Cell: A Cautionary Tale
About the Story
Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) is best known as the inventor of the first telephone in 1875, but he also invented many other devices including an early metal detector and the photophone, a precursor to modern fiber optic communication systems. Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, and his first invention was a wheat dehusking device that he constructed when he was just 12 years old. Bell’s mother was deaf and his father conducted work on speech and elocution. In 1870, Bell and his parents moved to a farm in Ontario, Canada, where he studied hearing and speech and conducted experiments with electricity and sound. Bell’s experiments led to him patenting the first telephone in 1876, and just three days after the patent was issued, Bell transmitted the following sentence: “Mr. Watson, come here. I want to see you.” The Bell Telephone Company was created in 1877. Bell settled in Cambridge, MA, and became a naturalized US citizen. By 1886, 150,000 people in the US owned telephones.
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