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Show Bell's Varied Achievements Revealed During Centenary By BAUKIIAGE Ntws Analyst and Commentator. WNU Service, 1616 Eye Street, N. W., Washington, D. C. WASHINGTON. - Everybody has been talking telephones because of the well-publicized Alexander Graham Gra-ham Bell centenary. Reading the pounds of publicity, I learned more about Alexander Graham Bell than I ever knew before. I had read of how he dreamed jjl making the telegraph tele-graph instrument "talk" and how and why his dream came true. I didn't know about his father's deep study of phonetics and his own interest in-terest in "making speech visible," in teaching the deaf to talk, or that he was an accomplished musician or many other facets of this remarkable remark-able man's remarkable history. I already knew a little about the telephone business from first hand observance. It was Just about 20 years before I ever used a telephone that Bell, thanks to his harmonically trained ear, found on that day In 187S that what he thought could be done, had been achieved in his own laboratory on Court street, Boston. From then on it was just a question of removing re-moving "the bugs." The next year he was demonstrating his instrument instru-ment before audiences with conversations conver-sations over several miles of wire. Before he died at the age of 75, people were talking over an underwater under-water cable from United States to Cuba. I doubt if the great Inventor were to return to earth today he would ) A study of Alexander Graham Bell In later life shows how he spent many hundred "man-hours" of his time tabulating atatlstlcs concerning concern-ing the deaf. At one time he produced pro-duced a "Memoir Upon the Formation Forma-tion of a Deaf Variety of the Human Race." be greatly surprised at the strides in telephony which have been made since his death, great as they have been. He may not have considered, however, one of the temporary prob lems (electrolysis) which created many a headache for the telephone companies and which helped, Indirectly, Indi-rectly, to provide the writer of this column (who was to be a future extensive ex-tensive user of telephone facilities) with a part of his education. To explain the above remark: (1) 150.DO0 miles of program transmission trans-mission circuits now are provided by the Bel system for use of radio networks. (It's "wireless" to your home from your radio station, but it's "wired" between stations.) (2) The writer has been using a lot of these circuits Ave days a week for most of the last 14 years. (3) He worked two college vacations vaca-tions as "electrolysis Inspector" for the telephone company. To explain further: (1) You know how electroplating Is done? The object say It's a spoon to be plated Is suspended In a "bath" containing the material with which the spoon Is to be plated An electric current is passed through the substance in the bath into the spoon. The substance follows the current as far as it can, which is the surface of the spoon. Anyhow it moves. (2) You've seen the lead-sheathed cables containing telephone wires being pushed through the manhole into conduits that lie under the pavement. The sheath on the cable protects the insulated wires that carry the current which rings your phone bell and carries your voice. (3 But other electric currents get loose and run all over the place. You'd be surprised but almost every foot of earth or anything that will conduct an electric current in a city Jias some electricity (lowing through it. When the power companies were careless about preventing leaks In their wires it was worse. Stray cur-, rents left power wires or the rails of electric railways and took a short cut back to the power house. (4) Wherever they found a good j conductor like a lead cable, that was , like thumbing a ride for the wander- . ing volts and amperes. So far so ' good. But eventually they had to j leave the cable, to. find their way to a better conductor or just to say "sc i long", and struggle back to the i dynamo. (5) When they did that, "electrolytic "electro-lytic action" set in. The lead in ; the cable sheath followed the cur- . rent as far as it could (like the sub- stance in the bath) and left the . sheath porous. Dampness and destruction de-struction came in and soon your ' telephone line was out of order. My job consisted of sitting by the hour watching the face of an am- i meter (which registers the direction ! and flow of electric current) and 1 discovering where the current was , escaping. Then I had to get the power company to do what it could to stop leaks and the telephone com- j pany did all it could to keep stray current out or to provide a safe exit for what got in. In the process I learned much more than I earned not much about electrical engineering but I had a fine worm's-eye view of several Middle Mid-dle Western cities bird's-eye views, too, for I worked In cable boxes up on poles, as well as down in manholes, man-holes, and also learned that it isn't only newspapermen who "meet so j many interesting people." When I ponder on my elcctrolyt- Ic age and also when I "address the mike" Mondays through Frl-days Frl-days now, I am deeply and doubly grateful to Alexander Graham Bell. Jone$ Finally Get$ Official Birthday One day recently I received a tele phone call from my friend Capt. E. John Long, USNR, who is assistant curator of the United States naval museum at Annapolis. I detected exultation in his voice and, sure enough, when I joined him at the J club he was wearing that "Eureka- ' 1 have-found-it" expression which blooms only on the face of a Bell discovering the telephone, a Lord Carnarvon (and-or) Howard Carter exclaiming as he leans over the mummy-case: "King Tut, I presume?" pre-sume?" or possibly you or me when we finally get a firm hold on the end of our vanished pajama c.ord. What happened to Long was comparable. com-parable. He had recorded the confirmation con-firmation by his chief, Capt. H. A. Baldridge, chief curator, of the long-suspected long-suspected but never-proved date of birth of John Paul Jones, father of the navy. And it was fortunate he had, for the post office department was demanding it for the next memorial stamp. Baldridge already had a letter of Jones' containing this sentence: "America has been the country of my fond election from the age of 13." Since it was known he sailed from Whitehaven, England, in 1760 that would make the birth date (1760 minus 13) 1747. But the birth date was not actually recorded in any authentic writing, not even the early Jones biography by Charles Sands. However, there came into temporary possession of Captain Baldridge a copy of that work, upon whose margins Janette Taylor had written some caustic comment. Miss Taylor was a niece of Jones who had been a close and meticulous student of her uncle's life and many of his papers which she possessed. One of her holographic statements re the picture of Jones In the frontispiece frontis-piece was this: ". . . it Is even too old, making every allowance for his mode of life, for a just representation of his appearance ap-pearance at the time of his death, he was then only 4.") years and 12 days." (His death. 1792. Is of record.) That tied It. No wonder the cap. tains tossed their scrambled eggs in the air like graduating midshipmen. John Paul has an olllci.i birthday only two centuries late and his face on a stamp for a present. In an attempt to end mess hall griping, the army aims to make kitchen police a respected and respectable re-spectable army chore. We'll have to wait on the critical judgment of the long-suftYring mess lines be. fore we really know ; but meanwhile we'll olTrr a U'.ist of . powdered K-ration lemonade to Genrral Ike and his staff -Just for trying. |