A Connected World – Forever Indebted to a Talking Dog, Cadaver Ears, and a Bowl of Acid
As unlikely a combination as can be, it’s the very things mentioned in the title that have contributed to the connectivity we take for granted today.
Alexander Graham Bell’s invention - the telephone - has led to an industry that transformed the world.
But little do people know that Bell was never interested in creating a telephone for the sake of connecting everyone. It just happened to be a series of steps, some to gain a stable income and others to foster his dream that eventually led to this idea. He was essentially obsessed with a much bigger agenda – of allowing the deaf to visualise speech without the use of any sort of sign language. The part he played in that area, though, has been the focus of much heated debate, with his intentions being considered misguided by many.
Whatever may be the case, his reluctant ingenuity still yielded an innovation that has resulted in our way of life.
“From his father, he (Bell) knew which parts of the mouth and throat controlled which sounds, how to read those sounds from an obscure alphabet, and how to give the speech the power to shock, to astound. From watching his mother lean her ear toward the piano as she played, he understood how to listen very closely to the tiniest shades of sound. From holding his mouth close to her ear and manipulating his own speech so that she could hear it, he began to believe that the transfer of information from his ears to her mind was a transfer of power, too. And from the way people respected her when she used her own voice, he understood how much power speech could contain and confer—not just before a captive audience but also in life.”
[Katie Booth – The Invention of Miracles]
