Radio Broadcast (May-Oct 1922)

An Evening with Dr. Alexander Graham Bell 205 the radio art and cannot help feeling regret that this keen experimenter could not live long enough to see the wonderful practical benefits which mankind was to receive as the direct result of his work, carried out in the interest of pure science. It is because of the results following from the work of such men as Hertz that our most highly developed industries are to-day spending millions of dollars annually in the support of purely scientific research; the directors of these immense laboratories know too well that no real scientific truth can be discovered without bringing with it some application which will benefit the industry itself. Very shortly after the death of Hertz in 1894 the world began to hear of the modest successes of Marconi, whose optimism and aggressiveness, combined with the wonderful foundation of knowledge which Hertz had given, soon showed that the possible reliable distance of radio communication was probably limited only by the extent of the earth's surface. In our next number will be taken up the work of the later and better known inventors and scientists, Marconi, Fleming, De Forest^ Fessenden, Armstrong and others, who, building on the work of those earlier experimenters we have mentioned in this number, have given us the modern radio telephone. An Evening with Dr. Alexander Graham Bell By DONALD WILHELM WE TELEPHONED to Dr. Bell shortly after dinner. We, the managing editor of the IVorld's IVork and 1, wished, if possible, to see him, his secretary was told, if he felt physically able to see us. Back came the inquiry a bit later "What time would you like to come, to-night?" "To-night?" "O yes. Doctor Bell often receives callers at night. He says that he will be glad to see you at any time up until two or three o'clock in the morning! " At our end, we reckoned that there must be something wrong with the line ! We considered that Doctor Bell was twenty-nine years of age when he invented the telephone in 1876, must therefore be in his seventy-fifth year! Being, ourselves, in the thirties, we felt that 9:30 would be late enough for us. At 9:30 Doctor Bell arose from his family group, a figure as nearly majestic as the figure of a man ever comes to be; a veritable oak of a man; a tall man finely put together, in a light gray suit, with a skin tanned by the out-ofdoors, and eye as clear and blue and rested as that of a young man. His white copious hair was flung back. A curved pipe hung in a per fectly steady hand. He wore neither glasses nor spectacles. 1 glanced at his hands. There was not a tell-tale mark of age on them. Later, when he snatched a paper pad from a handy table and with pipe dangling from his mouth and both hands and arms unsupported he drew a diagram, we could not discern the suggestion of a tremble. 1 confess that I wrote down in my notebook then and there just this: "Think what this man has done for the world! The hazards of Science are great enough, but where, except in the world of Science, can a man give his life for the millions yet conserve it still!" " Light up," he laughed, settling himself in his chair. " Will you have a cigar or a cigarette — O you prefer your own brands? That's fine! 1 like to pull on this old pipe." It was all like an idyl. Here was a man who, within the span of a lifetime, had seen his dreams come true; who had topped the mountain, held his ground, who says he never felt stronger intellectually. " My mind has a greater power of concentration," he observes when you ask him, "than it ever had. It seems to be quicker and it does not tire along the line in which 1 am interested. I sometimes work for eighteen hours at a stretch." And "by the by," to use his phrase, you are privileged to go along hand-in-hand with him down