Bell’s Breakthrough

by Stacia Deutsch

  “Come upstairs,” Professor Bell said, and sighed. “I will show you exactly why I quit working on electric speech.”

  We walked back up the stairs with Alexander Graham Bell. My legs were feeling rubbery from going up and down the steps.

  When we reached the landing, Alexander Graham Bell called to Mr. Watson to put the wire up between rooms 13 and 15.

  Mr. Watson stepped into the hallway. “You want me to take it down. Then you want me to put it back up. You need to make up your mind.”

  “I have made up my mind. I have quit working on electric speech!” Professor Bell said firmly. “These pesky children are trying to convince me to keep trying.” Mr. Watson handed Professor Bell a spool of wire. “I am going to prove to them that the electric speech apparatus does not work. It will never work!”

  We followed Professor Bell into room 15, his bedroom. He took one end of the wire and attached it to a small black cone. He gave the other end back to Mr. Watson. Mr. Watson went into the next room.

  “At first, I wanted to invent something that would make the world easier for deaf people. My father invented an alphabet system that used symbols instead of letters to teach the deaf to communicate. So I thought if a deaf person could speak into a cone, a machine like a telegraph could write down his or her words on the other side. Then I also got the idea that if two people could hear, maybe two voices could be transmitted electrically to each other.” He sighed. “But neither idea works. Mabel’s father thinks I should stick to the multiple telegraph instead of fiddle around with this foolishness.”

  “The telephone is going to be way more important than the multiple telegraph,” I argued.

  “Are you listening?” Alexander Graham Bell said, turning to face me. “It does not work! I do not know why. I cannot fix it. Electric speech will never happen.”

  “But electric speech will work,” I insisted. “You just have to keep trying.”

  Alexander Graham Bell stared at me. I thought he was going to go crazy and start yelling at me. That’s what my sister does when I keep badgering her about something. But instead he ruffled my hair and said, “You never give up, do you?”

  “Mr. Watson,” Alexander Graham Bell called down the hall to his assistant, “after we show these meddling children what a failure electric speech is, let us finish the multiple telegraph.”

  Alexander Graham Bell held the cone to his mouth. “Go next door,” he told us.

  We followed the wire down the hall to room 13. Mr. Watson had a similar black cone on his table.

  We could hear Alexander Graham Bell talking. But not through the cone. He was shouting into the hallway, “Can you hear me?”

  “Sure,” Jacob answered. “But if we close the door, we won’t.”

  “Change the tension on the reed,” Professor Bell called down the hall. Mr. Watson reached over to the bottom of his cone and tightened a screw.

  There was a silent pause before Professor Bell shouted from the next room, “Did you hear me?”

  “What did you say?” Mr. Watson shouted back. “I can’t hear you!”

  “I will attach the magnet,” Professor Bell called out. There was another silent pause, followed by Professor Bell shouting, “How about that time?”

  We all looked at Mr. Watson, hoping he could repeat whatever Professor Bell was saying in the other room. But Mr. Watson just shook his head at us.

  “He can’t hear you,” Jacob called down the hall.

  “See? It does not work!” Alexander Graham Bell shouted.

  We went back to Alexander Graham Bell’s bedroom.

  “To make a voice travel over a wire, we need to make an electrical circuit,” Professor Bell explained. “A circuit is a circle of electricity. Mr. Watson was working on the wires and electricity for the circuit. I was trying to figure out how the wires could carry voices, but I cannot do it. It cannot be done.”

  He removed the wire from the cone and left it on the table. Then he leaned out the door and called to Mr. Watson, “Come here, please.”

  When Mr. Watson arrived, Professor Bell said, “For the last time, take down the wire.” He was clearly frustrated. “There is no future for electric speech.” Professor Bell threw up his hands and announced, “I quit!”

  Fire

  Alexander Graham Bell started throwing parts of his electric speech apparatus into a big wooden box.

  I was worried. We needed a plan. And we needed one quickly. So we went out into the hallway to talk.

