DEAFNESS IS THE MOTHER OF INVENTION: PART ONE

"I seldom think about my limitations, and they never make me sad. Perhaps there is just a touch of yearning at times; but it is vague, like a breeze among flowers."

~   Helen Keller   ~

One of the great losses to me because of my poor hearing is the use of the telephone. It made my work difficult and isolating. My home life cannot be Private and Confidential as others have to make the calls for me to the Bank, the Hospital or my GP. Almost every help line asks for a telephone call to verify who you are and ask for personal details or passwords to confirm it, before imparting their advice. I am so glad I live in the time of SMS Text Messaging Service. It gives me a great deal of that independence back.

One hundred and fifty years ago deafness was a common problem with children. Poor health of the pregnant mothers and the insanitary conditions of life brought about hearing loss by various means.

Pregnant mothers suffering from Chlamydia, Syphilis and Rubella damaged their babies hearing development as did Foetal Alcohol Syndrome, various unregulated social drugs and malnutrition which also caused premature births. Having survived the birth the common childhood diseases such as Measles, Mumps, and Meningitis caused damage to auditory nerves whilst frequent untreated ear infections also have a cumulative effect. The added problem to early childhood deafness is the inability to speak as there are not intelligible sounds for them to copy.

It is into this world of deaf and dumb children that we meet one of the famous inventors of the Victorian age. 

Alexander Graham Bell    1847-1922 

Alexander Bell was not deaf, in fact, he had exceptionally good hearing which enabled him to learn the piano untaught and help his father in linguistic studies by being able to analyse different tones in complex dialects. What he did have, was a life surrounded by family and people struggling with their deafness. Some were born deaf and others acquiring deafness later but still in their early years. It was his search for a device to transmit speech rather than aid hearing that he is famous for inventing, the telephone, which he patented in the USA in 1876. Strangely, he did not like the device himself and never had one in his own house. It was his father, Alexander Melville Bell, who developed the system of Visible Speech or sign language with lip reading as a teacher of elocution to deaf children which Alexander Bell jnr. also taught to earn money to support his invention research.

His early years. 

Alexander Bell was born on 3^rd March 1847 in Edinburgh to Eliza Grace and Alexander Melville Bell. He had two older brothers. He was known as Aleck and was a gifted child who excelled at music, art, poetry, language and all things auditory. He was a good ventriloquist which made him many friends during his student years. He was taught formal lessons in Latin, Greek and Literature but was not very good at it. He liked to work at his own pace in his own way. He was good at finding answers but not remembering them. During his life he claimed he could never remember the names of the months of the year.

When he complained to his father that he did not have a middle name like his brothers he was allowed to choose one for himself. He chose the name of a family friend Alexander Graham.

It was when he was twelve years old that his mother lost her hearing. This is what started his interest in speech communication. His father provided her with a hearing tube so that she could hear Aleck playing the piano. Aleck communicated with her by sign language and by speaking in precise syllables directly into her forehead to allow bone conduction of the sound.

His teenage years.

Aleck’s father and grandfather both taught elocution and studied philology. Their pupils were young deaf children who had not learnt to speak. Because he had such a musical ear he could help his father with his studies of dialects. After finishing formal schooling at fourteen years old he went to stay with his grandfather in London. From this one to one education he was inspired to try harder and when he returned to Edinburgh he had become a Gentleman. His lack of money drove him to look for work and (aged sixteen) he became a pupil teacher in preparation for entry to university. It was at this time that he taught a dog to speak by manipulating its mouth. This locally famous incident then led on to his studies of sound and electronic transmission.

He never went on to university in London as he had wanted. His two older brothers died from tuberculosis and, as he suffered from it himself, his family emigrated to Canada in 1870. There they lived on a farm and the better air quality improved his health and saved his life. He used his skills to study the local unwritten language of the Mohawk Indians and expressed it in visible speech symbols.

Adulthood.

In 1871 his father was offered a job teaching his Visible Speech System to instructors at the Boston School for Deaf Mutes but as he already had work in Canada he offered it to Aleck. After taking up this position, Aleck went on to open his own School of Vocal Physiology and Mechanics of Speech in Boston. It became very popular and his assistant Gardiner Green Hubbard enrolled his own fifteen year old deaf daughter Mabel. In due course Aleck became Professor of Vocal Physiology and Elocution at the Boston School of Oratory.

He was working so hard for long hours and frequent travelling back and forth to Canada that he became ill. To save himself from following his brothers into an early grave he agreed to see only selective special pupils. He was just twenty six years old at the time. The father of one of these pupils was a wealthy man who paid him well and set up a laboratory for him to research and develope a way to transmit the human voice. His first of many patents was filed in 1875 and he consulted the renowned physicist Joseph Henry about developing another invention to transmit voices through telegraph wires. This was because Aleck knew nothing about electricity. Henry told him to go and learn it then! He never was able to understand it well so he hired his most famous assistant Thomas Watson. He was an expert and could build the machines that Bell could invent in his head but could not make. They both preferred to work long hours and into the night. Bell felt it aided his thoughts to work between ten pm and four or five am. Ultimately the first words spoken on a telephone were “Watson, come here. I want you!” The distance between telephones grew longer and he demonstrated the device around the world.

Aleck had originally been asked to give private elocution lessons to one of his former deaf pupils, Mabel Hubbard. She was deaf due to scarlet fever as a young child. Being a gentleman, when he found himself becoming too close to her he resigned stating that “… her mind was too young to be disturbed by such matters”. However she missed him so much her melancholy affected her health and when it was discovered why, he was summoned back. They were married in 1877 and as a token of his commitment to her he gave her all but one of his shares in the newly formed Bell Company. They honeymooned for a year in Europe and in his luggage he packed a telephone (although no one else there had one for him to speak to!). It was very fortunate that her father was a ‘patent lawyer’ which came in handy in later years because he was frequently accused of having infringed other inventor’s patents. His own USA patent for the telephone device was accepted an hour earlier on the same day that Elisha Gray presented his own. 

Notable connections.

In 1887 Alexander Graham Bell met a little girl who would become his most famous pupil. He received a letter from a desperate father, Arthur Keller, for help with his six year old daughter Helen who had been deaf and blind since birth. Bell believed she could be taught to communicate and so passed the letter on to a friend who connected them with the Perkins Institute for the blind. Helen was given the teacher Anne Sullivan who helped her connect with the outside world. Bell remained in touch with Helen for the rest of his life and gave her money and encouragement to help her.

Also in 1887 his father-in-law Gardiner Hubbard discussed with him the idea for an organisation for scientists. With other interested parties they drew up the rules and constitution for the National Geographic Society "to increase and diffuse geographic knowledge." Hubbard remained president until his death in 1897 and Bell was elected to follow him until he died in 1922.

Towards the end.

As telephone technology continued to improve, Bell and Watson were invited to make the first transcontinental call in 1915. In 1876 they had spoken those first words over a two mile wire. This time it was three thousand, four hundred miles between Bell in New York and Watson in San Francisco. The sound was better over this greater distance than it had been thirty eight years previously.

Alexander Graham Bell was a prolific inventor and workaholic but it is his dedication to communications for the deaf rather than the hearing that he devoted his working life. When he died in 1922 aged seventy five years at the end of his funeral no telephone rang in North America for one minute of silence to mark its respect.

See also: The Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing

Next time, a contemporary inventor who went on to eclipse Bell and improve on the telephone, because he was deaf! Tomas A. Edison.

Legendary Scientists: the life and Legacy of Alexander Graham Bell.

Published by Charles River Editors.