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Alexander Graham Bell

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2020-08-02
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2020-08-02
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  1. “Anybody to be ready. By the next day, Alex laid breathing heavily. On august first, he opened his eyes and called for his secretary to take dictation. Don't hurry, she said, and the old man smiled. I have to, he replied. Speaking was a supreme effort. Alexander Graham Bell paused, closed his eyes winced, and then He could manage no more. Daisy found herself standing at her father's bedside, watching him struggle for breath. Daddy is still here, she wrote to her sister, but I have the strange feeling that his spirit is struggling to get loose and is only held to his body by slender cords.”

    2020-08-02 · Founders · #138 Alexander Graham Bell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “His obsession with his routine made him maddening to live with. So for the rest of Alex's life, he never stopped being an inventor. He tried to invent human-powered flight before the Wright brothers. He invented hydrofoils, which is a technology used for boats that was left kind of undiscovered for 50 years and then picked up 50 years after Alex's death. He tried to find new ways to breed sheep. He just had all kinds of weird experiments and stuff. He still would wind up being awarded a few patents, but he never had another commercially viable invention like he did with the telephone. The telephone generated enough wealth that it freed him from having to do that. He just followed his intellectual curiosity. And he just loved to experiment and to learn. And the personality traits we saw in a young Alex never left him. So the book goes on. This is a rather large book. It's almost 500 pages. So it goes on into great detail about that. But I want to fast forward to his death.”

    2020-08-02 · Founders · #138 Alexander Graham Bell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Never liked for anyone to knock on his door before entering the room. If he was following a train of thought and there was a tap at his door, his attention being diverted to the noise he very often lost the thread for days and would not be able to pick it up again. So this is what Edwin Lan and Alexander Gabriel preached over and over again. Long periods of uninterrupted concentration brings about you things that you didn't even know were possible. Alex once told Charles, thoughts, my dear sir, are like the precious moments that fly past. Once gone, they can never be thought again, caught again, sorry, can never be caught again. Charles often saw his employer work for up to 22 hours without sleep, ignoring his wife's request that he join her and the guests for dinner. Any disturbance was such anathema to the telephone inventor that he never had a telephone installed in his own study.”

    2020-08-02 · Founders · #138 Alexander Graham Bell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Learned and he says, I hold it as one of the highest of all things, the increasing of knowledge making us more like God. So the founder of Intel, Bob Noyce, has this fantastic, fantastic quote I think of all the time. It says, knowledge is power, knowledge shared is power multiplied. This is, I'm fast forwarding much in his later life. This is him on parenting, which I absolutely love. He says there's a refreshingly modern ring to Alex's attitude to parenthood. During an era where parents regarded themselves first and foremost as figures of authority, it's definitely a description of his dad. He believed that play is nature's method of educating a child and that a parent's duty is to aid nature in the development of her plan. So he was very busy during that. He had two daughters, very busy when they were kids, but when he's older, he was a fantastic.”

    2020-08-02 · Founders · #138 Alexander Graham Bell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Wildly popular invention. I want to draw your attention to this argument that's happening between Alexander Graham and his wife because she's like, why aren't you? He'd make a bunch of inventions, not file patents on or not take them to explore their commercial viability. And so in this exchange, we see really what's important to Alex. He went on, yes, I hold it as one of the highest of all things. The increase of knowledge making us more like God. It was a strange way for a self-confessed atheist to frame his ambition. He had purchased a new set of the Encyclopedia Britannica and had announced that he was going to read it from start to finish. However reluctant Alex was to exploit his inventions, nothing would dampen his impressible urge to explore, to discover, and to improve. So he is trying to, his main goal in life is learn as much as he can and then teach others what he has learned.”

    2020-08-02 · Founders · #138 Alexander Graham Bell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “A feverish, anxious life like that I have been leading since our marriage would soon change my whole nature. Already it has begun injuring me and I feel myself growing irritable, feverish, and disgusted with life. Think about those last three words. These are coming from the mouth of somebody that made one of the history's greatest inventions ever. And he was disgusted with life. That's how hard this was. The company that Alex and his partner start, it'd be dead if they don't defeat Western Union. Western Union says, I don't give a shit about your patents. I'm going to violate all over them. Remember, they were printing money. I think Western Union was doing like 40 million of revenue. I think $3 million in profit. And this is 1900 maybe. I mean, this is an outstanding amount of money. And they were led by William Orton, who was an absolute savage. Oh, I'm also, I was also wrong.”