  I suddenly had an idea. “I know what to do,” I said excitedly.

  “What?” Zack asked. He had an “I told you this was going be hard” look in his eyes.

  “We have to show him there is a future for electric speech,” I said. “And there is only one way to show him that!”

  “A trip to the future?” Jacob asked, with one eyebrow raised. He was already thinking about where we should take Alexander Graham Bell. “We could take him to the mall,” he suggested. “He could see people talking on cell phones while they shop.”

  “Bad idea,” Bo said, scratching his chin again, deep in thought. “He’s a tinkerer, remember? He might try to invent the cellular phone instead. We need him to invent phones with wires, not phones without wires.”

  “How about walking with him down Main Street?” I offered. “We could show him pay phones and phone books.”

  Zack threw out another idea: “How about to an office building? He could see video phones, fax machines, and speaker phones.”

  “Before we moved here, Mom and I lived with my abuelo, my grandfather, in New Mexico,” Bo explained. “Maybe we should just take Professor Bell to my house and let him call Abuelo Rodriguez,” he suggested. “He could see how we can talk on telephones to people who are far away.”

  We were ready to do everything we could to convince him, but the sound of a woman screaming outside interrupted our planning.

  We all ran to the window.

  A house down the street was on fire. We could see the flames shooting up through the roof.

  We ran down the stairs and hurried outside. A woman ran up to us and asked us to help her.

  “Did you call 9-1-1?” I asked her. She stared at me like I was crazy before running back down the street.

  Alexander Graham Bell rushed out of the boardinghouse. “Ring the alarm!” he shouted to us. Then he hurried down the street to see what he could do to help.

  “Ring the bell!” another man called out as he rushed past to help.

  “Where’s the fire alarm?” Jacob asked me.

  I looked at Bo. He shrugged. Bo looked at Zack. Zack didn’t know where the fire alarm was either. We started to run around in circles, looking for a way to call the firehouse.

  Mr. Watson rushed by.

  “Where’s the fire alarm?” Jacob called out to him.

  Mr. Watson pointed down the street to a black box hanging on a pole.

  We ran down the street. Bo opened the box. When the door of the box swung open, little bells started tinkling. They made cute and happy sounds. Not the kind I’d expected from a fire alarm. I was positive that we had to do something else to call the fire department.

  Inside the box was a telegraph machine similar to the one Mr. Caruthers had shown us in the library.

  We gathered around the alarm box.

  “How many dots and dashes in ‘H-E-L-P’?” I asked Bo.

  Bo looked at me blankly. Just because he’d read about telegrams didn’t mean he knew how to send one.

  We didn’t know what to do. We had finally found the fire alarm box, but we didn’t know how to send the telegraph. We couldn’t ring the fire alarm.

  “Hey, there’s a little sign on the door,” Zack said, looking over my shoulder. “It says, ‘Pull the Hook.’ ”

  I reached into the box and pulled down the small lever. It made the telegraph pieces come together, creating one huge, long dash.

  And then we waited. And waited. And waited. Nothing happened.

 
Mr. Watson came over to us. “Did you pull the lever?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Jacob answered, “but nothing is happening.”

  “Oh yes, it is,” Mr. Watson replied. “When there is a fire, we send a telegram from these street boxes. The telegram goes to a main office. The office tells the fire station about the fire. Then, the station sends the fire truck.”

  It seemed to take forever, but we finally saw the fire truck coming down the street.

  “It’s a steam fire engine like the one in the car museum Dad takes us to,” Zack whispered to Jacob.

  I looked down the street and saw six horses pulling the big, red fire engine.

  The fire truck stopped right in front of Jacob, Zack, Bo, and me. Some firefighters pulled a long hose out of the fire engine and attached it to a nearby fire hydrant.

  Other firefighters threw logs into the fire truck’s engine. The truck burned fuel, like wood sticks and logs, in a small steam engine. The steam engine provided power for a water pump. The water pump pumped water from the hydrant through the hose.

