Alexander Graham Bell's Forgotten Greatest Invention
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 ก.พ. 2025
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brainfood gives food for thought?????
@@beepboop204yes
you are so wrong on fiber optics ...
Narinder Singh Kapany (31 October 1926 - 4 December 2020) was an Indian physicist best known for his work on fiber optics. He is credited with inventing fiber optics, and is considered the 'Father of Fiber Optics'.
@@unmanaged The photophone was a precursor to the fiber-optic communication systems which achieved popular worldwide usage in the 1980s. Since you know its an episode about the photophone, but nice try with the virtue signalling I suppose.
@@unmanaged oh wow you so smart and got such a big brain, just change the subject from what this video was about in order to show how you are smarter and more clever!11 aamaozing!! very cool. very awesome
I think his most important invention to society is the hearing aid. He miniaturized the technology and made it possible for the deaf to hear. My mother (and many others) benefited from attending Bell Elementary in Chicago, one of the first schools working with deaf.
*What?*
@@daxxonjabiru428 Prior to Bell's invention, the deaf or hard of hearing used Ear Trumpets or hearing tubes.
I didn't know about this ,that's very cool.
@@jeffreywilliams9299 Its just tech appropriated from the telephone. Think about what else sprang up from it.
Alexander Graham Bell invented Squarespace? He truly was a century ahead of his time.
Well played.
As someone who installs fiber optic cabling, I’m very thankful to the geniuses mentioned in this video. It still baffles me how glass can bend the way it does in fiber
I sometimes wonder what the world would be like if we had people at this level living and inventing in the world today.
I mean I know we have super intelligent people inventing stuff but it doesn't feel like we have anyone at this status in the world
@@Berengier817 The issue is Necessity is the Mother of invention. When you have everything you need then you usually reinvent things such as how the phone has gone through many reinventions leading us to the Digital Cell Phones that use RF that we use today.
@@jimflagg4009 thank you. That makes sense and I understand better now
And yeah smart phones are unbelievably useful
@@Berengier817 well. a lot of these inventions were bubbling up from multiple places around same time, stemming from advances in knowledge. like the discovery of seleniums property in this leading to other inventions. same for 'car' and internal combustion engine advancements called an inevitability, an 1+1.
but imagine the guys trying to figure out electricity in 17th century, chasing wild goose chases for info from antiquity references in literature, collaborating on a few other colleagues by post that took months to reach them for seemingly no practical application for the troubles you would go through trying to understand why something made a spark - all you'd have for your troubles would be perhaps scientific documentation in an era where that got you zilch and a party trick of making a spark in a glass tube(pretty effin good party trick for the time but still).
by bells time electromagnetics were kind of understood theoretically already and it's not that hard to argue that invention of telephone was an inevitability during the decade(and the implication of making huge amounts of money with patenting such an invention being in the air). such an era of hope and advancement though! while we're still waiting for the flying cars and other impractical things, the practical advancements to better human life through technology took huge strides every decade back then - still though, world hasn't really experienced lately the sort of wars they got up to...
@@lasskinn474
we have flying cars. we call them airplanes and helicopters.
Alexander Graham Bell came up with the basic theory of fiber optics?? Mind blown. 😳
My sister and I grew up very close to Graham Bell's home in Brantford, Ontario, Canada. She was a tour guide at the museum there. We were raised knowing about his brilliance. My sister also spent time at his later home in Baddeck, Nova Scotia. One of our great geniuses.
My grandfather was the Bell's family doctor in Baddeck. I was born in Baddeck, but we moved to Halifax when I was very young.
San Diego's science museum had (1980's) a whisper phone that was two parabolas positioned on opposite sides of a large room. You'd get your friend to go to the other one and each of you would walk up a flight of stairs where there was a circle you'd whisper into and place your ear towards it to listen to the response. A whisper was sufficient to hear but being children we discovered that yelling into it was more fun, because our shouts could fill the room and teachers would get angry trying to get us down
The true glee of these pairs of "low tech" parabolas, is that the two positioned just to within their focal points can whisper secrets and jokes to each other at distance, without anyone being able to hear nor intercept the communication.
Ah, those are a _classic_ bit of ancient tech. Oklahoma City's science museum has a similar setup, no stairs though, just two sound reflectors with wooden circles marking the focal points to talk/listen into, across a big ol' room.
