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

by Seth Shulman

  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.

  for an improved telegraph relay: Elisha Gray, U.S. Patent 76,748, “Improvement in Telegraph Apparatus,” issued April 14, 1868.

  Barton & Gray: See American National Biography, Vol. 9, p. 441.

  a one-third interest: See David A. Hounshell, “Elisha Gray and the Telephone: On the Disadvantages of Being an Expert,” Technology and Culture (April 1975), p. 138.

  “Gray was electrician”: Watson, Exploring Life, p. 60. “Electrician” was the contemporary term for what we would call an “electrical engineer” today.

  called a “caveat”: The U.S. Patent Office rules are laid out clearly in Webster Elmes, The Executive Departments of the United States at Washington (Washington, DC: W. H. & O. H. Morrison, 1879), chap. 28, “The Patent Office,” pp. 471–87.

  by 1910: See timeline in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, The Story of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1981), p. 21.

  Gray filed his claim: Elisha Gray, U.S. Patent Office Caveat, “Instruments for Transmitting and Receiving Vocal Sounds Telegraphically,” filed February 14, 1876.

  one of the largest and most lucrative monopolies: AT&T, the direct descendant of Bell’s original agreement with Hubbard and Sanders, was incorporated on March 3, 1885. A vertically integrated monopoly, AT&T would soon thereafter become the largest corporation in the world. See Irwin Lebow, Information Highways and Byways: From the Telegraph to the 21st Century (New York: IEEE Press, 1995), p. 41.

  4 : CALLING HOME

  to have his pocketwatch cleaned: Edwin S. Grosvenor and Morgan Wesson, Alexander Graham Bell: The Life and Times of the Man Who Invented the Telephone (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1997), p. 16.

  born in 1847 in Edinburgh: Bruce, Bell, p. 16. Bell was born on March 3, 1847, at 16 South Charlotte Street, Edinburgh.

  Alexander Bell, taught elocution: MacKenzie, Alexander Graham Bell, p. 13.

  David Bell: Ibid., p. 32.

  Alexander Melville Bell: See AGB, “Notes of Early Life.” See also MacKenzie, Alexander Graham Bell, pp. 17–20.

  “Visible Speech”: See Alexander Melville Bell, Visible Speech: The Science of Universal Alphabetics (London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 1867).

  Shaw’s preface: George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion (1916; New York: Washington Square Press, 2001), preface, p. 19.

  just minutes away: Bruce, Bell, p. 30.

  Bell invariably thereafter called the experience: See, e.g., AGB, “Notes of Early Life.”

  reading Shakespeare aloud: Ibid.

  don a suit jacket: Ibid. As Bell recalls: “The moment my father left for Edinburgh my grandfather sent for a fashionable tailor, and I soon found myself converted into a regular dude, resembling a tailor’s picture plate of an Eton school-boy.”

  “Sanskrit cerebral T”: Grosvenor and Wesson, Alexander Graham Bell, p. 23.

  “The best thing Bell did for me”: Watson, Exploring Life, p. 58.

  Shakespearean repertory theater troupe: Ibid., pp. 250–96.

  a gifted musician: See MacKenzie, Alexander Graham Bell, p. 22. She says that Bell, as a boy “enjoyed music, and it was his solace all his life.”

  following Signor Bertini’s model: AGB, Address Before the Telephone Society of Washington, February 3, 1910.

  Eliza Symonds Bell: AGB to Mabel Hubbard, August 1, 1876. See also Bruce, Bell, p. 22.

  a renaissance in the science of acoustics: See, e.g., Stephan Vogel, “Sensation of Tone, Perception of Sound, and Empiricism: Helmholtz’s Physiological Acoustics,” in David Cahan, ed., Hermann von Helmholtz and the Foundations of Nineteenth-Century Science (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 259–87.

  Sir Charles Wheatstone: See Daniel P. McVeigh, “An Early History of the Telephone 1664–1865,” a project of the New York–based Institute for Learning Technologies, available online at http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/projects/bluetelephone/html/.

  most lucrative telegraph patents: Ibid.

  on a visit to Wheatstone’s laboratory: AGB, “Notes of Early Life.”

  Wolfgang von Kempelen: See Bernd Pompino-Marschall, “Von Kempelen et al.: Remarks on the history of articulatory-acoustic modeling,” ZAS Papers in Linguistics, no. 40 (2005), pp. 145–59.

  “I saw Sir Charles”: Ibid. See also Grosvenor and Wesson, Alexander Graham Bell, p. 17.

  their own “talking machine”: As recounted in AGB, “Making a Talking-Machine,” unpublished article, undated, Miscellaneous Articles file, LOC.

  “The making of this talking-machine”: Ibid.

  “made it yell”: Ibid.

