BELL 



677 



BELL 



is poured into it and allowed to cool. The clay 

 mold is then destroyed and the bell is com- 

 plete. A very large bell may require several 

 weeks to cool thoroughly. 



Uses of Bells > In addition to its original 

 use as a summons to worship, the swinging 

 bell has for centuries been employed for numer- 

 ous important purposes. In the feudal days 



THE GREAT BELL OF MOSCOW 



of England a bell at evening signified it was 

 time to "cover the fire" and was called tho 

 curfew; this custom is immortalized in Rose 

 Hartwick Thorpe's poem, Curfew Must Not 

 Ring To-night, a tragic incident of the Crom- 

 well era. In pioneer days of America a bell 

 pealed warning of Indian attacks. At sea, time 

 is marked by the sounding of a bell, and buoys 

 sometimes carry bells to warn ships off danger- 

 ous coasts. In England even at the present 

 day a "town crier" is sent around in small 

 communities to announce sales or other im- 

 portant events, and he rings a bell to attract 

 attention. P.ST.A. 



Bell, NAUTICAL. On board ship time is 

 marked by the striking of a bell every hour 

 and half hour, and the term bells is used 

 exactly as one says o'clock on land. The day 

 at sea is divided into six periods of four hours 

 each, termed watches, commencing at midnight. 

 Half an hour after midnight one bell is struck ; 

 at one o'clock it is two bells; at two,, four bells; 



at three, six bells; at four, eight bells. Then 

 the round commences again, eight bells being 

 sounded every four hours. The odd number 

 of strokes denotes the half hour. 



BELL, ALEXANDER GRAHAM (1847- ), an 

 American scientist, celebrated as the inventor 

 of the first successful telephone. Everyone 

 realizes the importance of this instrument, but 

 only the business man, who may wonder how 

 business was ever 

 carried on in the 

 days before the 

 telephone, appre- 

 ciates what a mir- 

 acle-worker its in- 

 ventor really was. 

 Bell's first tele- 

 phone was pat- 

 ented in 1876 and 

 was exhibited at 

 the Centennial 

 Exposition. Its 

 possibilities were 

 evident, but it ALEXANDER GRAHAM 

 was far from be- BELL 



ing a perfect instrument. The inventor never 

 ceased his experiments upon it, and by suc- 

 cessive improvements brought it to such a 

 point that in January, 1915, conversation was 

 easily carried on between New York and San 

 Francisco. Bell was not the only experimenter 

 with long-distance conversation. Elisha Gray 

 (which see) also invented a telephone and 

 applied for a patent on the same day on which 

 Bell sent in his application, but Bell was 

 adjudged to have the prior claim, and his rights 

 were later sustained against all claimants. The 

 Bell Telephone Company has held practically 

 the monopoly of telephone business in the 

 United States, and it is stated on good author- 

 ity that a thousand million conversations are 

 held over the Bell telephones of the United 

 States and Canada annually. See TELEPHONE. 



Alexander Graham Bell was born in Edin- 

 burgh, Scotland, received his education there 

 and in London, and in 1870 moved to Canada 

 with his father, who was the inventor of the 

 "visible speech" method of teaching deaf-mutes 

 to talk. Of the thousands who have profited by 

 this system, Helen Keller (which see) is a 

 notable example. In 1872 the younger Bell 

 became professor of vocal physiology at Boston 

 .University, and there introduced his father's 

 system. Even after his inventions demanded 

 most of his time, he never lost interest in the 

 education of the deaf, and wrote various works 