    2020-08-02 · Founders · #138 Alexander Graham Bell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “That made him a genius. He refused to be hemmed in by rules. He allowed his intuition to flourish. He relied on leaps of imagination backed up by a fascination with the physical sciences to solve the challenges he set for himself. I referenced earlier how important the fact that his partner was a former patent attorney. And this patent, which again many people claim is the most valuable patent that ever exists in U.S. history, was filed within a few hours. If they filed it a few hours later, it would have could have very likely went to somebody else. So it says, in February 1876, without consulting Alex, he went ahead. This is Gardner Hubbard again. He went ahead and filed on Alex's behalf for a patent on the speaking telegraph. That's what they're calling the telephone at this time. At first, Alex was furious with Hubbard for taking matters into his own hands, but Hubbard's action was crucial. Two hours after Hubbard's call on the U.S. patent office.”

    2020-08-02 · Founders · #138 Alexander Graham Bell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “He was frustrated by his lack of technical education and electricity, although he tried to reassure himself with the knowledge that Morse conquered his electrical difficulties, although he was only a painter, and I don't intend to give up either until this is all completed. If you could only pick one of the, like you have to ask yourself, why are some of almost all of the smartest and most productive people in the world? Why do they always encourage you to read biographies? Why is that happening over and over again? These are not silly people, right? And I think that may be, yes, you get a lot of ideas, but that right there, you are able to draw inspirations in times when you want to give up by other people not giving up. That paragraph where Alexander Graham Bell is explicitly telling us what he learned from studying the life of Samuel Morse encouraged him not to give up. What was that, what's the value to him? He doesn't have the telephone yet.”

    2020-08-02 · Founders · #138 Alexander Graham Bell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “I am now beginning to realize the cares and anxieties of being an inventor. He wrote home gloomily. He felt himself becoming almost unhinged by the pressure. What is he describing there? He's describing the emotional roller coaster. I just went back. I'm going back and re-listening to a lot of old founder episodes. I think the one on Mark Andreessen, Mark describes the emotional roller coaster of doing anything new, of doing something hard perfectly. And he says he's telling his partner to time, you know what the best thing about startups is. And his partner says, what? And he says, you only experience two emotions, euphoria and terror. And I find a lack of sleep enhances them both. And I think that is a really succinct way of describing it, right? You get the highest of highs, but the lowest of lows, and that's exactly what this book that's very present in the story of Alexander Graham Bell for sure. This is another example of him drawing inspiration from the life of Samuel Morse.”

    2020-08-02 · Founders · #138 Alexander Graham Bell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Encouraged by his interest, Alex later wrote that I determined to ask his advice about the apparatus I had designed for the transmission of human voice by telegraph. He told the eager young inventor that his idea was the germ of a great invention, and he gruffly advised him to keep working at it, a huge grin spread over Alex's face, but then he remembered his own limitations, since he lacked the necessary electrical knowledge, he asked doctor Henry should he allow others to work out the commercial application of his idea. This is a very important part. Memories of his own career must have sprung to the elderly scientist's mind, although Henry had been the first person to convert magnetism into electricity, it was British scientist Michael Faraday who had earned the credit for it because he was the first to publish his results. Forty-four years later, Dr.”

    2020-08-02 · Founders · #138 Alexander Graham Bell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “He has the advantage over me in being a practical electrician, but I have reason to believe that I am better acquainted with the phenomenon of sound than he is, so I have the advantage there. The very opposition seems to nerve me to work and I feel with the faculties I have now I may succeed. I shall be seriously ill should I fail in this now and I'm so thoroughly wrought up. The telegraph race consumed him.”

    2020-08-02 · Founders · #138 Alexander Graham Bell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Way that the air carried sound waves from the speaker to the hearer. The telephone receiver pressed to the human ear could act like an electrical mouth. What an interesting way to think about a telephone. Current flowing through an electromagnetic would cause the receiver's membrane to vibrate. The vibrations reasoned Alex would then hit the listener's eardrum, making it vibrate too. The listener's ear would interpret these vibrations as the sound spoken by that person on the other end of the wire. This was the eureka moment for Alexander Graham Bell. His flash of genius In his dreaming place overlooking the swirling waters of the Grand River, he had grasped the principle on which the telephone would operate. This extraordinary leap of imagination is what put Alex ahead of a pack of inventors scrambling to advance technology.”