  “We heard someone abo
ve say”: Ibid.

  Weston House Academy: AGB, autobiographical article, February 6, 1879.

  his first-ever professional experiment: See AGB, “The Result of Some Experiments in Connection with ‘Visible Speech’ Made in Elgin in November 1865,” Alexander Graham Bell Family Collection, LOC (Subject File Folder: The Deaf, Visible Speech, Notebooks, 1865).

  Alexander John Ellis: Wesson and Grosvenor, Alexander Graham Bell, p. 30.

  Hermann von Helmholtz: See Hermann von Helmholtz, On the Sensation of Tone (1863), 2nd English ed., trans. Alexander J. Ellis (New York: Dover, 1954).

  London Philological Society: Wesson and Grosvenor, Alexander Graham Bell, p. 30.

  a “tuning fork sounder”: For a discussion of Helmholtz’s device, see Bruce, Bell, p. 50.

  47 the completely erroneous conclusion: See Bell’s explanation in The Bell Telephone: The Deposition of Alexander Graham Bell in the Suit Brought by the United States to Annul the Bell Patents (Boston: American Bell Telephone Co., 1908), Int. 19, p. 12.

  “‘I thought that Helmholtz had done it’”: Quoted in MacKenzie, Alexander Graham Bell, p. 41.

  Grandfather Alexander had died: Ibid., p. 37.

  passed his entrance exams: J. Symonds to AGB, July 26, 1868; see also Bruce, Bell, p. 57.

  had suffered from chronic maladies: See, e.g., Wesson and Grosvenor, Alexander Graham Bell, pp. 30–31.

  Melville Bell’s reputation: Ibid., p. 58.

  On a visit to Boston: See Bruce, Bell, p. 59.

  Harvard University president Thomas Hill: MacKenzie, Alexander Graham Bell, p. 44.

  to Brantford, Ontario: Bruce, Bell, p. 73.

  5 : NO ANSWER

  “If Gray had prevailed in the end”: Bruce, Bell, p. 168.

  the liquid transmitter makes its first appearance: AGB, Laboratory Notebook, 1875–1876, p. 39.

  MIT professors: In particular, Bell met with Professors Charles R. Cross, Lewis B. Monroe, and Edward Pickering—see Bruce, Bell, pp. 110 and 171.

  world’s first public demonstration: AGB, “Researches in Telephony,” Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, May 10, 1876.

  Watson had sat in a warehouse: Walworth Manufacturing Co., Cambridgeport, MA. See Watson, Exploring Life, pp. 91–95, and AGB, “The Pre-Commercial Period of the Telephone,” speech delivered November 2, 1911, p. 16.

  A painting by W. A. Rogers: The painting, depicting Bell’s workshop at 5 Exeter Place as it stood in March 1877, is available in a photographic reproduction in the Gilbert H. Grosvenor Collection of Alexander Bell Photographs, LOC, Bell Collection, neg. no. LC-G9-Z2-4429-B-3.

  the Charles Williams machine shop: For an evocative description of the shop, see Charlotte Gray, Reluctant Genius: Alexander Graham Bell and the Passion for Invention (New York: Arcade Publishing, 2006), p. 82.

  Boston Athenaeum Building: The building on Beacon Street in Boston was designed by Edward Clarke Cabot; construction began in 1847. See http://www.bostonathenaeum.org.

  Perhaps the most compelling portrait: See Watson, Exploring Life, passim.

  By using pictures: AGB to his parents, May 6, 1874. See also Grosvenor and Wesson, Alexander Graham Bell, pp. 41–43.

  newspapers chronicled the success: See “Report of a Committee on the New Method of Instruction for Deaf-Mutes,” Boston Daily Advertiser, December 1871; and AGB Papers, LOC (Subject File Folder: The Deaf, Visible Speech, Misc., 1868–1919). See also AGB to his parents, June 22, 1873. Bell writes eagerly, The lecture has at once placed me in a new position in Boston. It has brought me in contact with the scientific minds of the city” (emphasis in the original). See also Bruce, Bell, p. 76.

  at Boston University: AGB to his parents, November 1, 1873; see also AGB to his parents, April 1874.

  Thomas Sanders soon agreed: AGB to his parents, October 2, 1873. Bell writes his first letter after moving into the Sanders home. For more on Sanders, see also Bruce, Bell, pp. 127–31.

  “power of electricity”: Watson, Exploring Life, p. 52.

  in the same building: See Josephson, Edison, p. 62.

  an electrical vote recorder: Thomas A. Edison, U.S. Patent 90,646, “Improvement in Electrographic Vote-Recorder,” issued June 1, 1869.

  “One day early in 1874”: Watson, Exploring Life, p. 54.

  he headed straight: Ibid. See also Bruce, Bell, pp. 134–35.

