"Leave the beaten track occasionally and dive into the woods. Every time you do so you will be certain to find something that you have never seen before. Follow it up, explore all around it, and before you know it, you will have something worth thinking about to occupy your mind. All really big discoveries are the results of thought."

Bell's willingness to search out the path less taken resulted in some of the world's most important inventions. It has been said that Bell invented the telephone by searching for it in places where other inventors would never think to look. Bell's ability to believe in the impossible has served the world well.

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Sunday, June 25, 1876, was the day of the Battle of the Little Big Horn, or Custer's Last Stand. Far away, in Philadephia, it was also the day when Bell demonstrated his new invention at the Centennial Exhibition. The Exhibition was organized to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The telephone was its star attraction.

Having entered at the last moment, Bell failed to obtain a booth in the electrical section. Instead, he was located far away, in a corner of the educational exhibit. It was a hot day and the judges did not relish the long trip down the corridor and up a flight of stairs.

Their fatigue vanished with the first words that came crackling over the telephone wire. Pandemonium broke out as these distinguished scientists raced to see if Bell's voice in another room had indeed produced the sounds. Kings and ordinary citizens alike sat transfixed before this new wonder.

Bell himself had no doubts about the importance of his new discovery. Shortly after the telephone's invention, he had written to his father,

"The day is coming when telegraph wires will be laid on to houses just like water or gas -- and friends will converse with each other without leaving home."

For Alexander Graham Bell, it was the first of many glimpses into the world of the future.

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In retrospect, every step on the path of Bell's early life seemed a step closer to the telephone. Young Aleck Bell was born into a family of learning and scholastic achievement. The whole family was enthralled with the idea of sound and its possibilities. Aleck's grandfather, Alexander Bell, was an eminent elocutionist. His father Melville developed the first international phonetic alphabet. Not surprisingly, young Aleck's first memory was of sitting in a wheatfield, trying to hear the wheat grow.

Aleck's mother, Eliza Bell, was almost totally deaf. Aleck soon discovered that by pressing his lips against his mother's forehead, he could make the bones resonate to his voice. His mother became the first person to have her world expanded by the genius of Alexander Graham Bell.

Aleck was a gifted pianist, who learned early to descriminate pitch. As a teenager, he noticed that a chord struck on one piano would be echoed by a piano in another room. He realized that whole chords could be transmitted through the air, vibrating at the other end at exactly the same pitch. In the years to come, this simple observation would eventually lead him to the telephone.

Aleck also benefitted from his father's special qualities as a teacher . Melville Bell encouraged his sons Melly and Aleck to build a speaking machine. Thereafter, visitors to the Bell home were surprised to hear the sound "ma ma" emanating from the upper floors. There were no babies in the Bell household.

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Alexander Graham Bell never set out to invent the telephone. Initially, he wanted to develop a multiple telegraph. Only later did he realize that a far greater prize lay at the end of the road.

In telegraphy, a current is interrupted in the pattern known as Morse Code. Bell hoped to convey several messages simultaneously, each at a different pitch. However, he could not see a way to make-and-break the current at the precise pitch required. "How," he wondered, "could pitch be conveyed along a wire?

Bell knew that speech was composed of many complex sound vibrations. While on vacation in Brantford, Ontario, in 1874, he constructed an "ear phonoautograph" from a stalk of hay and a dead man's ear. When Bell spoke into the ear, the hay traced the sound waves on a piece of smoked glass.

Bell began to wonder whether this wave could be converted into an electrical transmission. Suddenly, all his work with pitch, electricity and speaking machines "fused" in one sudden flash of inspiration. The sound waves, he realized, could be reproduced in a continuous, but undulating, current. This current was the missing link to the telephone.

At this early point, Bell conceived the instrument as a series of reeds arranged over a long magnet. As each reed responded to the voice, it would vibrate alternately toward and away from the magnet, creating the undulating current.

This "harp apparatus" (as Bell called it) was not the telephone. He did not yet realize that a single reed could convey all the elements of human speech. The breakthrough came one day in June, in 1875. Bell asked Thomas Watson to pluck a steel receiver reed with his finger to make sure it was not stuck. When Watson vibrated the reed, the receiver in Bell's room also vibrated, even though the current was turned off. Bell realized that the vibration had generated an undulating current, solely on the strength of a slight magnetic field. In that moment, the telephone was born.

The telephone patent was one of the most valuable ever issued. Bell received it on March 7, 1876, four days after his 29th birthday. Speech, however, had not yet been transmitted. That would occur five days later, on March 12, when Watson heard the famous words, "Mr. Watson -- Come here -- I want to see you."

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238k Quicktime VR movie of the main kiteroom in the Bell Museum in Baddeck, Nova Scotia.

