Alexander Graham Bell

On Sunday, June 25, 1876 was the day when Bell demonstrated his new invention at the Centennial Exhibition. Bell having entered the exhibition so late that he was not able to take a booth in the science section but he was able to get on in the education section. Many of the judges did not even want to take the trip to the area but when they did everyone was suprised and shocked at such a great invention.

Originally Alexander had not set out to invent a phone but instead wanted to make a multiline telegraph. Bell had been running into many problems with this but then one day while on vacation he figured out a way where sound could travel through electricity. His original "phone" was composed of several reeds afixed to a long magnet where he saw that each reed was affected by his talking. Then yet another accident occured that helped Alexander to realize that an eletric current was not need just a magnetic field. The patent for the telephone was issued March 7, 1876.

A little known fact was that Bell had planned on working on a flight machine that would have a telephone inside of it. He had originally planned on a helicopter style craft but quickly moved onto kite style flight. Some people criticized him because of his work on flight. But eventually the people became used to it and some even helped him. A friend of Alexander , named Simon Pierpont Langley, had suffered extreme public ridicule and when his full-size model of his plane crashed was believed to cause his early death. Wilbur and Orville right flew their first succesful test nine days after Simon's failure. But in 1907 Bell was still able to make history by cooperating with four other men and they were able to make a plane that could travel for a half-mile.