Radio Broadcast (May-Oct 1922)

An Evening with Dr. Alexander Graham Bell cuits, and do not belong, in the view of many authorities, within the sphere of modern radio. Nevertheless — the proof is in of Mr. Bell's amazing ingenuity and resourcefulness — it may well be that his experiments with ground and water telegraphy and telephony might long ago have given results that have not even now been attained if he had continued his experiments. But his fertile brain got to working in other directions, at aircraft, for instace. We have seen how, on March lo, 1876, he spoke the first words ever sent over a telephone line. Four years later, on Sunday, February 15, 1880 — he remembers the date because on that day his daughter, now Mrs. Fairchild, was born — he received the first words ever spoken over a wireless phone. The words spoken and received were heralded by a flash of light through his laboratory window. Then he distinctly heard, he told me: "Mr. Bell, Mr. Bell, if you hear me, come to the window and wave your hat!" The man who spoke these words was Charles Sumner Taintor. He was on the top of the Franklin School, 13th and K Streets, N.W., Washington. Mr. Bell was in his laboratory on L Street, between 13th and 14th, on the north side of the street. Curiously enough, it should also be added, though Maxwell and others abroad, in the years around 1880, were suggesting and even assuming a medium through which electromagnetic action could be propagated. Hertz, who demonstrated conclusively the existence of that medium and related electromagnetic or "Hertzian" waves and light waves, did not begin to produce his tremendous series of papers until 1888. Yet the instrument devised by Doctor Bell, by which for the first time in history words were transmitted beyond the power of the human voice and without the use of wires, might have been called a light-phone, was at both the Louisiana Purchase Exposition and the World's Fair displayed as the radiophone, and without question projected speech on electromagnetic waves, though not, of course, by means of high frequencies or a modern tuned circuit. " For some time," Mr. Bell told me, "we had been carrying on experiments between the top of the Franklin School and the Virginia Hills, a mile and a half away. These experiments had progressed until we succeeded with them that Sunday when my daughter was born." He smiled. " Looking back," he considered, " 1 was very nearly not at home!" He related, then, how, when his experiments had proven a success, he put all the records into a sealed envelope and deposited the envelope in the Smithsonian Institution, where, unopened, the envelope still remains. That fact leaked out. Shortly thereafter a gentleman named H. E. Lix, of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, gave out the information that he had invented a method of seeing by telegraph. The two ideas of an invention by this unheard-of inventor and the mystery of the sealed envelope became confounded in public prints with the remarkable result that two English inventors assailed Doctor Bell for seizing upon their ideas concerning an instrument by which one could see by telegraph! But Doctor Bell, himself, had nothing to say, for, by contract, all his inventions of that period automatically became the property of the American Bell Telephone Companies. Briefly, Mr. Bell had noted the remarkable characteristics of selenium, which, Willoughby Smith in 1873 had demonstrated, would, if placed in an electric circuit, alter its resistance to the current under the influence of light of rapidly varying intensity. With this cue Mr. Bell developed a mirror in the shape of a telephone diaphragm — a mirror of minimum thickness. Fastened to this mirror was a mouthpiece. When one spoke through this mouthpiece the mirror vibrated. He then devised means to throw a beam of light against this mirror and, by reflection, to direct this beam to the receiving apparatus. Bit by bit he then developed improvements so that the mirror in its vibrations caused fluctuations (invisible fluctuations, of course) in the light rays and corresponding variations in the degree of heat in the amount of light thrown upon the substance designed to reproduce the sounds of the voice. For instance, the word " Hello," which makes changes in a modern electrical circuit distinctly different, after being spoken into a telephone, from those made by the word "good-by", caused certain vibrations in the mirror. These in turn caused fluctuations in the rays of light, and the receiving apparatus, under their influence, sent out sounds which reproduced the word, "Hello." For receiving, he