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While working on the telephone, Bell mentioned to Watson that their next project would be a flying machine. On his honeymoon, he told his wife Mabel that he dreamed of flying machines with telephones attached.

By 1891, Bell was testing helicopter models. He quickly moved on to kites as the most stable structure for human flight. Throughout the 1890's, residents of Baddeck were accustomed to looking up at Beinn Bhreagh, to see the red kites flying in the sun. No doubt, many of these practical people murmured amongst themselves as they watched his designs waft over the Bras d'Or Lakes. At night, the kites glowed from the light of the lanterns suspended in their cradles.

In spite of doubts, the population of Baddeck was soon pulled into Bell's kite flying activities. Young girls sat sewing in the kite house, surrounded by piles of bright red silk. Young men were engaged to take photographs or work the pulleys. Older people became accustomed to seeing galloping horses careening across the meadows, in often vain attempts to lift the kites.

It was just as well that Bell confined his kite-flying to Beinn Bhreagh. He knew how a close association with flight could injure a professional reputation. In May, 1896, Bell photographed the 1/4 mile flight of a model built by his good friend Simon Pierpont Langley. While his models flew successfully, however, Langley's full-sized plane got caught in the launching gear and crashed. Bell always believed that the public ridicule his friend suffered was responsible for his early death. Ironically, Wilbur and Orville Wright flew at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, only nine days later, on December 17, 1903. Since their flight was made in secret, however, their achievement came too late to save Langley. His vindication came only after his death, when he was named one of aviation's "pioneers."

Undeterred by Langley's failure, Bell continued his own series of experiments. He would not, however, taste public success until his association with the Aerial Experiment Association in 1907. That year, he collaborated with four young men to develop a series of airplanes that would make aviation history. On February 23, 1909, the Silver Dart rose into the air and flew for a full half mile. The people of Baddeck, and the world, applauded.

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It is part of Bell's legend that he made his most important discoveries while on the road to somewhere else. The telephone was an accidental by-product of the multiple telegraph. The tetrahedron grew out of his search for a flying machine.

Bell hoped to develop a kite large enough to carry a man. But how could he increase the size without increasing the weight? With this question, Bell took his first step on the road to the tetrahedron.

His first innovation was the triangular box kite. By removing one of the kite's sides and joining the remaining two sides together, he could remove one of the wooden sticks. This decreased the weight and had a positive effect on stability. Moreover, a triangle is a more stable shape than a rectangle, which tends to distort in the wind.

The next step was to combine several small triangular kites. By adding many small surfaces, Bell increased the total surface area, with little increase in weight. Eventually, he evolved a figure made up of four equilateral triangles. This was the tetrahedron, one of nature's most stable structures.

Like the telephone, the tetrahedron was born in a moment of original insight. Once Bell conceived the form, his agile mind quickly grasped its potential. He realized that it could be made very cheaply, of metal. Bell's notebooks for August 25, 1902 reveal sketches of bridges that resemble the bridges spanning our own skies.

It was Mabel Bell who realized that her husband would need help in proving the tetrahedron's potential to the world. In 1906, she asked young Douglas McCurdy to find an assistant for Dr. Bell. Douglas showed up that summer with Frederick, or "Casey," Baldwin, who had just graduated with an engineering degree. Like Thomas Watson during the telephone years, Baldwin provided the technical expertise that Bell lacked.

Bell assigned Baldwin the job of building an observation tower composed of tetrahedral cells. As a test of strength, it was built on the summit of Beinn Bhreagh, where it was assaulted by the winds sweeping across the mountain.

The 4-ft. tetrahedral cells were made of half-inch iron pipe. Each cell supported 4000 pounds without stress. Furthermore, a damaged cell could easily be replaced without weakening the rest of the structure.

The opening ceremonies were held in August, 1907. Braver souls in the audience climbed the stairs to the observation platform. From there, they looked down over the Bras d'Or Lakes, a dizzying 600 feet below. The National Geographic Magazine covered the occasion.

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The Silver Dart was the fourth and final airplane produced by the members of the Aerial Experiment Association. It incorporated all the lessons learned with previous designs. The tail section was shortened for easier turning, while a bi-wing elevator increased stability. The 8-cylinder, 35 hp engine powered a chain-driven propeller, carved from a single block of wood. The Silver Dart also carried the first water-cooling radiator ever used in an airplane. With fuel and pilot, it weighed approximately 363 kg. The members of the A.E.A. had high hopes for the craft.

Thomas Selfridge was not present to observe the group's final triumph. As a member of the Aeronautical Board of the U.S. army, Selfridge was asked to witness the Wright trials, held at Fort Myer, Va. on September 17, 1908. Selfridge volunteered to fly with Orville Wright. The experiment ended in tragedy, when the plane crashed. Wright escaped with two broken ribs and broken leg. Selfridge died that night. It was the first airplane fatality.

