Alexander Graham Bell Famous Quotes

In 1907 the American Telephone and Telegraph Company faced a crisis. The patents of its founder, Alexander Graham Bell, had expired, and it seemed in danger of losing its near-monopoly on phone services. Its board summoned back a retired president, Theodore Vail, who decided to reinvigorate the company by committing to a bold goal: building a system that could connect a call between New York and San Francisco. The challenge required combining feats of engineering with leaps of pure science. Making use of vacuum tubes and other new technologies, AT&T built repeaters and amplifying devices that accomplished the task in January 1915. On the historic first transcontinental call, in addition to Vail and President Woodrow Wilson, was Bell himself, who echoed his famous words from thirty-nine years earlier, “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.” This time his former assistant Thomas Watson, who was in San Francisco, replied, “It would take me a week.”1

11. Never give up on yourself Everyone may give up on you but never give up on yourself, because if you do, it will also become the end. Believe that anything can be achieved with effort. Most important of all, we must understand that dyslexia is not just a hindrance to learning; it may also be considered a gift. Multiple studies have proven that dyslexic people are highly creative and intuitive. Not to mention the long list of dyslexic people who have succeeded in their chosen fields; Known scientist and the inventor of telephone, Alexander Graham Bell; The inventor of telescope, Galileo Galilei; Painter and polymath, Leonardo da Vinci; Mathematician and writer Lewis Carroll; American journalist, Anderson Cooper; Famous actor, Tom Cruise; Director of our all time favorites Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park, Steven Spielberg; Musician Paul Frappier; Entrepreneur and Apple founder, Steve Jobs; and maybe the person who is reading this book right now. We must always remember, everything can be learned and anyone can learn how to read!  

Look at the telephone; it would remind you of a unique scientist, Alexander Graham Bell. He, besides being a great inventor, was also a man of great compassion and service. In fact, much of the research which led to the development of the telephone was directed at finding solutions to the challenges of hearing impaired people and helping them to be able to listen and communicate. Bell’s mother and wife were both hearing impaired and it profoundly changed Bell’s outlook to science. He aimed to make devices which would help the hearing impaired. He started a special school in Boston to teach hearing impaired people in novel ways. It was these lessons which inspired him to work with sound and led to the invention of the telephone. Can you guess the name of the most famous student of Alexander Graham Bell? It was Helen Keller, the great author, activist and poet who was hearing and visually impaired. About her teacher, she once said that Bell dedicated his life to the penetration of that ‘inhuman silence which separates and estranges’.

Before he could start writing Kilby’s application, though, Mosher had to resolve a fundamental tactical question. Anyone who applies for a patent has to decide whether he needs it for offensive or for defensive purposes—whether, to use lawyers’ favorite metaphor, he wants his patent to be a sword or a shield. The decision usually turns on the novelty of the invention. If somebody has a genuinely revolutionary idea, a breakthrough that his competitors are almost sure to copy, his lawyers will write a patent application they can use as a sword; they will describe the invention in such broad and encompassing terms that they can take it into court for an injunction against any competitor who tries to sell a product that is even remotely related. In contrast, an inventor whose idea is basically an extension of or an improvement on an earlier idea needs a patent application that will work as a shield—a defense against legal action by the sword wielders. Such a defensive patent is usually written in much narrower terms, emphasizing a specific improvement or a particular application of the idea that is not covered clearly in earlier patents. Probably the most famous sword in the history of the patent system was the sweeping application filed on February 14, 1876, by a teacher and part-time inventor named Alexander Graham Bell. That first telephone patent (No. 174,465) was so broad and inclusive that it became the cornerstone—after Bell and his partners had fought some 600 lawsuits against scores of competitors—of the largest corporate family in the world. In the nature of things, though, few inventions are so completely new that they don’t build on something from the past. The majority of patent applications, therefore, are written as shields—as improvements on some earlier invention. Some of the most important patents in American history fall into this category, including No. 586,193, “New and Useful Improvements in Transmitting Electrical Impulses,” granted to Guglielmo Marconi in 1898; No. 621,195, “Improvements in and Relating to Navigable Balloons,” granted to Ferdinand Zeppelin in 1899; No. 686,046, “New and Useful Improvements in Motor Carriages,” granted to Henry Ford in 1901; and No. 821,393, “New and Useful Improvements in Flying Machines,” granted to Orville and Wilbur Wright in 1906.