  More and more unsightly wires: See Hounshell, “Elisha Gray and the Telephone,” Technology and Culture, p. 144.

  Joseph Stearns: Joseph Stearns, U.S. Patent 126,847, “Duplex Telegraph Apparatus,” issued May 14, 1872. See also Bruce, Bell, p. 93.

  “harmonic multiple telegraph”: The most complete explanation can be found in Bell’s The Multiple Telegraph (Boston: Franklin Press, 1876). This monograph was prepared by Bell as a detailed narrative account of his path to his invention in accordance with the U.S. Patent Office’s so-called Rule 53, which required a detailed statement in an interference proceeding. See also AGB to George Brown, October 4, 1874.

  build an early prototype: Watson, Exploring Life, p. 57.

  6 : OPERATOR ASSISTANCE

  paid a fateful visit: AGB to his parents, October 20, 1874.

  tutoring Mabel: See, e.g., Lilias M. Toward, Mabel Bell: Alexander’s Silent Partner (Toronto: Methuen, 1984), pp. 19–20.

  scarlet fever: For a good discussion, see Helen Elmira Waite, Make a Joyful Sound: The Romance of Mabel Hubbard and Alexander Graham Bell (Philadelphia: Macrae Smith Co., 1961), pp. 36–49.

  146 Brattle Street: The house burned down long ago, but pictures taken in 1922 have survived in the Gilbert H. Grosvenor Collection of Alexander Graham Bell Photographs, LOC. See neg. nos. LC-G9-Z3-126545-AB and LC-G9-Z3-126550-AB.

  The well-heeled Sanders family: Bruce, Bell, p. 98.

  Gardiner Greene Hubbard: Fred DeLand, Dumb No Longer: Romance of the Telephone (Washington, DC: Volta Bureau, 1908), pp. 124–27.

  William Hubbard: Ibid., p. 124.

  first president of the Clarke School: Ibid.

  Gertrude McCurdy Hubbard: Ibid., p. 125.

  to learn Hebrew: See Toward, Mabel Bell, p. xvii.

  red velvet wallpaper: Bruce, Bell, p. 126.

  Bell gave Hubbard a demonstration: AGB to Alexander Melville Bell, Eliza Symonds Bell, and Carrie Bell, October 23, 1874.

  “I brought the subject”: Ibid.

  From earlier letters home: See, e.g., AGB to his parents, dated only March 1874. In this letter, Bell writes: “I do not know if I told you that the gentleman who has introduced a Bill into Congress for the purchase of all the telegraph lines by the government on the English model is that father of one of my pupils…. Would it not be well to write to him about the telegraph scheme?”

  “I am tonight a happy man”: AGB to his parents, October 20, 1874.

  manufacture of shoes: W. Bernard Carlson, “The Telephone as Political Instrument: Gardiner Hubbard and the Formation of the Middle Class in America, 1875–1880,” in Michael Thad Allen and Gabrielle Hecht, eds., Technologies of Power (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), pp. 25–55.

  specialized saws: See Edwin Jenney, “Machinery for Sawing Staves,” U.S. Patent 7,380, May 21, 1850.

  compiled a report: See “In the Matter of the Postal-Telegraph Bill,” Gardiner G. Hubbard’s presentation before the U.S. House Committee on Appropriations, April 22, 1872 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1872).

  Atlantic Monthly: Gardiner G. Hubbard, “Our Post-Office,” Atlantic Monthly (January 1875).

  the Hubbard Bill: See “In the Matter of the Postal-Telegraph Bill,” Gardiner G. Hubbard before the House Committee on Appropriations, April 22, 1872.

  it would be run by a consortium: Ibid.

  caused controversy: For an insightful discussion, see W. Bernard Carlson, “The Telephone as Political Instrument,” in Allen and Hecht, eds., Technologies of Power, pp. 25–55.

  “franking” privileges: See Alvin F. Harlow, Old Wires and New Waves (New York: D. Appleton-
Century, 1936), p. 336.

  1876 presidential election: For a fuller account, see C. Vann Woodward, Reunion and Reaction: The Compromise of 1877 and the End of Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).

  Cambridge Gas company: DeLand, Dumb No Longer, p. 124.

  Cambridge Railroad Company: Robert W. Lovett, “The Harvard Branch Railroad, 1849–1855,” Cambridge Historical Society Proceedings, vol. 38 (1959–60), pp. 23–50, cited in Carlson, “The Telephone as Political Instrument,” p. 35. As Carlson notes (fn 28), partly as a result of Hubbard’s work to improve the transportation and utilities, the population of Cambridge nearly doubled in the 1850s, boasting some 26,000 residents in 1860.