Improvement in Telegraphy
By James Bezerra
Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone to impress a girl.
Her eyes were blue and her voice was sing-song-y like a nursery rhythm. Her name was Hester. She was the daughter of his benefactor Gardiner Greene Hubbard, however, so too was Bell’s wife Mabel. Hester was her sister.
Mabel was deaf, her hearing had left her after a childhood bout with Scarlet Fever. Bell, whose life had been so devoted to the plight of the deaf, was ashamed to admit to himself that he loved Hester because of the way she spoke, so pretty, so perfect. Mabel spoke so little and so poorly.
They made love, Bell and Hester, just once. They were discovered! A misshapen shriek left Mabel’s mouth when she found them together. Gardiner Greene Hubbard shipped his youngest daughter off to France and the two men never spoke of the incident. But for Bell it was torture. He was anguished. He locked himself in his workshop. He longed only to hear her sweet voice again.
Yet Bell was not the only man who loved Hester Hubbard, nor was he the only inventor in Gardiner Greene Hubbard’s employ. The young Elisha Gray had also cherished and adored her and when he learned that Hester was gone, and why, he was enraged. His long, stern face twisted into a mask of hatred, “Damn you Alexander Graham Bell!” he shouted, fist in the air, “Damn you to Hell!”
Gray learned from the jilted Mabel that Bell had devoted himself to the completion of his ‘harmonic telegraph’ so that he could hear Hester’s voice from across the sea. Seeing the perfection of such a romantic gesture, Gray committed to finishing his own ‘liquid transmitter’ prototype, which functioned on entirely different principles but would accomplish the same end as Bell’s device.
Bell learned of Gray’s competition and the two men engaged in a race of invention. At times Bell could even feel Gray’s hot breath on the back of his neck.
On the crisp, snowy morning of February 14th 1876, Bell was in his workshop, his brow was sweaty. His arms were heavy with exhaustion as he snapped into place the acoustic reed, completing his device. “Thomas!” he shouted to his assistant Thomas A. Watson, “I have just invented the telephone!”
Then, to Bell’s amazement, it rang.
He picked it up and held it carefully to his ear. Unsure of the appropriate etiquette, he answered, “Ahoy?”
Gray’s voice crackled down the line, “Fuck you Alexander Graham Bell!” Then Gray hung up.
In a panic, Bell gathered his notes and the device. He dashed out the door, his knees high in the air as he ran. A trail of papers streamed behind him like a cloud.
Halfway to the Patent Office he spotted Gray rounding a corner, clutching his own invention. They came even, both of them running down the center of the street, dashing past carriages and horses.
“She doesn’t love you!” Bell shouted.
“She will when she finds out I invented the god damn telephone for her!” Gray yelled back.
They rounded the last corner; the U.S. Patent Office loomed at the end of the block. The men were both puffing; lungs were burning, legs were cramping, pain-in-the-name-of-love was all around and then Bell did the thing that he would spend the rest of his life denying, he said, “You’re right. She loves you.”
“What?”
But when Gray turned his head to look at his nemesis, the back of Bell’s hand was already swooping around in a wide arc. Bell slapped him across the face and Gray stumbled, still running full-speed, and his foot caught an uneven cobblestone, he was wrenched sideways and he hit the ground with an awful wet thwack! and he slid for several bloody feet.
Alexander Graham Bell never looked back. He ran straight through the doors of the Patent Office. He slammed the device down on the desk and said to the clerk, “Hurry up, I have to make a call.”
I ‘borrowed’ the telephone photo from this person on
Flickr
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