Mr. Bell (1947)

[Music] e [Music] this was a part of Boston in the 1870s the age of long fellow and Emerson and LEL of hoop skirts and bustles of gallantry and sideburns and most fastidious manners known as [Music] Gentile the Morse Telegraph just reached ing our furthermost boundaries was a common tool in Boston the most familiar Forerunner of the electric age but still this was The Gaslight era oh my peter remember we were we were reading today about the speed of light and the speed of sound light's faster much faster light is so fast that we see the lightning almost exactly when it happens but um what about the noise it makes the Thunder that's a lot slower that's right Thunder the sound of lightning comes to us at about 1,000 ft a second so with a little arithmetic you can tell from that how far away the lightning is you know how we just as soon not know how close it is e Sun how can you tell as simple as 1 2 three when the lightning flashes count the seconds until the Thunder comes a second it 1,000 ft there 1 2 3 4 there 4 seconds away so 4 * 1,000 good so the lightning was 4,000 ft away from me pretty close that very close thunderation too dagnab close for your sincerely Willis J Walton that was a real rip snotter I guess there's one advantage manag to be in deep like those dummies over there they haven't been scared just look at them chattering away there are no advantages I can think of to being de there is a special disadvantage I should say in being dep to warnings of danger well that's one way of looking at it better be dumb than deep is what I say but I guess they go together right wrong what did you say I took leave to differ with you I said wrong I couldn't hear you it looked like you said wrong that's what I did say I said wrong and you read my lips I can't read lips nobody can and when you're deep you're dumb my dear sir the organs of speech are in no way affected by deathy the de person is mute simply because he cannot hear and hasn't been taught to speak a contradiction in terms sir a most illogical contradiction the de mute speech organs may be intact agreed but if he can't hear a word how how in the name of all that's sensible is he an idiot going to learn to say it Mr Walton my hearing must be failing me I could have sworn you used the word idiot I did and in many states the law classifies him as idiots and that's practical no speech no language and you can't think without language and you can't undo the work of the almighty the almighty is far more merciful to the deaf child than we Mr w then we what do you mean nature inflicted upon the deaf child but one flaw one little flaw imperfect hearing but we deny him speech by not teaching him to speak and Language by not teaching him to read sentimental baladash Monumental poppycock good afternoon Mr Walton goodbye goodbye you arithmetic scolar he can't hear you Mr won can never hear you he's dead he was born dead well for goodness shade who was that with the Deep Boy him Bell's the name Professor Alexander Graham Bell young poor Professor but they say he comes from a family of teachers and writers guess he got started early a Scottish family the bells they settled in Branford Canada they teach people to talk to talk clearly all kinds of people stuttering folks children and important people too ministers and judges and political leaders this young Bell's father it said in the paper publishes many books that go by thousands all over the world even to China can you imagine teaching people to say their words just right B now he lectures at the University and he teaches the de to speak with some kind of system his father invented the deaf can't here but there's a deaf young lady here in Boston they they say can understand speech very well that's Miss mael Hub daughter of Garder green hubard you've heard of Gardner hubard lawyer and Street Railway Man one of our great families the hubs well they say the way this Miss hubard can talk and understand is a wonder I guess she understands young Professor bell all right Dearing young child which I G soond to where to change by tomorrow andet in my arm like fa gift fading away thou would still be adored as this moment good evening sir did you know that if we had two pianos here and I struck this G the G of the second instrument we found I suppose that second hypothetical piano could be made to play sympathetically the whole of endearing young charm AEL darling I'm going to say a few serious words to this young man do you want to stay I should do some plain talking I should stay father very well you stay now Mr Bell you listen to me we've gone into business together you and I yes when you outlined your idea of finding a way to send several more Telegraph messages at the same time over one wire we arranged without formalities without contracts for me to enter into your Clans as a partner do you remember that of course I remember you and Mr Sanders would to supply the costs of the experiment you want an account I certainly do father you are squandering or at least mismanaging the only essential asset we have in this Enterprise do you know what that is I quite fail to follow if you think for a moment keep your seat Mr B the only thing we can't get on without is you now I haven't had detectives following you it just happens quite by chance by chance meetings with various acquaintances of mine and admirers of yours around Boston today that I'm