The parabolic reflector is the basis of the "whispering gallery" found in St. Paul's cathedral in London (and similar ones in a few other places,) where a circular or oval room with a dome allows people in it to whisper clearly to people on the other side of the space without being heard by people outside the gallery space. Kind of nifty for eavesdropping.
The Alexander Graham Bell in Baddeck Nova Scotia on the beautiful Bras d'Or Lakes is well worth the visit if one happens to be in the area.
This may have been the inspiration for R. A. Lafferty's SF short story, "Selenium Ghosts of the Eighteen Seventies."
While Alexander Grahame Bell invented the first telephone, he had no idea as to whether it would work until he invented the SECOND telephone!
Lol 🤣😆🤣
Wow. That is so cool. So far ahead of time.
BTW, he invented the metal detector to try to help find the bullet that was lodged inside of President Garfield after he was shot.
Bell's metal detector would have likely found the bullet too, so the theory goes, if they had moved Garfield onto a wooden plank instead of leaving him atop a mattress & metal bedsprings.
Bell was absolutely brilliant. Invented so much more than just the telephone
Bell was a great inventor, but he had an eaven greater callings. Bell wrote what is was, and may till be, the greatest patent ever. His wording of the patent for the telephone allowerd is to stand up to countless court challenges by other inventors. With each case, the paptent was found to be iron clad until it eventually ran out.
Bell did not write or submit the patent, his future father in-law did, hours before the competition.
Todays Squarespace ad was bought to you via a short story about Alexander Graham Bell
10:00 commercials
It's amazing that "modern" technology was actually thought up over 100 years ago... 😲
Btw: fiber cables have come a long way. In the 1990s they had an attenuation of around 10 dB per kilometer. Nowadays fiberoptic cables used in national telecommunication networks have around 0.1 dB per kilometer... ✌️
Clarity is amazing isnt it?
Went to high school with a woman named Suzzanne R Nagle who went to work for Bell Labs in 1972 and ended up leading the research team that reduced the water content of the fiber optic glass down to one part per billion by 1986. This made the first transatlantic fiber optic cable possible in 1988. By the time she retired, she had two patents and was the first woman named an AT&T Bell laboratories Fellow.(The highest technical level recognition in Bell Labs.
Thank you for your videos.
what an awesome find. Thanks Simon!
There was a book of electronics project plans going around in the 80s and 90s that had the plans for a laser driven photophone in it. I had a copy that I bought from Lindsey Publications out of Chicago, which was stolen from me not long after I got the thing.
I swear, it wasn't me.
Called electronic projects.
Back in that day, I was interested in spy or surveillance projects. That project works.
It used a laser bouncing off of reflective surfaces, like a window, with a detector to pull sound from a room using the window as a kind of speaker. It works. It also made me a bit paranoid.
@@GoDodgers1 ack in the last century, 60 Minutes had en article about the Pentagon using multiple pane glass in all their windows with music being piped into the void(s) to reduce the potential of this technology being used against them.
3:34 No, Mahloon Loomis demonstrated electromagnetic (although he thought it was purely electric) wireless communication in 1865, and voice (using the improved Bell telephone of that year) in 1877.
I grew up 30 miles from Bells' home in Baddeck Nova Scotia, great museum there!
Everyone should watch both first flights, Write Brothers and the Silver Dart, compare dates and flight paterns 😂
Hello from a fellow Cape Bretoner!
I was born in Baddeck, and my grandfather was the doctor for the county, looking after the Bell family (and everyone else for miles around :)).
Thankfully, his daughter wasn't stuck with a ridiculous name. Parents, just don't. No matter how cute you think it is, don't.
I'll name my child after my greatest achievement: Master's Degree
OMG tell me about it. I have to spell and respell my name both after I married lol btw I'm Darylyn Phraner
My favorite is Shanda Lear.
Teresa Green
Get in his shoes: he finally had an invention he hadn't stolen, he wanted to celebrate.
Considering that light is in fact the visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, the photophone was in fact wireless RF comms. The visible light spectrum will never have the ranges that we associate with RF transmissions. The visible light spectrum and higher have such short wavelengths/high freqs that it mostly goes in a straight line.