  The firefighters held the hose high toward the fire. Water shot out of the hose in long bursts and fell on the flames.

  Mr. Watson went to see if he could help.

  It didn’t take long for the firefighters to put the fire out. And when they did, Professor Bell and Mr. Watson came over to where we were standing.

  “What a shame!” Professor Bell moaned. “The fire destroyed her house.”

  “At least it did not destroy the whole neighborhood,” Mr. Watson said. He was covered with ash. He’d been helping the woman search for her dog in the rubble. He held a small puppy in his arms.

  “Four years ago,” Mr. Watson explained, “a fire burned down much of the city of Boston. It ate up more than 770 buildings, and it took three days before it stopped burning.”

  Mr. Watson saw the woman who owned the house sitting on the sidewalk. “I must go,” he said. He went to give the woman her dog.

  Professor Bell sighed and said, “If only we could call the fire engines faster than by telegram.” He rubbed his tired eyes and added quietly, “We could save both lives and buildings.”

  “We can!” Zack said excitedly. “If you don’t quit, we can!”

  “Can what?” Professor Bell asked. He was confused.

  “If you invent the telephone, we can get the fire engines to a fire faster,” Jacob said. He grinned and got the computer out of his pocket.

  Zack looked around to make sure no one was watching. “The coast is clear,” he told his brother.

  Jacob pushed a few buttons on the computer. Then he pulled the cartridge out of the back slot.

  A green glowing hole appeared in the street near the black telegraph box. Thick smoke covered the ground.

  “What is that?” Alexander Graham Bell asked, curiously inspecting the big hole. As he moved closer to the hole, I saw a mischievous spark in the twins’ eyes.

  “What are you guys doing?” I asked them.

  Jacob and Zack answered at exactly the same time: “We are taking Alexander Graham Bell to meet our dad!”

  Zack pushed Alexander Graham Bell into the hole.

  Bo, Jacob, and I held hands.

  On the count of three, we jumped.

  And on the count of four, we landed, because time travel is really fast.

  The Future

  Jacob and Zack’s dad was a firefighter. I knew that because I lived next door to them. Sometimes their dad worked all night. He’d be coming home to go to sleep when Jacob and Zack were leaving for school.

  Today, Firefighter Osborn was working at the firehouse. We landed at the front door of the station.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Professor Bell demanded to know. “Where are we?”

  “Would you believe us if we told you we have traveled to the future?” Jacob asked.

  “No!” Professor Bell said loudly. “I would not believe you.”

  “Even if it was the truth?” Bo questioned.

  “I am a scientist,” Professor Bell proclaimed. “Can you prove to me that we are in your time and not in mine?”

  “Easy,” I said, looking around for something to show him. “Come with me.” We walked down the front path and around the corner.

  A big red fire truck was parked in the garage. “See?” I said. “Cars and trucks weren’t invented in eighteen seventy-six.”

  “I see what you mean,” Professor Bell said as he climbed up into the driver’s seat. “I am beginning to believe you. Is this a fire engine from your time?”

  “It’s a little different from the ones you have in eighteen seventy-six,” Jacob said. “This one has an engine with a battery. Instead of steam.”

  “A battery,” Professor Bell repeated. “That is interesting.”

  “You’d better get him out of there,” Bo said to me. “He’s a tinkerer, remember. If we don’t pay attention, he might just decide to invent the first car, or truck, or—”

  “Battery,” Professor Bell repeated again. He hopped down from the fire truck. “Can I see the battery?”

  “No!” we all said at once.

  “I’m sorry, Professor Bell,” I explained. “We’re supposed to convince you to get back to work on the telephone. We can’t let you invent something else instead.”

  “But—,” Professor Bell countered.

  “Sorry,” I interrupted.

  “Excuse me,” a loud voice said from behind us. “You are not allowed in the fire truck.” I turned around to see Jacob and Zack’s dad coming out of the firehouse and into the garage.

