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Alexander Graham Bell and the invention of the telephone

While experimenting with how to improve the telegraph machine, scientist
Alexander Graham Bell came up with a clever idea. He realised that rather than
sending a code along an electrical wire, it might be possible to send the actual sound
of a human voice.
Bell started to experiment, but lacked the time and skill to make the equipment he
needed. So, he engaged the help of Thomas Watson, who worked in a nearby electrical
shop. The two became fast friends, and worked together to produce sounds over the
‘harmonic telegraph’, an early machine for transmitting sound.
One day in June 1875, Bell was at one end of the wire while Watson worked on a broken
transmitter in another room. By chance, Bell heard the twanging sound of Watson
plucking a string coming to him along the wire.

The next day, Bell used the same instrument to transmit the sound of his voice along
the wire to Watson. Recognisable voice sounds could be heard but not actual words.
Bell and Watson experimented all summer, and in September 1875, Bell completed
the documents asking for his first telephone patent*. The patent was granted to Bell on
7 March, 1876. It wasn’t until three days later that Bell managed to transmit the first
understandable words. The telephone was born!

Bell announced his discovery, first to scientists in Boston and then to a group of
influential people in Philadelphia including Brazilian Emperor Dom Pedro II and eminent
British physicist William Thomson. The emperor exclaimed, ‘My gosh! It talks!’
Thomson took news of the discovery to other countries and proclaimed it
‘the greatest by far of all the marvels of the electric telegraph.’

By the summer of 1877, the telephone had become a business. The first private telephone

exchange was built in Connecticut and the Bell Company was created. Bell was the
owner of a third of the company’s shares and quickly became a wealthy man.

Glossary
patent: permission to be the only person to sell a new invention

1. What was Alexander Graham Bell’s job?

2. Give one word from the first paragraph (lines 1–4) that tells you that Bell was
trying different ways of doing something.

3. a.What is fast friends in the second paragraph (lines 5–11) an example of?

a. alliteration
b. onomatopoeia
c. rhyme

d. simile
b. What is the best definition of fast as it is used in the second paragraph?

Well hard
Quick good