It'll always be a balancing act. Higher frequencies mean faster comms but shorter range. Long wave can bounce off the ionosphere and reach the other side it'd the planet but the data rate would make a modem look fast...
Sending a message in a straight line can be useful if it's intended to be private.
Bell could have called hi s 2nd daughter "Light"...just don't let her get the Deathnote,though.
Light Yagami FTW!
Aether, Nova, Lux, Ray, Shine…so many other great options in the same category if he wanted
This is my favorite channel of yours because you don't play music while you talk. 😘
Actually, to make optical fiber work efficiently you have to add specific elements ("doping" it); the result is a less pure glass, but it works better.
Wow! Way to go Alexander Graham Bell!
I thought Tesla created the precursor to wifi as we know today, he even said that pictures could be sent as well but he dropped it as he often did when another thought fell into his brilliant mind.
i think his Bell Schools for the Deaf (as they were called then) was his finest achievement, hearing aids and the cochlear implants that came later. I am a certified ASL interpreter my hearing-impaired friends educated me in understanding that within their community they do not consider deafness a disability at all and think that doctors and inventors should stop trying to make them 'hear' and teach ASL in schools so they are not segregated from hearing children. I teach toddlers ASL and they are brilliant! Where as a hearing child they cannot communicate clearly until speech begins, I have toddlers signing perfect sentences and explaining exactly what they want. Its a blessing when they are ill and can tell you where, what and how they feel. It is amazing.
Also most of my coding interns were hearing-impaired and were outstanding in developing, trouble-shooting and creating computer programing although i was the only one initially who was able to communicate, they were fine on their own and it was the hearing people who were awkward and didn't like not being able to shout an order. In the end i got my Sr Manager to 'get' that they are reading your lips!! they know what you need just tell them. Best co-workers ever!
I work in a noisy environment, ASL (or BSL as I'm in England) would be very useful. Also useful in that film " a river wild".
Finally. A TIFO that isn't 3 days long.
@@classic.cameras they often dive far deeper than necessary into the topic in the title \ thumbnail. I don't mind a little bit of background, but many times it is excessive.
Simon's queue finally caught up to a couple months ago when the algorithm changed to liking 8 minute videos, probably.
... "Greater than the telephone" ... And how right he was!!
You forgot to credit Alexander Graham Bellowski, the first telephone Pole !
Didn't Alexander Graham Bell NOT invent the telephone? Someone else did it first and he paid off the patent office to say that Alexander invented it.
Have you got a citation to back up your claim? If not then you’ve fallen for a nasty conspiracy theory.
Antonio Meucci
Likely something you heard on the internet, if you want to form an informed opinion then read Alexander Graham Bell and the Conquest of Solitude by Robert Bruce and come to your own opinion.
Antonio Meucci invented the telephone five years before Bell.
I’ve listened to the podcasts so much it’s weird seeing Simon on screen now 😂
Great. My younger coworkers bemoan the fact that almost everything they enjoy came from the mind of a boomer and now you tell them this.
That was brilliant, I did not know this! Thank you!
Certainly an amazing man !
When I was 12 I invented mint tea. I put peppermint into boiling water to disinfect it from germs before trying to eat it and to my delight discovered that it made a tasty tea! I failed to file for patent and Celestial Seasonings had cornered the market leaving my chance for fortune and glory in the dust.
he needed the amplifier tube which didn't exist yet at all
The most important discoveries for our modern world were the encoding and decoding of signals on various wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum and the associated accoutrement.
This being a part of that collection of knowledge.
This technique of analog light intensity chanes was used to afd sound to film since the 20 s.
Many people will tell you the Nipkow disc could not be used for television until the development of a suitable transducer decades later. As the photophone proved, this is false because a transducer fast enough to recreate audio would've been fast enough for moving pictures. Some time long ago I read that a closed-circuit TV system was in use at the finish line of a race track in 1898, and while I haven't been able to locate that reference for years, it's at least plausible.
I really wish you would make your commercials longer. I just love watching commercials.
Had to dig deep for this one, but it was worth it.
I heard about this. Could light up a conversation. Bright idea...
punny enough? BTW - Big Al loved puns. His favorite was the one he said often...
