Something Inspirational
Freeman Ashworth - October 8, 2007
I subscribe to a newspaper very few people would even consider. It goes by the name of Old News. The front page of the January 2003 issue states that "Alexander Graham Bell Invents Telephone." How soon we grow accustomed to inventions. In 1875, Morse code was the only means we could electronically transmit any messages. Even to think of someone transmitting his or her voice by wire was considered a pipe dream made only by wild-eyed dreamers. Alec Bell, at the time was a voice teacher, and very conscious of the vibrations that we create as we speak. He was also familiar with telegraph equipment and electricity and owned considerable stock in Western Union.
Although I am quite familiar with how the telephone works, I don't intend to turn this article into a lesson about electricity. However, studying his invention and the early attempts to transmit sound by electronics are very interesting -- very interesting to those who are curious enough to search out the manner of how someone brings nebulous ideas into fruition. Bell did not hatch the idea all at once, like an egg dropping from a hen. It came about from years of research about vibrations and harmonics. He found that specific vibrations of sound would vibrate specific objects at a certain frequency. If that vibration could be adapted to activate a switch rapidly at the same frequency, it could send electrical 'vibrations' across endless miles of transmission wire to another switching device that would amplify that identical vibration into the same sound. That, in a mouthful is how our telephone works today. However, we have substituted a number of devices that Mr. Bell did not have available, such as the carbon microphone. We now have portable telephones, small enough to carry in our wallets.
Inventors piece together sundry bits of information, to design something new that the world has never seen before. However, someone must have the basic idea in the first place, or nothing is accomplished. A prime example of this is what happened to Eli Whitney. You know, the guy who made history when he said, "Keep your cotton pickin' hands off my gin." Eli worked on a southern cotton plantation where he was deeply involved with the production of cotton. It was a real problem to separate the large cottonseed from its fluff, from which cotton thread is made.
One warm summer afternoon, he relaxed under a tree overlooking a chicken yard. He observed a cat attempting to claw at a hen by reaching its paw through the chicken-wire fence. The cat would draw back only a paw full of down, leaving the hen still on the other side of the fence.
He combined these two ideas: the need for a machine to remove the cotton fluff, and the observation of the cat's futile attempt at supper. Walla! The cotton gin was as good as invented right on the spot. All he needed to do was to devise a rotating drum with hooks on it that reached into the cotton bin (hen yard) and pull back the cotton fluff (down off the hen) and leave the large seed (the hen) behind.
How did all this happen in such a short time? Why didn't it happen centuries ago, back in Roman times? Back in the times of the Chinese Dynasties? The materials were there. The need was there. People are not that much smarter today than they were yesterday or thousands of years ago. So, why the difference?
The difference, at least I think so, the difference is that we have arrived at a point in our development where we can for the moment, stop chopping wood and can take a deep look at the forest around us, daydream now and then. Technology has given us an opportunity to create machines to do the wood chopping and we can look at the trees, and smell the roses and ask ourselves serious questions such as 'Where did creation come from?' and 'What really am I doing here?' What can I do about my immediate problem? However, it is more than advancement in technology.
Advanced technology would only create more creative devils, if it were not curbed by this wonderful political element called freedom. This nation was founded upon the belief that all people are important and are needed. It is also important that inventors can reap the joys of their inventions. We in America developed this combination in a little over two centuries -- something the world has never been able to create before. Greed always got in the way, keeping ignorance at an all time high.
Just something to think about. Until later, cheers!