  “Hi,” Firefighter Osborn said when he saw Jacob, Zack, Bo, and me. “I thought you kids had History Club today after school.” He looked at Jacob and Zack. “I’d better call Mom and tell her you’re here.”

  “Wait, Dad,” Jacob said quickly. “This is today’s History Club activity.” We liked to call our time-travel adventures “History Club.” It was pretty much true: We met after school and we were trying to save history. “We’ll be back at school in time for Mom to pick us up,” he quickly added.

  Zack checked the clock on the wall and mumbled, “Hopefully,” under his breath.

  “Hello, Firefighter Osborn,” I said. “This is our special History Club teacher, Professor Bell.” The two men shook hands. “Professor Bell was showing us how telegraphs were used to call fire trucks in eighteen seventy-six,” I explained. “We wanted to find out if today’s telephone system was faster.”

  “It’s much faster,” Firefighter Osborn said. “All over America, there are more than 500,000 emergency calls to 9-1-1 every day. That’s about 190 million a year. Telegraphs took too long to send, and it was difficult to figure out exactly where the fire was. Calling 9-1-1 on the telephone saves thousands of lives each day.”

  “Is that so?” Professor Bell seemed interested.

  Firefighter Osborn apologized that he had to rush off and check a fire hose. “I’ll be right back.”

  While he was gone, I whispered to Professor Bell, “In our time, pretty much everyone has a telephone. There are telephones in our houses that work on wires. And there are cellular phones that we can carry around that don’t have any wires at all.”

  “And you can report an emergency from both kinds of telephones?” he asked me.

  “Sure,” I said. “Are you convinced now?”

  “We only have fifty-two minutes to get him back to finish the invention,” Jacob said softly.

  I tugged at Alexander Graham Bell’s arm. I hoped we’d told him enough about telephones to convince him to not quit inventing. It was time for him to get back to his boardinghouse. There was a good spot behind the firehouse to open the green hole.

  “I do not understand your hurry,” Professor Bell said. “I would like to explore this city of the future. I have all the time in the world.” He grinned at us. “I quit inventing electric speech, remember?”

  “We remember,” I said, and sighed. “But we still hope you’ll change your min
d.”

  Professor Bell was being difficult. He wasn’t going to be convinced easily.

  Firefighter Osborn came back and invited us inside the firehouse. He showed us the kitchen. He showed us the bunkrooms, where firefighters rest when they aren’t working.

  And he showed us a small room where the telephones were kept.

  It was a little office. There was a desk with a computer and two telephones. One was attached to the wall. Another was sitting on the desk by the computer.

  Suddenly the phone on the wall rang.

  Firefighter Osborn answered, talked for a minute, and hung up. “Firefighter Wong is calling from her house. She thinks she left her wallet in the bunkroom. I’m going to check. I think I saw it upstairs. I’ll be right back.” He left us alone in the office.

  After Firefighter Osborn left the room, Professor Bell moved closer to the telephone on the desk. He poked at it with his finger. Then he picked up the receiver. “Aha!” he exclaimed. “It is my electric speech apparatus! Wires and all!”

  “Telephone,” I corrected, hoping that this would be the moment when he’d change his mind and want to go back to inventing.

  “Telephone,” he repeated. He was pretty calm for a man who was seeing what his invention would look like more than one hundred years later.

  “Look!” Jacob said. “It works just like the one you and Mr. Watson are building.” He held out the receiver to show him. “You talk in here,” he said, pointing to the bottom of the receiver. “And you listen from here.” He showed Professor Bell the top part of the phone.

  Professor Bell put his ear to the receiver and jumped back suddenly. “What do I hear?” he asked. He looked really confused.

  “A dial tone,” Bo answered. And because Bo had read more than any of us, he knew how to explain. “The telephone works on an electrical circuit.”

  We knew that the reason Professor Bell quit inventing the telephone was because he couldn’t get the circuit to work correctly. But we also knew that if we could get him back to 1876 and convince him to keep trying, he’d figure it out.