English Original
Bell and His Legacy
It is such a common occurrence that no one ever wonders from whence it 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.
He was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1847, the son of a man who was consumed, 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. Perhaps this obsession of the elder Bell was one of the reasons he married whom he did. For the woman who would give birth to the inventor of the telephone was deaf!
Young Alexander Graham Bell grew up with his father's passions. In 1870, due to poor health, he migrated to Canada. His success in teaching the deaf to speak soon brought him to the attention of a wealthy Boston merchant who had a deaf daughter, Mabel. Bell agreed to teach Mabel, and they fell in love. She inspired him through exhausting experiments and supported him through periods of depression as he developed the remarkable instrument that transformed speech into electrical impulses and back into human speech at the end of a wire. He had pierced another solitude—the one that had denied speech between distant people. They married in 1877, and he later became an American citizen.
Alexander Graham Bell was showered with praise and honors from around the world. While he made other discoveries, he was most proud of his efforts to help the deaf. When the French government awarded him the Volta Prize for inventing the telephone, he used the monetary award, combined with proceeds from another patent, to establish the Volta Bureau in Washington, D.C., to fund research on deafness. Today, it is called the Alexander Graham Bell Association, providing the latest information to help the deaf cope with their disability.
Bell died in 1922; Mabel followed five months later. His name endures as a constant reminder of how he brought humanity into closer touch.
The first voice transmitted over a wire surprised even its inventor. One night in 1876, while experimenting, Bell accidentally succeeded in sending a message to his assistant in the next room. That night marked the start of a communications revolution.
Initially, two iron wires connected each pair of telephones. Switchboards centralized connections. Later inventions like the vacuum tube to amplify sound and coaxial cables for long-distance links greatly expanded service. Transistors replaced vacuum tubes, and by the 1960s, communications satellites eliminated the need for landlines. Today, bundles of glass fibers carry calls on laser beams of light.
Many of these inventions, including sound motion pictures and stereo recording, along with thousands of other patents, came from AT&T Bell Laboratories, founded in 1925. As we move forward, even greater flexibility in telecommunications is expected.
It is hard to imagine a world without the telephone. Our lives depend on computers linked to phone lines for shopping, banking, and daily work. Electronic mail arrives via telephone lines, allowing instant, effortless communication.
中文翻译
贝尔和他的遗产
电话是如此常见，以至于无人探究其起源。但其背后却有一个引人入胜的故事，堪称“征服孤寂”。这就是亚历山大·格雷厄姆·贝尔的故事。
他于1847年出生在苏格兰爱丁堡。他的父亲全神贯注、满怀激情地研究人声的产生与运用，尤其专注于教授聋人发声。因为在那个时代，聋人生活在永恒的孤寂中，他们既听不见，也不会说话。也许老贝尔的这种执着，部分促成了他的婚姻——因为后来生下电话发明者的那位女性，本身就是一位聋人。
年轻的亚历山大·格雷厄姆·贝尔继承了父亲的热情。1870年，因健康不佳，他移居加拿大。他成功教授聋人说话的事迹，很快引起了波士顿一位富商的注意，这位商人有一位聋人女儿，名叫梅布尔。贝尔同意教导梅布尔，两人坠入爱河。在贝尔研制那项非凡装置的过程中——它能将语音转化为电脉冲，再在电线末端还原为人声——梅布尔激励他度过无数次精疲力竭的实验，并在他陷入沮丧时给予支持。他由此打破了另一种孤寂——那种使相距遥远的人们无法交谈的隔阂。两人于1877年结婚，贝尔后来成为美国公民。
亚历山大·格雷厄姆·贝尔收获了来自世界各地的赞誉与荣誉。尽管他还有其他发明，但他最为自豪的是为帮助聋人所做的努力。当法国政府因他发明电话而授予他沃尔塔奖时，他将这笔奖金与另一项专利的收益结合，在华盛顿特区建立了沃尔塔局，以资助耳聋研究。今天，该机构更名为亚历山大·格雷厄姆·贝尔协会，致力于向全球聋人提供应对听力障碍的最新资讯。
贝尔于1922年去世，梅布尔五个月后随之离世。他的名字将长久流传，不断提醒世人，是他让人类的联系变得更加紧密。
通过电线传送的第一个声音，甚至让它的发明者本人也感到惊讶。1876年的一个夜晚，贝尔在实验中偶然成功地向隔壁房间的助手传递了信息。那一夜标志着通信革命的开始。
最初，每对电话由两根铁线连接。交换台使线路得以集中。后来的发明，如用于放大声音的真空管和用于远距离连接的同轴电缆，极大地扩展了电话服务。晶体管取代了真空管，到了20世纪60年代，通信卫星消除了对地面线路的依赖。如今，一束束玻璃纤维通过激光光束承载通话。
包括有声电影、立体声录音在内的许多发明，以及成千上万的其他专利，都来自1925年成立的AT&T贝尔实验室。展望未来，电信技术预计将展现出更大的灵活性。
很难想象一个没有电话的世界。我们的生活已离不开连接电话线的电脑，无论是购物、银行业务还是日常工作。电子邮件通过电话线传递，实现了即时、便捷的沟通。