BEGINNINGS OF THE TELEPHONE. 



BY ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL. 



[Alexander Graham Bell, scientist and inventor; born Edinburgh, Scotland, March 3, 

 1847; educated at Edinburgh and in London university; went to Canada in 1870; and 

 to Boston, 1872, where he became professor of vocal physiology at the Boston uni- 

 versity; invented the telephone and was granted a patent Ferbuary 4, 1876; invented 

 the photophone, induction balance and telephone probe for painless detection of 

 bullets in the human body ; author of Memoir on the Formation of a Deaf Variety of 

 the Human Race, and other scientific articles.] 



Many years ago my attention was directed to the mechan- 

 ism of speech by my father, Alexander Melville Bell, of Edin- 

 burg, who made a lifelong study of the subject. Many may 

 recollect the invention by my father of a means of representing, 

 in a wonderfully accurate manner, the positions of the vocal 

 organs in forming sounds. Together we carried on quite a 

 number of experiments, seeking to discover the correct 

 mechanism of English and foreign elements of speech, and I 

 remember especially an investigation in which we were en- 

 gaged concerning the musical relations of vowel sounds. 

 When vocal sounds are whispered, each vowel seems to possess 

 a particular pitch of its own, and by whispering certain vowels 

 in succession a musical scale can be distinctly perceived. 

 Our aim was to determine the natural pitch of each vowel; 

 but unexpected difficulties made their appearance, for many 

 of the vowels seemed to possess a double pitch — one due, 

 probably, to the resonance of the air in the mouth, and the 

 other to the resonance of the air contained in the cavity behind 

 the tongue, comprehending the phar^Tix and larynx. 



I hit upon an expedient for determining the pitch, which 

 at that time I thought to be original with myself. It con- 

 sisted in vibrating a tuning fork in front of the mouth while 

 the positions of the vocal organs for the various vowels were 

 silently taken. It was found that each vowel position caused 

 the reinforcement of some particular fork or forks. 



I wrote an account of these researches to Mr. Alexander J, 

 Ellis, of London. In reply, he informed me that the experi- 

 ments related had already been performed by Helmholtz, and 



171 



