Bell : Alexander Graham Bell and the Conquest of Solitude

Robert V. Bruce

ISBN 10: 0801496918 / ISBN 13: 9780801496912

Published by Cornell University Press Jan 1990, 1990

About this Item

Neuware - The result of a decade of study with the blessing and help of Bell's descendants, this is undoubtedly the most comprehensive and handsomely researched biography of Bell since C. D. MacKenzie's 1928 work. The author is no stylist but he has assimilated a massive amount of material into a coherent view of the man and his accomplishment. Bell's Scots forebears were strenuously devoted to the study of the spoken word. Grandfather Bell was a teacher of elocution by way of the stage and there has been speculation that his play The Bride had elements pointing to Shaw's Pygmalion; but Shaw in his preface paid tribute to Alexander's father Melville, whose 'Visual Speech' was a trailblazing attempt to universalize the phonetic alphabet. Alexander arrived in Canada with his parents in 1870 and became involved in what was his lifelong interest - the teaching and rehabilitation of the deaf. While the inventor experimented with methods of training youngsters and adults with hearing disabilities to grasp the idea of auditory communication, he continued his laboratory work with sound transmittal. Bruce reviews the inevitable trials and errors, the technology and equipment then extant, and the available studies of other inventors also near the finish line. The neck and neck competition with Elisha Gray, whose claims as originator of the telephone led to a famous court case; and the problems, mechanical and theoretical, involved in a succession of models. And after the landmark event ('Mr. Watson - Come here - I want to see you. . .'), Bell, a veritable Leonardo of sound, became fascinated by other projects. He invented the photo-phone (speech sent by light rays); an audiometer for use with the deaf; flat and cylindrical phonograph records, etc. Bruce also touches on the founding of the Bell company and the attendant legal scrambles. A pleasant, kindly man, Bell was very happily married to Mabel Hubbard, who was afflicted with deafness and had been his pupil. Throughout the enormous detail of this biography, Bell's restless intellectual energy and breakthrough fever emerge. A gargantuan work - sure to be a basic reference for both future admirers and detractors. (Kirkus Reviews).

Seller Inventory # 9780801496912

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Bell : Alexander Graham Bell and the Conquest of Solitude
• Publisher: Cornell University Press Jan 1990
• Publication Date: 1990
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0801496918
• ISBN 13: 9780801496912
• Binding: Taschenbuch
• Condition: Neu
• Dimensions: 229W x 152H x 37D millimeters 229 millimeters width by 152 millimeters height by 37 millimeters depth
• Weight: 907 grams

About this title

Synopsis

A reprint of the 1973 biography of the American inventor. Divided into pre-telephone, telephone, and post-telephone sections, also covers his work with the Smithsonian, the deaf, the National Geographic Society, and Science magazine. Paper edition ($12.95) not seen. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Review

"Both a lucid picture of an extraordinary scientific career and an engaging account of a remarkable man. . . . Professor Bruce doesn't scant the astonishing variety of Bell's interests and accomplishments, which ranged all the way from supporting important scientific periodicals . . . to teaching the deaf to speak and fighting for their right to do so . . . to inventing everything he could imagine. . . . At the same time, he has given us an extremely candid personal picture of this titan of American technology."―Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times

"The brilliant Scottish immigrant's story is more complicated, and more fascinating, than his myth. This authoritative, scientifically informed biography vividly portrays a man who, unlike his single-minded contemporary Thomas Edison, was a divided genius."―Newsweek

"The first full-scale life based on the voluminous Bell papers. It is an absorbing story. . . . The technical trials and errors, Bell's almost naive persistence, the actual components he worked with, are all attentively documented by Professor Bruce. We are, as well, given a vivid picture of the human environment out of which the telephone emerged, as one individual after another, each of immense importance to Bell, sought to advise, encourage, deter, rectify his failings or even defeat him. . . . It is in Bruce's account of Bell's life after the telephone . . . that the man himself emerges and the book takes on its most powerful interest. It becomes, as the author writes, a study not of long adversity culminating in a final crescendo of triumph, the usual pattern for heroic tales, but of a long personal struggle against the deadening handicap of early fame. . . . As it turns out, Bell's post-telephone days, from 1876 to August, 1922, when he died at age 75, were in many ways his best."―New York Times Book Review

"Until now, Alexander Graham Bell has been eclipsed by that invention which so changed communication that it is among the few which can genuinely be called revolutionary. Here he emerges not as a myth but as a man."―Los Angeles Times