able to follow your activities in some detail at 9:00 you are lecturing at Boston University the power of this apparatus gentleman is to me almost the unsurpassed Marvel of nature this is a formidable piece of Machinery even in the ear of a baby and yet the buzz of the knet a dried Leaf tumbled in the wind has the power to move it to make a telegraph to the brain by 11:00 you had reached the Fuller School the school has three good teachers now but you stayed there for three hours and had nothing to eat but cake how you reach the normal school by 3:00 only you know but there you were starting a new class of prospective teachers for the de I presume you've been in the laboratory since then oh yes yes sir and I must tell you Mr Bell Mr Bell these are all highly praiseworthy activities I wouldn't have you drop them forever but you've gone into business I realiz that gone into business with Tom Sanders and and me to develop this new harmonic Telegraph a highly commercial and probably enriching Enterprise remember it seems to me that if you gave your full attention to the telegraph you'd soon have time and funds for other things and for work on that Obsession of yours the transmission of speech by Telegraph Wire I just hope for all of our sakes that you slow down before you break I realize that sir please forgive me I am not well organized but I came here to tell you something something amazing beyond anything we' foreseen this this is a re nabel this simple little thing we tune them you see two of them tuned to the same pitch will vibrate together when electric current is applied to them while presumably reads differently tuned on the same line will not Rea he means all reads will be silent unless they receive impulses from instruments tuned to them exactly and the same wire we hope may be used for many many Telegraph messages at one time now Tom Watson and I were preparing for a test I was adjusting this read this very read in this manner Watson was in another room operating the transmitting read when when I heard something it was like nothing ever heard before yes a I ran to Watson and said what happened what did you do what had he done just this he it a slight twang Mabel a piece of metal vibrating so Mr Bell what was the wonderful thing that you heard this same sound diminish the murmur of it yes really Alec don't you see tell us Alec a sound was transmitted not a signal not the Clack of a telegraph this little thing moving over this coil had generated an infinitesimal current varying modulated like speech it came from Watson over there to my read over here it duplicated exactly the sound over there in this read in my hand so simple I must say I'm still at Sea if Watson's voice had vibrated his read I should have heard Watson's voice voice on my re but you didn't hear it how could you by using a parchment diaphragm sir a diaphragm attached to the re by a diaphragm very like the top of this hat you'll try it I suppose of course tonight in an hour bson has been working on it all [Music] day all ship shaped Mr Watson all righty Mr Bell thank you thank you very much no Tom yes sir I should say something rather special wonder if I can well got to you post my friend and listen yet listen well sir something [Music] important and let us pray that Comet may as Comet will for all that that man to man the world or shall brothers be where Mr Watson I I heard your voice I'm I'm sure it was your voice I couldn't make out the words I couldn't just catch them now everyone may not know that this first telephone was scientifically correct in principle and that the original instrument has worked many time since under more favorable conditions B himself couldn't know this at the time so months of tireless study and rebuilding endless testing went by months went by and winter came before the telephone performed a characteristic service with its first intelligible [Music] sentence Mr [Music] Watson Mr Watson come here I want you say Mr B Mr [Music] B B I heard every word you said distinctly you were perfectly clear I I I recognized your voice you said Mr Watson come here I want [Music] you well Mr Watson I did want you and that's how it happened the telephone was a fact but for all the Acclaim of science Bell still faced a skeptical business world that had to be shown the practical uses of the telephone so he must perforce Barn storm with this great instrument of communication hide his impatience prove the obvious he must have the good Watson serenade across the Hudson to the darting Thomases of Finance from New Brunswick New Jersey to New York Watson serated the curious I am the invisible Tom Watson everybody hears me nobody sees me AO oh Mr Watson will you oblige us with a song all right all [Music] right do not trust him gentle lady though his voice be low and [Music] sweet you gently at now the life is in morning CL not this thy [Applause] happy gentle lady trust [Music] him an amusing toour ladies and gentlemen I must confess I'm a little weary of this circus Sideshow phase of my work a little impatient I was in some haste to invent the telephone for it has urgent work to do talks sings makes you laugh quite an entertainment yes but I want to see it buckle down and work in my view of the future the novelty will wear off the instrument will be refined it will grow light convenient and familiar to every hand a common tool within the means of every Factory