It was a heavy blow to the remaining members of the A.E.A. Yet they kept on experimenting. On February 23, 1909, the population of Baddeck gathered on the ice of Baddeck Bay to witness the flight of the Silver Dart. The Bells, snug in fur robes, watched from their sleigh.

For the people of Baddeck, it was time to share in Bell's final triumph. Baddeck's own J.A.D. McCurdy piloted the Silver Dart a full half mile over the length of the bay, at the astonishing speed of 40 m.p.h. It was the first heavier-than-air flight in Canada and the first manned flight in the British Empire.

Fifty years after the original event, (Name) built and flew a replica of the Silver Dart. Once again, spectactors gathered on the ice of Baddeck Bay to watch a silver biplane climb into the winter sky. This CD contains the original film of that commemorative flight. Today, the replica is housed in the National Aviation Museum in Ottawa, together with various other Bell artifacts.

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It all began with finding a safe way to take off and land on water. Bell had already used barges, floats, and steamers to pull his large kites into the air. His associate, Casey Baldwin, convinced him that an airplane hull mounted on hydrofoils would take off under its own power. Together, they began working on designs.

The two men experimented with various arrangements of hydrofoils. In the winter, Bell tested the smallest models in the bathtub of his Washington home. Others were large enough to be pulled by a motorboat. Eventually, the inventors settled on a series of blades which descended in size as they approached the water line. The upper, larger blades lifted from the water first, followed by the smaller blades. As the area was reduced, so was the resistance.

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250k Quicktime VR movie of the HD-4 Hydrofoil .

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Once the United States entered the war in 1917, Bell wished to lend his talents to the effort. He soon realized, however, that the field of aviation was now in the hands of professionals. Bell briefly considered reviving his old experiments in sonar, as a means of detecting submarines. He abandoned this idea upon discovering that the U.S. Navy's hydrophones did the job very effectively.

During these years, most people feared the possibility of a submarine attack. The American Department of War called for proposals to build submarine chasers, in the form of motorboats. Bell argued that a hydrofoil was the better choice: it could skim over a mine-infested bay in the same way that a skitterbug moves across a pond. In his musings, Bell had even built an iron model of a skitterbug.

The final design was 60 feet long and almost 6 feet in diameter at its widest point. Named the HD-4, it was launched on October 18, 1918.

Two outrigger hulls were designed to float the craft when at rest. The navy's Liberty engines had not yet arrived, so two Renault engines were mounted on pedastals affixed to the hull. Each drove a propeller, which faced the rear of the craft.

Three sets of hydrofoils provided a triangular base of support. Under the bow, a fourth set ensured that the craft did not slam back down onto the water during lift-off, in an action known as porpoising. Once the HD-4 was up and running, this set of hydrofoils remained inactive.

Bell's enthusiastic report to the navy resulted in the shipment of the long-awaited engines. In trials held on September 9, 1919, the HD-4 achieved a speed of almost 71 mph. and became the fastest watercraft in the world. Riding on the two lowest blades, it easily lifted almost 14,000 pounds.

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Alexander Graham Bell's first invention, a device for cleaning wheat, was developed when he was just eleven years old. At the age of 75, a year before his death, he received a patent on the fastest watercraft in the world: the HD-4. Between these two inventions, Bell's fertile brain formulated hundreds of new concepts. Yet most people know of him only as the inventor of the telephone.

Many of Bell's ideas were simply conceived before their time. His photophone, for example, achieved optic transmission of sound. In many ways, it resembled the fibre-optic telecommunications we use today. While working for the U.S. Census Bureau, Bell designed a machine for the sorting of punch-coded cards. In doing so, he used binary systems of computation that resembled the principles behind our own computers. Like many of his ideas, however, this one never moved beyond the theoretical stage.

During his Volta Laboratory period, Bell and his associates considered impressing a magnetic field on a record, as a means of reproducing sound. Although the trio briefly experimented with the concept, they were unable to develop a workable prototype. They abandoned the idea, never realizing they had glimpsed a basic principle which would one day find its application in the tape recorder, the computer, and the CD-ROM.

Bell's own home used a primitive form of air conditioning, in which fans blew currents of air across great blocks of ice. He also anticipated modern concerns with fuel shortages and industrial pollution. Methane gas, he reasoned, could be produced from the waste of farms and factories. At Beinn Bhreagh, he experimented with composting toilets and devices to capture water from the atmosphere. In a magazine interview published shortly before his death, he reflected on the possibility of using solar panels to heat houses.

Bell's notebooks are still available for anyone to consult. There, we can read and understand concepts that seemed fanciful or incomprehensible at the time of his death. Who knows what secrets future researchers may discover?

In June, 2002, the US Congress stripped Bell of the honour and credited a little-known Italian immigrant named Antonio Meucci as the phone's true inventor. Could this be true?

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