14. The telephone

Alexander Graham Bell never planned to be an inventor, he wanted to be a musician or a teacher of deaf people. The subjects that he studied in school included music, art, literature, Latin and Greek. They did not include German, which moat scientific and technical writers used in their books, or science or math.

.In 1863, when Alexander was only sixteen, he became a teacher in a boys' school in Scotland. He liked teaching there, but he still wanted to become a teacher of deaf people. He read all the books about sound that he could find, and started to work on some of his own experiments. Reading scientific books was't easy for him, but he worked very hard, and learned a lot about the laws of sound.

In 1868, a terrible thing happened to the Bell family. Alexander's two brothers died of tuberculosis. Then Alexan­der became ill with the same disease. The doctor suggested a better climate, and the whole family moved to Canada. Alexander could not work for a year, but he continued his experiments with sound. He became interested in the tele­graph, and he tried to find a way to send musical sounds through electric wires. These experiments were not very successful.

After a year of rest, Alexander was offered a job at the School for the Deaf in Boston, Massachusetts. He was so successful that he was able to open his own school when he was only twenty-five.

About this time, Alexander became interested in finding a way to send the human voice through an electric wire. The parents of some of the children whom he taught contributed money for equipment. He found an assistant, Tom Watson, who worked in an electrical shop and knew a lot about building electric machines. Tom and Alexander worked together to build a machine that people could use to talk to one an­other over long distances.

The first permanent telephone line was built in Ger­many in 1877. And in 1878, the first telephone exchange was established in. New Jersey. By 1915, a coast-for-coast telephone line was opened in the United States - 5440 kilometers from New York to San Francisco. Alexander Graham Bell was invited to open the new line, and he asked his old friend, Tom Watson, to help,

15. The television

An important thing can have a small beginning. The first television picture that was ever seen was not exciting

It was only a picture of a face, and the picture only tra­veled a few meters. But to the inventor, John Logie Baird, it was wonderful.

Baird had always been interested in science, but not all of his experiments had been successful. In 1900, when he was twelve years old, he and some friends built a private telephone system. It worked well, but one night a storm pulled down the wires that the boys had stretches across the street. A man who was standing in the street was hurt by the falling wires, and the boys' telephone system had to be closed down.

A few years later, Baird and a classmate built a plane, which they launched (with John in it) from a roof. Luckily, when the plane crashed, it fell on some grass, so John wasn't badly hurt.

After studying electrical engineering at the Royal Tech­nical College in Glasgow, Scotland, John Baird went to the University of Glasgow. When he finished school, he got a job in a power station that supplied electricity to the Clyde Valley in Scotland. When he used the power supply at the station for one of his experiments, all of the electri­city in the Clyde Valley was cut off! That was the end of his job.

At this time, one of Baird's friends lived in Trini­dad. Godfrey Harris had often written to Baird about the wonderful climate there. Now John decided to go to live in Trinidad.

When he returned to England in 1922, he had no job and very little money. Since he hadn't completely recovered from his illness, his doctor said he had to leave London and go to the seashore. Baird went to Hastings. He thought about some inventions that he was interested in. One of his ideas was transmitting pictures by wireless. He worked with an old motor that he had found in the junk behind an electrician's shop, a metal cookie container, an old wireless telegraph, some needles flashlight batteries, and pieces of wood. He almost killed himself several times by touching the wrong wires. For three years, he worked alone.

Finally, on October 2, 1925, Baird transmitted a picture of a human face - the face of a fifteen-year-old boy. In January 1926, members of the Royal Institution came to see his invention. Baird's demonstration was a success.

By 1929, the public had become interested in television. In September of that year, the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation;, which controlled all broadcasting in England, started experimental transmission with Baird^’s equipment. However, other companies and inventors in England and the United States had discovered better transmission methods. In 1937, when the BBC examined all of the existing televi­sion systems, Baird's was not chosen. John Baird was not discouraged, however, and continued to work on other inven­tions.