business every home and connected to a central switching office which can connect any two subscri subscribers in a matter of seconds and then I see its lines and poles marching thousands of miles connecting the head office of every city in the land to the head office of every other city and then I see perhaps in The Next Century the tiniest farthest Hamlet woven into the wire fabric doctors summoned disasters met and [Music] overcome so that was Bill in 1876 when I was your age starting in here at the laboratory that's what impress me most about B having done this great thing right at the start I used to say that's the way I'll handle my career however now that the boy grown older you know I get the same inspiration from the way he has carried on in all directions the variety of the man's thinking at 37 to take a case he developed with two Associates the wax phonograph record financed it with an award from France for telephonic achievement and all the earnings of the phonograph record patent went to founding the association to a death he initiated an extended the National Geographic society's magazine reaches a lot of people now and then the airplane when Bel met Len ctis and other Aviation Pioneers it was much as your life was worth to back heavier than their CRA but from that meeting of Mines the association then formed came new ways of controlling flight but he never forgot the de he spent six years without compensation taking a national sensus of the death and it all ties together somehow widening Horizons for the dep widening Horizons of the Mind Communications Transportation yes you're lucky to be nearing him today lucky he's 74 now gentlemen young gentlemen it um was suggested when I was invited here that I speak to you the laboratory's newest youngest engineers about the telephone but to tell you the truth I am sure that in your Technical Training you have learned more about the telephone than I ever shall know thousands of patterns and procedures and devices have been added since last I concerned myself with it and I must confess that I haven't kept track the telephone system today is a blend of thousands of minds and ideas the first telephone also was a blend of many Minds no invention really can belong to one mind alone realize gentlemen there are no soloists no primadana in science or engineering one cannot learn enough alone and I think it is this interdependence and the realization of it that tends to make science virtuous and not e harmonious and not discorded sometimes um the junior scientist has fixed me with a jist eye and charged your generation has done it all everything is invented finished to this I say I say it to you as long as man suffers and wants and Wonders science's work is hardly begun no doubt some young scientist at this moment is dreaming a dream or writing an equation which within your lifetime will tap some source of Universal Power and dwarf all our engines and dynamos what should you work upon in the laboratory of the shop well my ideas are limited such as they are I do not hoard them I take the liberty of offering a few example years ago using a substance whose resistance changes according to the light that falls upon it I managed to telephone for a short distance without wires along a beam of sunlight and perhaps there is for you to find a way to make the light that passes through Motion Picture film reproduced The Voice with Clarity and range brother I suggest that disasters such as the Titanic encountered in the North Atlantic are unnecessary there is a means if you can but find it of utilizing the echo principle so that a ship's Bridge may see or feel or hear an iceberg in time to change his ship's course now I give you one of my failures to ponder it has been very dear to me throughout my life before the telephone I tried to build a device to record the human voice visual greable symbols this if you succeed can have several practical applications the immediate one will immeasurably benefit the death you will understand why this means so much to me by profession by personal wish and Instinct I have always been a teacher of the death this then is an assignment from me to you a rather special thing in the greater picture of science but young gentlemen I toss you that brand with this final word do not neglect those obscure Corners where men work to discover the unknown to prove the intangible for here is Dawn coming up here is tomorrow [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] many scientific Minds working together in many places have since brought forth much that Bell's prophetic Vision foresaw the motion picture was given a voice radio and television were perfected life-saving mechanisms of sonar and radar were designed they have succeeded to as he hoped they would in turning spoken words indivisible symbols that deaf children can learn to read as the words are spoken in the Laboratories that now bear his name Bell's scientific heirs have taken a leading part over the years in the research that made all these things possible yet these are but eddes in the main channel of telephone research as step by step we move toward the realization of Bell's early dream his dream of a day when anyone anywhere can talk clearly and at a moment notice with anyone anywhere else and let us pray that comeet may as comeet will for our L that man to man the world or shall brothers be what are [Music] that [Music]