August 12, 1922] 



NA TURE 



he endangered the success of his own researches by 

 the readiness of the aid he rendered to others. 



Mayor cherished a great ambition to remove the 

 equipment of the Tortugas Laboratory to some locality 

 in the West Indies and make it a truly international 

 meeting-place for biologists. Just before the war his 

 opportunity seemed to have come, and he was about 

 to enter into negotiations for a site in Jamaica when 

 the storm broke. It was a bitter disappointment to 

 Mayor that he was not able to proceed with his project 

 after the war. not least because he hoped that, in his 

 yearly assemblies, English biologists would be repre- 

 sented more fully than in the past, and that in this 

 way the cause of Anglo-American unity, which he 

 held very dear, would be furthered. F. A. P. 



Dr. Alexander Graham Bell. 



Ox August 1 Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, one of the 

 world's greatest inventors, died at the age of seventy- 

 five \ears. The effects of early upbringing and en- 

 vironment always leave their mark on a man's life, and 

 in Graham Bell's case they are specially apparent. 

 His father spent the first half of his life as a lecturer on 

 elocution at Edinburgh, and was also a prolific author 

 of books on the same subject. Among his son's earliest 

 experiments were the recording of speech waves on 

 smoked cylinders. Graham Bell was a student at 

 Edinburgh University, and later he assisted his father 

 when the latter was a lecturer at University College, 

 London. In 1870, for reasons connected with Graham's 

 health, the family migrated to Brantfprd, near Tutela 

 Heights, Ontario. In 1873 Graham was appointed 

 professor of physiology at Boston University. In 1874 

 lie invented a system of harmonic multiple telegraphy, 

 and in that year he began a series of experiments which 

 led him at last to realise in practice his conception of 

 an articulating telephone. 



Considering the marvellous results achieved the 

 mechanism of the telephone is wonderfully simple. 

 Previous to its invention, elaborate devices had been 

 proposed containing large numbers of tuned reeds so 

 as to cover the whole gamut of the human voice. The 

 final form of the instrument is fully described in 

 Graham Bell's patents of 1876 and 1877. Although 

 he made several other notable inventions, the telephone 

 \\ ill always be outstanding as his supreme achievement. 

 It first attracted world-wide attention at the Centennial 

 Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876. After Graham 

 Hell had laid down all the essential principles of tele- 

 phony, Edison developed his carbon transmitter. 



In 1878 the first telephone exchange was established. 

 There are now about tw r enty-one million telephones 

 connected with the various exchanges throughout the 

 world. In the early days Graham Bell regarded 

 twenty miles as the limit to which articulate speech 

 rould be sent. It has now been sent over five thousand 

 miles. 



In 1917 the Bell Memorial Committee presented to 

 Brantford, Ontario, a public park, the hou.se in which 

 Graham Bell lived when he made his epoch-making 

 discos ery, and a noble monument, to commemorate the 

 invention of the telephone. Graham Bell in his later 

 years took the keenest interest in aeronautics and 

 geophysics. When Father Cortie recorded the mag- 



NO. 2754, VOL. I 10] 



netic storm of August n, 1919, in Nature (vol. 103, 

 p. 483), Graham Bell wrote to say that he had noticed 

 a display of the Aurora Borealis at Cape Breton Island 

 on that date, " Pulsations of light swept upward to the 

 zenith resembling clouds driven before a heavy wind " 

 (vol. 104, p. 74). He was made a doctor of science at 

 Oxford in 1906, and in 1913 the Royal Society awarded 

 him the Hughes medal and the Institution of Electrii al 

 Engineers made him an Honorary Member. On his 

 visit to this country in 7920 the freedom of his native 

 city of Edinburgh was conferred on him. He was held 

 in universal esteem. As the founder of a great and 

 flourishing industry which ameliorates the conditions 

 of life he was a great benefactor to humanity. 



A. R. 



Workers in many branches of science and education 

 will deeply sympathise with Prof. W. A. Bone, pro- 

 fessor of chemical technology in the Imperial College 

 of Science and Technology, on the death of his wife 

 on July 26. Before her marriage to Prof. Bone in 

 1916, Mrs. Bone, who was then Miss Liddianl. was 

 headmistress of the St. Albans High School for Girls, 

 and had previously been a member of the teaching 

 staff of the Ladies' College, Cheltenham. She was a 

 graduate in arts of the University of London, and 

 possessed exceptional capacity for teaching as well as 

 for organisation. While she was head of the St. 

 Albans High School, the domestic economy school was 

 inaugurated there. Mrs. Bone took an active interest 

 in science progress in general, and her husband's 

 researches in particular, and her death will be regretted 

 by a large circle of pupils and friends who came under 

 her strong and delightful influence. 



Oriental learning has suffered a serious loss by the 

 death, at the age of eighty-five years, of Mr. Charles 

 Henry Tawney, CLE. Educated at Rugby and 

 Cambridge, where he gained the highest classical 

 honours, and a fellowship at Trinity College, Mr. 

 Tawney joined the Indian Educational Service, and 

 became professor at the Presidency College, Calcutta, 

 where he won the esteem of his pupils by his kindness 

 and learning. He became Director of Public Instruc- 

 tion in Bengal, and retired from the Educational Service 

 in 1892. On reaching England he became librarian 

 at the India Office. Much of his time was occupied 

 in assisting writers on Indian subjects, by whom he 

 was regarded with the greatest esteem. He was an 

 admirable Sanskrit scholar, and published several 

 works, the best known of which are translation 

 great collections of Indian folk tales, the Kalha 

 Sarit Sagara and the Katha Kosa, enriched with 

 valuable notes, which displayed a wide knowledge of 

 the literature of folk-tales. One of his sons, Mr. R. H. 

 Tawney, Fellow of Balliol, is a distinguished writer and 

 lecturer on economic problems. 



We regret to see the announcement of the death, on 

 |ulv 25, of Dr. Arthur Ransome, F.R.S., lately pro- 

 fessor of public health in Owens College and examiner 

 hi e in the Universities of Cambridge and 

 Manchester. 



