
N. Bohr and L. Rosenfeld, “Field and Charge Measurements in Quantum Electrodynamics,”
Physical Review,
vol. 78, no. 6 (1950), pp. 794–98.

Sir Isaac Newton:
See, e.g., I. Bernard Cohen and George E. Smith, eds.,
The Cambridge Companion to Newton
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

its sensible progression:
AGB, Laboratory Notebook, 1875–1876, pp. 1–33.

notes on March 8:
Ibid., p. 35.

idly twisted a box:
The story is related in many places, including by Orville Wright in Marvin McFarland, ed.,
The Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1953), p. 8.

Alexander Fleming:
Fleming’s discovery was published in the seminal article: A. Fleming,
British Journal of Experimental Pathology,
vol. 10, no. 226 (1929). A concise, descriptive account is given in Rupert Lee,
The Eureka Moment: 100 Key Scientific Discoveries of the 20th Century
(London: British Library, 2002), p. 29.

“Returned from Washington”:
AGB, Laboratory Notebook, 1875–1876, p. 34.

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made him seem much older:
See, e.g., AGB, “Notes of Early Life,” from the

“Notebook of Alexander Graham Bell”
Volta Review
(1910), available online at LOC (Series: Article and Speech Files, Folder: “Autobiographical Writings,” 1904–1910, undated). As Bell recalls, ever since visiting his grandfather for a year at age fifteen, people invariably thought he was older than he actually was. Bell’s pupil Mabel Hubbard thought him at least ten years older than he really was—see Mabel Hubbard Diaries, January 1879, available online at LOC.

an astonishing 12,000 miles of track:
Harper’s New Monthly
(February 1876), p. 465, available online at http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/moa/.
Harper’s
reports on the latest figures from
Railroad Gazette,
noting that the major railroad lines in the United States added 6,202 miles of track in 1872; 3,276 miles in 1873; 1,664 miles in 1874; and 1,150 miles in 1875.

William “Boss” Tweed:
For a thumbnail summary, see “Tweed, William Marcy,” in
Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress
, available online at http://bioguide.congress.gov.

Jesse James:
See, e.g., Kathleen Collins,
Jesse James: Western Bank Robber
(New York: Rosen Publishing Group, 2003), p. 30.

The broad avenues:
The description of Washington is derived in part from Catherine MacKenzie,
Alexander Graham Bell: The Man Who Contracted Space
(New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1928), chap. 1.

yet to be paved:
See “A Timeline of Washington, DC History,” available online at http://www.h-net.org/~dclist/timeline1.html.

“city of magnificent intentions”:
Ibid.

doubled in population:
Ibid.

half-finished Washington Monument:
See George Olszewski,
A History of the Washington Monument
(Washington, DC: Department of the Interior, 1971), available online at http://www.nps.gov/archive/wamo/history/.

“Mr. Pollok has the most palatial residence”:
AGB to Alexander Melville Bell, February 29, 1876.

Pollok’s Gilded Age mansion:
Ibid.

“You can hardly understand”:
Ibid.

“If I succeed in securing”:
Ibid.

working models of inventions:
In the nineteenth century, the United States was the only industrializing nation that required patent applicants to submit a model along with a description and detailed drawing of their invention. But, according to the U.S. Patent Office, “Two fires and the general chaos of the Civil War” threatened the government’s collection of models, and “their enormous quantity made them an unwanted nuisance in the 1880s.” Information available online at http://uspto.gov/web/offices/com/speeches/02-11.htm. See also Seth Shulman,
Owning the Future
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999), p. 6.

James E. English:
See “United States Patent Laws: Main Points of the Senate Bill Amending the Present Laws,”
New York Times,
February 15, 1876, p. 1.

Timothy Stebins:
Timothy Stebins, U.S. Patent 181,112, “Improvement in Hydraulic Elevators,” filed March 2, 1876; issued August 15, 1876.

William Gates:
William Gates, U.S. Patent 174,070, “Improvement in Electric Fire Alarms,” filed April 1, 1874; issued February 29, 1876.

just a few dozen patent examiners:
The
Congressional Directory
(Washington, DC: Office of the Librarian of Congress, 1876), lists twenty-two “examiners” in the U.S. Patent Office (including Zenas F. Wilber), one “Examiner of Interferences,” and three “Examiners-in-Chief.”

tens of thousands
of patent applications:
According to U.S. government information, 15,595 patents were issued in 1876. The number annually more than doubled between 1866 and 1896. For a table and discussion, see Thomas P. Hughes,
American Genesis
(New York: Viking, 1989), pp. 14–15.

Emile Berliner’s 1877 patent application:
Emile Berliner, U.S. Patent 463, 569, for a “Combined Telegraph and Telephone” (microphone), filed June 1877; issued November 1891.

known as a technological footnote:
See, e.g., Daniel S. Levy, “Man-made Marvels,”
Time,
December 4, 2000.

one of the leading electrical researchers:
See David A. Hounshell, “Bell and Gray: Contrasts in Style, Politics and Etiquette,”
Proceedings of the IEEE,
vol. 64, no. 9 (September 1976), pp. 1305–14.

roughly seventy patents:
See Robert Bruce, “Elisha Gray,” in John Garraty and Mark Carnes, eds.,
American National Biography,
Vol. 9 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 441–42.

born in 1835:
Ibid. See also George B. Prescott, “Sketch of Elisha Gray,”
Popular Science Monthly
(November 1878), pp. 523–28.