    2020-08-02 · Founders · #138 Alexander Graham Bell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Sound waves travel through the air in the same way that energy moves through the coils of a spring when a section of the spring is compressed and released. He now began to wonder whether electric currents could be made to mimic a sound pattern of compressions and refractions. If they could, any sound could be transmitted electrically. Alex had understood how sound was produced in the human larynx ever since he and his father had built their speaking machine all those years ago, and they were doing it to see if they could help teach deaf people. So it wasn't even related to his invention. Now he understood how sound was received in the human ear, so he understands how it's produced and received. The next step would be to reproduce the action of the ear membrane and design an instrument to translate the vibrations into sounds. Suddenly, the idea struck him that it might be possible to create an undulating electric current that could carry sound along a telegraph wire in the same”

    2020-08-02 · Founders · #138 Alexander Graham Bell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “So, when school is not in session, he leaves Boston every year and he goes back to the backwoods of Canada where his parents are still living. And this is where he experiences his eureka moment. And so it says he was struck by the way that sound vibrations acting on a tiny membrane could move relatively heavy bones. So he's talking about, he built this model of the human ear. And he's deriving insights from that model that he's going to apply to his invention. Alex strolled out of the house towards the bluff overlooking the Grand River. A large tree had blown down there, creating a natural and completely private belvedere, which Alex had dubbed his dreaming place. So he's in the middle of nowhere. There's complete silence, and he's just left his own thoughts, right? Far from the bustle of Boston and the pressure of competition from other eager inventors, he mulled over everything he had discovered about sound. Alex now understood this.”

    2020-08-02 · Founders · #138 Alexander Graham Bell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “But the one thing that never leaves him is this passion for helping the deaf. So it says for Alex rescuing the hearing impaired was an end in and of itself. The disagreement between father and son created a rift between them, a rift that widened as Alex refused to be cowed. Alex was good at what he was doing as much as he loved his father, he was not going to be bullied from a distance into abandoning his plan. So they're just having a disagreement on what method is best to achieve that end, okay? As a young teacher, Alex was a rarity in the New England school system. He found himself in high demand. Offers of employment reached him from all over the Northeast. So he's like, do I want to move away from Boston? Do I want to take this opportunity? And this is how he makes a decision on where he wants to be, which is very fascinating. He decided he wanted to settle in Boston and establish himself as a teacher of the death there.”

    2020-08-02 · Founders · #138 Alexander Graham Bell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “A single issue now preoccupied him. Could Hem Holtz's theories on the nature of sound have any application for the electric telegraph? So this is probably an insight into Bell's greatest talent. He was not, he's not classically trained. He had a way to connect. He had a very powerful imagination. And what his breakthrough was is connecting ideas in unrelated fields and combining them to a new insight. And that's exactly how he came up with the telephone. In particular, could they solve a puzzle with which amateur engineers all over the United States were grappling? Nearly 30 years after its first commercial application, the telegraph system was still limited to sending one message at a time. The race was on to increase its capacity, and Alex was determined to join this race. So that is how, that's the very beginning of what he's going to stumble into.”

    2020-08-02 · Founders · #138 Alexander Graham Bell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “In electric communications, what he calls it, and he starts doing his early experiments. Before that, he leaves a note to himself that I think really demonstrates his personality. He says, a man's own judgment should be the final appeal in all that relates to himself. Many men do this or that because someone else thought it right. So essentially Alex is telling us, I'm going to think through things through first principles, not reason just by analogy, not because other people told me to do so. And then I'm going to live my life with the results of my conclusions. So before I get to his experiments, I think it's important to give you a context into which the time that Alex is a young man, the time in history. And I think there's analogy to Bell's time and the time that we're currently living to as well. So it says the mid-19th century was a wonderful time to be alive for a young man with a quick brain and endless curiosity. Today we can understand.”

    2020-08-02 · Founders · #138 Alexander Graham Bell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “I have my periods of restlessness when my brain is crowded with ideas tingling to my fingertips, when I am excited and cannot stop for anybody, let me alone, let me work as I like even if I have to sit up all night or even for two nights. When you see me flagging, getting tired, discouraged, put your hands over my eyes so that I go to sleep and let me sleep as long as I like until I wake. Then I may hang around, read novels, and be stupid without an idea in my head until I get rested and ready for another period of work. But oh, do not do as you often do. Stop me in the midst of my work. My excitement with Alex Alex, aren't you coming to bed? It's one o'clock. Do come. Then I have to come feeling cross and ugly. Then you put your hands on my Eyes, and after a while, I go to sleep, but the ideas are gone. The work is never done”

    2020-08-02 · Founders · #138 Alexander Graham Bell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source