Wow what an abrupt ending to some good listening. For a moment, I thought it was buffering.
Hi everyone 👋🇬🇧
I knew this for a long time. Back in the 90’s I commented that this could EASILY have garnered fiber optic telecommunication 100 years earlier…
1:19 Simon Whistler Gets On With It, at last.
Antonio Meucci invented the telephone and was formally recognized as the original inventor in 2002, Bell just had access to his work. The only reason Bell is left as a co-inventor on the patent is because they can't prove he knowingly stole Meucci's work. Poor Meucci died struggling and people still say Bell invented it because they don't bother to look it up.
Absolutely wrong
Many inventors did not take out patents on their works as they believed science belonged to man kind.
Two examples are Edward Hargraves who developed the curved wing and experimented with box kites capable of carrying a man. He corresponded with the Wright Bros who put a motor into a box kite and it flew. They patented (or stole?) Hargraves ideas which he had freely given to them.
Henry Sutton developed many things including the telephone handset, mechanical television, portable radio, rechargeable batteries, mining pumps, transmission of photographs, built a clockwork ornithopter in 1878. Demonstrated his light bulb just 16 days after Edison. His work on vacuum pump design was later used by the Edison Swann company in the making light bulbs.
Most of Suttons inventions were not patented.
@@utkarshpandey6424No, he's correct. Meucci invented the telephone years before Bell.
Great spot Boss🤝
I guess he just felt the... call... to do it.
So the Photophone was the precursor to the fiber-optic communication.
Legend!👍
Congratulations! You finally have a thumbnail with the correct use of “its”.
All he needed was an optical fiber and the invention would have had large, long-distance practical applications.
your computes can transmit data with this technology
In fact we are rediscovering this since transmission by point-to-point laser has been pushed very recently.
Finally, a video not about hitler or nazis
Rudementary fiber optics wow
1:20 video starts
The light spectrum is pretty magical huh
Completely out of left field from that sponsor pitch but "Re-Imagined Dragons" sounds like a great name for a cover band
Mornin Simon
What was that about Simons dome being used as a golf course? 😂😂
Love your contenr❤❤❤❤❤
It's pronounced " low ll" if that makes sense. Lowell Massachusetts, we lived near there at Fort Devens. Also went to Ayer High School. Ayer is pronounced "air". Love watching all the cool things you find and I'll be happy to keep watching thanks!!
Today I found out the Alexander Graham Bell looks Tim Allen in "The Santa Clause"!
We have the technology. We can rebuild this, better, stronger, clearer.
When the first minute and a half is a commercial I stop watching. I only stayed long enough to write this.
If we are listening to radio waves from space ,why aren't we trying to decipher messages sent via light ad well.
I'm pretty sure radio is light
We are.
FFS, 1.20 of this 7.43 video is promo. Sometimes it's not difficult to see that, like TV, content is just for delivering ads.
I wonder if this contributed to RCA's Photophone sound on film system?
Video starts at 1:30
Bell didn't actually invent the telephone.
Very interesting. Thanks. Your videos would be easier to understand if you would slow your speaking down a little. You have pleasing and good speech, except it is so fast that some words tend to blend together. Otherwise, enjoyed the video.
Skip the ad @1:20
his tombstone is real strange and makes us Canadians salty AF
Why.
@@SelectCircle spent a lot of time in Canada, but "for legal reasons" put CITIZEN OF THE UNITED STATES on his grave. if we overplay his role in Canada, he certainly underplayed it
@@beepboop204 I can't think of any American hero who has the slightest connection with Canada. No one here is aware of his having spent a single day there. : D
@@SelectCircle i can think of two war novels, Generals Die In Bed and A Rifleman Went To War, which are Americans who served in WW1 fighting for Canada. the great Canadian WW1 books are by Americans
That must've been the Canadians who let down Monty at Arnhem.
you know what i love about accents? Not just being able to detect what country one is from but particular regions of that country. A man had an Australian accent and asked if he was from Australia, he was, i asked were you form New south whales? YES! He askes how'd you know?? I said the Dialect was a keen part of my hearing picked up on certain regions. Hes like really?? In Australia NO one would know any difference " id just sound Australian to them" My brain is weird, ive never been to that part of Aussie just Melbourne but i just know certain regions of the world and what they sound like. the tone is always pristine to that region. I may be the real life guy from Taken lol. for the fact ill know where you were raised :)
❤
As soon as I saw the title of the video I knew what you were going to talk about. 😁
Now adays, that's called "team speak". My fellow gamers know what I'm talking about.
