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Small magnetic key holder that is easily accessible. So easy, one can pull right up to it. Contains log only, so BYOP. Please replace as found; as high as possible. HIGH MUGGLE AREA.
FTF Congratulations to WKY_LDS (July 15, 2010 5:52 am)
Alexander Bell was born on March 3, 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland to Professor Alexander Melville Bell and Eliza Grace (née Symonds). Although he was born "Alexander", at age ten, he made a plea to his father to have a middle name like his two brothers, and for his 11th birthday, his father allowed him to adopt the middle name "Graham", chosen out of admiration for a family friend. To close relatives and friends he remained "Aleck" which his father continued to call him into later life
From an early age, Bell demonstrated the skill and desire to invent devises that were practical in nature, one of the first being a wheat dehusker for the mill onwed by a family friend. Bell's preoccupation with his mother's deafness led him to study acoustics.
Bell experimented with a "harmonic telegraph". The basic concept behind his device was that messages could be sent through a single wire if each message was transmitted at a different pitch, but work on both the transmitter and receiver was needed. In 1874, telegraph message traffic was rapidly expanding and in the words of Western Union President William Orton, had become "the nervous system of commerce", Bell mentioned that he was working on a method of sending multiple tones on a telegraph wire using a multi-reed device that he hoped would transmit the human voice by telegraph. On 2 June 1875, Thomas A. Watson, an experienced electrical designer and mechanic, accidentally plucked one of the reeds and Bell, at the receiving end of the wire, heard the overtones of the reed; overtones that would be necessary for transmitting speech. That demonstrated to Bell that only one reed or armature was necessary, not multiple reeds. This led to the "gallows" sound-powered telephone, which was able to transmit indistinct, voice-like sounds, but not clear speech.
Meanwhile, Elisha Gray was also experimenting with acoustic telegraphy and thought of a way to transmit speech using a water transmitter. On February 14, 1876, Gray filed a caveat with the U.S. Patent Office for a telephone design that used a water transmitter. That same morning, Bell's lawyer filed Bell's application with the patent office. There is considerable debate about who arrived first and Gray later challenged the primacy of Bell's patent.
On March 10, 1876, three days after his patent was issued, Bell succeeded in getting his telephone to work, using a liquid transmitter similar to Gray's design. Vibration of the diaphragm caused a needle to vibrate in the water, varying the electrical resistance in the circuit. When Bell spoke the famous sentence "Mr Watson—Come here—I want to see you" into the liquid transmitter, Watson, listening at the receiving end in an adjoining room, heard the words clearly. Although Bell was accused, and is still accused, of stealing the telephone from Gray, after March 1876, Bell focused on improving the electromagnetic telephone and never used Gray's liquid transmitter in public demonstrations or commercial use.
On August 3, 1876, he amazed guests as well as his family when a message was received at the Bell home from Brantford, four miles (six km) distant along an improvised wire strung up along telegraph lines and fences, and laid through a tunnel. The guests at the household distinctly heard people in Brantford reading and singing. This clearly proved that the telephone could work over long distances.
The Bell Telephone Company was created in 1877, and by 1886, over 150,000 people in the U.S. owned telephones. Bell company engineers made numerous other improvements to the telephone, which emerged as one of the most successful products ever. In 1879, the Bell company acquired Edison's patents for the carbon microphone from Western Union. This made the telephone practical for long distances and it was no longer necessary to shout to be heard at the receiving telephone. In January 1915, Bell made the first ceremonial transcontinental telephone call. Calling from the AT&T head office at 15 Day Street in New York City, Bell was heard by Thomas Watson at 333 Grant Avenue in San Francisco.
Other inventions included a primitive air conditioner for his home and the metal detector. Bell worked extensively in medical research and invented techniques for teaching speech to the deaf by impressing a magnetic field on a record as a means of reproducing sound but was unable to develop a workable prototype. He and his associates abandoned the idea, never realizing they had glimpsed a basic principle which would one day find its application in the tape recorder, the hard disc and floppy disc drive and other magnetic media.
Alexander Graham Bell Bell died of diabetes on August 2, 1922, at his private estate, Beinn Bhreagh, Nova Scotia, at age 75. Dr. Alexander Graham Bell was buried atop Beinn Bhreagh mountain. Upon the conclusion of Bell's funeral, "every phone on the continent of North America was silenced in honor of the man who had given to mankind the means for direct communication at a distance".
Additional Hints
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