It is such a common occurrence that no one ever wonders from whence the telephone came. But the telephone has a fascinating story behind it， one that could be entitled “The Conquest of Solitude.” It is the story of Alexander Graham Bell.
Alexander Bell was born in Edinburgh， Scotland in 1847， the son of a man who was consumed①， passionately consumed， with the workings of the human voice， how it is produced and used， and especially， in teaching the deaf how to use it. For in those days， the deaf lived in permanent solitude. Not only could they not hear， they could not speak. After all， how could they pronounce words， they couldn’t hear？ Perhaps this was one of the reasons that made the elder Bell married a deaf woman who later gave birth to the inventor of the telephone！
Young Alexander Graham Bell grew up with his father’s passions. In 1870， because of poor health， he migrated② to Canada. It was not long before his success in teaching the deal to speak brought him to the attention of a wealthy merchant in Boston who had a deaf daughter， Mabel. And they fell in love. It was she who inspired him through the exhausting experiments， helped him develop a remarkable instrument that transformed speech into electrical impulses that could then be converted back into human speech at the end of a wire. He had pierced yet another solitude， the one that up until then had denied human speech between people distant from one another. A year later， in 1877， he and Mabel were married. He later became an American citizen.
The first voice to travel over a wire was even a surprise for its inventor Alexander Graham Bell. He was experimenting in his laboratory late one night， and quite by accident he succeeded in transmitting a message to his assistant in the next room. What Mr. Bell could not know at the time was that that night in 1876 would mark the start of a revolution in communications.
At first， two iron wires connected each pair of telephones. Then switchboards③ brought phone wires into one location. Other inventions—the vacuum tube to amplify④ sound， and coaxial cables to link long distances on land and under the seas—greatly expanded phone service. Transistors replaced the old vacuum tubes， and by the 1960s communications satellites eliminated the necessity of landlines. Today， bundles of glass fibers carry calls on laser beams of light.
When the government of France awarded him the Volta Prize for inventing the telephone， he combined this monetary award with the money he made from selling the patent⑤ on another invention to establish the Volta Bureau in Washington， D. C； Its purpose was to fund research on deafness. Today， it is called the Alexander Graham Bell Association. Its role has been changed to provide the latest information to the deaf of the world on how best to cope with their disability.
Alexander Graham Bell died in 1922 and Mabel five months later. She loved him so much. He has many inventions， many of which， including sound motion pictures and stereo recording， along with 23，00 other patents came from AT&T Bell Laboratories founded in 1925. His name is likely to live as long as man recalls history. After all， there is this constant reminder of how he brought the human family into closer touch.
① consumev. 使全神贯注，使着迷，使憔悴，充满
② migratev. 迁移，移居
③ switchboardn. 接线总机
④ amplifyv. 放大(声音等)，增强
⑤ patentn. 专利，专利权
亚历山大·贝尔
电话的出现是如此普通，以至于没有人会去想它是怎样发生的。然而，在电话的背后，却有着一个可以被命名为“征服孤寂”的有趣而又迷人故事。而这，就是亚历山大·格雷厄姆·贝尔的故事。
亚历山大·贝尔，在1847年于苏格兰的爱丁堡市出生，他的父亲全神贯注、满怀激情地沉浸于研究人的声音，研究它是如何发生的以及其作用过程，尤其还教耳聋的人如何运用声音。因为那个时候，耳聋之人生活在永恒的孤寂之中。他们不仅听不见，而且也不能够讲话。毕竟，因为他们无法听见，所以又如何能够发出声音来呢？或许，这就是促使老贝尔与日后生下电话发明者的那位聋哑女人结婚的原因之一。
年轻的亚历山大·格雷厄姆·贝尔带着自己父亲的执着爱好成长。1870年，由于身体不佳他移居到了加拿大。之后不久，他由于成功地教会了耳聋者说话而使自己引起了波士顿一位富商的注意，这位商人有个耳聋的女儿梅布尔。他们陷入了爱河。是梅布尔鼓舞他进行了那些使人精疲力竭的实验，也是在梅布尔的支持下，他才得以研制出当时很了不起的一种工具，它能把人说的话转变为电脉冲，之后又在金属丝的末端使之还原成人说的话。这样他就打破了又一种孤寂，那种在此之前一直使相距遥远的人无法通话的孤寂。一年之后，在1877年，他和梅布尔结婚，后来成为一名美国公民。
通过电线传送的第一个声音，甚至连它的发明者亚历山大·格雷厄姆·贝尔自己都感到很惊讶。一天深夜，贝尔正在实验室里做实验，非常偶然地他成功地向在隔壁房间里的助手传递了一个口信。贝尔当时并不知道的是，1876年的那个夜晚将标志着通信革命的开始。
起先，两根铁丝连接而成了一对电话。之后，交换台将电话线集中到一个方位。其它的发明，像放大声音的真空管以及在陆上及海底连接长距离的同轴电缆，极大地扩展了电话服务。晶体管代替了古老的真空管。而到了60年代，通信卫星又消除了对地面线路的需要。今天，一束束的玻璃纤维用激光传递人们彼此间的通话。
当法国政府因为他发明了电话而授与他沃尔塔奖金时，他用这笔奖金和他从出售另一项发明中得到的钱，在华盛顿建立了沃尔塔办事处，其目的就是为医治耳聋提供资金。今天，这—机构被称作“亚历山大·格雷厄姆·贝尔协会”。它的角色已经转变成向全世界的聋人在如何最有效地治疗他们的残疾方面，提供最新资料。
1922年，亚历山大·格雷厄姆·贝尔去世，梅布尔在其去世5个月后也离开了人世，她是如此的爱他。他的一生有多项发明，这些发明当中有许多项，包括有声电影和立体声录音，与23，000项其它专利都出于1925年建立的AT&T贝尔实验室。他的名字很可能就像人类记忆历史那样永世长存。毕竟，有了电话这一事物，它经常提醒人们，贝尔是怎样使人类大家庭彼此保持着更密切的联系的。