Iaphragm?Auld Sang sign? Ha!
Slow down here and there, Slimin’!
I think we're working on a version of WiFi that uses similar technology.
Of course Bell doesn't resent the phone, he stole the invention.
More ads than American TV!
This country is so bad ass
Alexander Graham Bell didn't invent the telephone
@@YaePublishingNo, he didn't.
He got the idea of communication via radiation right, he just didn't get the frequency
What's the frequency Kenneth?
@@slake9727dang, you got there before me 😂
Tesla did not invent the alternating current induction motor. That myth is as prevalent as every other myth about Tesla
OK so who did???
1/137
Reverse Engineering of old world technology
Bell was a thief. He did not invent the telephone. He stole the idea from someone else. And tried to lie and cheat to beat another person to the patent entry.
You chose to believe this, as you aren't personally acquainted with the people or events a century before your birth.
Pretty strong opinion under the circumstances.
Kids today dont understand the importance of noticing specific elemental characteristics. Shame.
Enjoy this fellow immensely however I only wish he would slow his speech down a wee bit - so I can better absorb the content in my little pea American brain -
"Diagram"
Did you say his wife's maiden name was Hubble?.Any relationship to astronomer Edwin Hubble???
What was the name of Bells assistant, Charles Some Potato
Can you talk any faster? Between the British accent and the high-speed I could hardly understand a word you said.
Dude, this guy probably makes 20 videos before tea time. He has to talk fast so he can keep cranking them out.
And I and most likely a lot of you are watching this over the internet brought to you over Optical Fiber!!!
He didn't even invent Telephone btw.😂😂😂
Seeing as how he was the first to produce a working model and file a patent, yes he did. Meucci only filed a caveat, which is an announcement of an idea or concept, and never produced a working model. In order to be credited with inventing something, you have to actually make the thing, not just tell us you have an idea. Your assertion is based on a fallacious assumption.
@@SkunkApe407 Meucci first invented it,and I sure i read is now being recognised as the inventor.😂👍
@@mktf5582 no, he didn't., and no, he isn't. He is recognized as having first CONCEPTUALIZED the telephone. He never built a working model, nor did he ever file a patent. Just having an idea doesn't make you an inventor. If you took even two minutes to actually look into the subject, you'd see that literally everything in the matter confirms what I am telling you.
You're wrong. Period. End of story.
@@SkunkApe407 No he did actually build/develope telephone,you obviously denying reality and evidently raging by your post.😂😂😂
@@mktf5582 An early communicating device was invented around 1854 by Antonio Meucci, who called it a telettrofono (lit. "electrophone"). In 1871 Meucci filed a patent caveat at the US Patent Office. His caveat describes his invention, but does not mention a diaphragm, electromagnet, conversion of sound into electrical waves, conversion of electrical waves into sound, or other essential features of an electromagnetic telephone.
In 1861, a description of it was reportedly published in an Italian-language New York newspaper, although no known copy of that newspaper issue or article has survived to the present day. Meucci claimed to have invented a paired electromagnetic transmitter and receiver, where the motion of a diaphragm modulated a signal in a coil by moving an electromagnet, although this was not mentioned in his 1871 U.S. patent caveat. A further discrepancy observed was that the device described in the 1871 caveat employed only a single conduction wire, with the telephone's transmitter-receivers being insulated from a 'ground return' path.
A resolution was passed by the United States House of Representatives in 2002 that said Meucci did pioneering work on the development of the telephone.[4][5][6][7] The resolution said that "if Meucci had been able to pay the $10 fee to maintain the caveat after 1874, no patent could have been issued to Bell".
Meucci never held a patent, nor did he create what we know as a telephone. He did groundbreaking work on what would become the telephone, but he did not invent the thing. Furthermore, not one single governing body recognizes Meucci as the inventor, but rather a contributor.
You need to learn to comprehend what you read and make sure you know what you're talking about before opening your mouth.
Antonio Meucci invented the telephone.
Hi