Reluctant Genius (55 page)

The Forlanini craft fired the imaginations of both Alec and Casey. They were convinced they could do better. By the time the Bell party had reached France, the two men had reverted to inventor mode. In Paris, they saw a seventy-five-horsepower motor, built by the Gnome Company, that Alec decided was exactly what he needed for his newest man-carrying kite: the
Cygnet II.
When the Gnome Company refused to sell the engine unless one of their own engineers was retained to install it, Casey enrolled at the Gnome plant as an apprentice mechanic for six weeks. Then he and the motor steamed back to Cape Breton, and Alec began to focus on building the fastest boat in the world. As usual, however, there were many distractions—sheep, the National Geographic Society, the American Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf. He wrote to Mabel, who was in Washington, “There seems to be always something going on where I am. Nothing, perhaps, that would interest other people, but it keeps me busy and interested all the time. First, I have been working very hard at the sheep records, and now I am off [to help grandson Melville with] experiments concerning ice and water, with other ideas crawling around not yet expressed, relating to a reefing displacement for hydro-aerodromes. …”

Soon after the Bells’ return from their world tour, yet another preoccupation piqued their interest: the Montessori method of education. A new educational philosophy was taking root in North America in the early twentieth century. In retrospect, it is not surprising that, in a world where scientific inquiry was proving as valuable as classical studies, rote learning and strict discipline were losing ground. Reformers who took a more child-centered approach to education challenged the traditional view of a child’s mind as an empty vessel to be filled with knowledge by an authoritarian teacher. Among the most impassioned critics of old-fashioned pedagogy were the followers of the Italian physician Dr. Maria Montessori. “Children teach themselves” was the Montessori slogan. Montessori teachers would place carefully prepared materials in front of their young students, then let them explore and discuss those materials at their own pace. A young Chicago teacher called Anne George studied with Dr. Montessori in Rome and then returned to America to establish a primary school. In Tarrytown, New York, George and her friend Roberta Fletcher pioneered Montessori methods. In 1911,
McClure’s Magazine
carried an article about their Tarrytown school.

Alexander Graham Bell never had any patience with traditional teaching methods. He had given his opinion of them to a Chicago newspaper reporter in the 1890s: “The system of giving out a certain amount of work which must be carried through in a given space of time, and putting the children into orderly rows of desks and compelling them to absorb just so much intellectual nourishment, whether they are ready for it or not, reminds me of the way they prepare pate de foie gras in the living geese.” When his own daughters were young, Alec was too caught up in his own pursuits to spend much time on their education. However, show-and-tell sessions at Beinn Bhreagh with his grandchildren inspired him to design—and publicize in the
Volta Review
(published by his Volta Institute)—simple experiments for children. “If their curiosity and interest can be aroused,” he wrote, “they will speculate for themselves as to the causes of the phenomena observed. This exercise of the mind is just what children need. It develops their reasoning powers and arouses their interest.”

Alec probably heard about the Montessori Method in 1912 at one of his Wednesday evenings, at which S. S. McClure, founder of the magazine, was a regular guest. The new educational philosophy had instant appeal for him. Within weeks, his wife and his daughter Daisy had visited the Tarrytown school. They persuaded Roberta Fletcher to open a Montessori school in Washington. That summer, Miss Fletcher joined the Bells in Baddeck to establish the first Montessori school in Canada.

The Montessori school in Baddeck had a serious educational purpose, but for the Bell grandchildren it was just another wonderful activity sponsored by “Gammie and Grampie.” The loft of a Beinn Bhreagh warehouse was given a new coat of whitewash and decorated with potted trees and prints of Norway and Egypt acquired by Mabel on her travels. When the school opened on July 18, 1912, there were twelve pupils: five Grosvenors, two Fairchilds, and five small Nova Scotians. “Little ones from three years of age upwards,” Mabel noted with delight, “can experiment with all sorts of things to their hearts’ content, and at their own sweet will.” Alec was fascinated by the school and had regular afternoon conferences with Miss Fletcher to review progress.

When the Bell household returned to Washington in October, Miss Fletcher discovered the momentum bestowed on any project by the Bell name. A larger school was opened in the annex of the Bells’ Connecticut Avenue residence, for 23 children, including the Grosvenors and Fairchilds. Press coverage stimulated more inquiries, and in April 1913, over 250 interested people gathered in the Bells’ home to discuss a permanent Montessori school in the U.S. capital. The Montessori Educational Association was formed, and Mabel was unanimously elected president. Within months, she had purchased a large old house and garden at 1840 Kalorama Road, overseen the renovations, furnished it with low tables and chairs and a piano, and rented it to the association. “I want my grandchildren,” she confided to a friend, “to be workers and if the Montessori System does not make them efficient men and women, looking on work as the noblest thing of all, I shall be disappointed.”

The Montessori bandwagon rolled on for a few more years. The founder herself arrived in Washington in December 1913 to give a lecture at the Masonic Temple. “Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Graham Bell entertained at a reception this evening, complimentary to Dr. Maria Montessori, when 400 members of Washington society met the noted Italian educator,” reported the
New York Times.
By 1915, the Montessori Educational Association was publishing a magazine and Alec had replaced Mabel as president. But the Montessori movement began to decline in North America as other educational reform movements, particularly the homegrown “learning-by-doing”approach promoted by Chicago’s John Dewey, took off. In 1919, the school on Kalorama Road closed its doors.

But Alexander Graham Bell remained constantly in the news. In 1912, he appeared before a congressional committee on foreign affairs, urging the adoption of an international agreement on standard pronunciation. “You have no idea of the absurdities of our speech,” the proponent of Visible Speech explained. “For instance, e-n-o-u-g-h spells ‘enuff,’ whereas p-l-o-u-g-h spells ‘plow.’ A foreigner might think that c-o-u-g-h spelled ‘cow,’ but it doesn’t.” Alec was regularly invited to speak at school graduation ceremonies. “What a glorious thing it is to be young and have a future before you,” he told one such class. “But it is also a glorious thing to be old and look back upon the progress of the world during one’s own lifetime.” His Wednesday-evening get-togethers continued to be among the most prestigious private events in the city. Between January and April 1912, participants discussed subjects ranging from wireless telephony and the temperature of volcanoes to hookworm and the Scott Expedition to Antarctica.

Alec’s world renown, combined with Mabel’s achievements despite her deafness, made them celebrities within Washington before the word “celebrity” was even fashionable. And they were such an endearing couple. At Washington dinners, if a speaker was out of Mabel’s sight, Alec would position himself so that he could silently repeat the speaker’s words to his wife. At the theater, fellow members of the audience were intrigued to watch Alec turn his face toward Mabel and mouth the dialog so she could follow the plot. Once silent movies arrived, the Bells became regular moviegoers. This time, Mabel would whisper to Alec what the actors were actually saying, as opposed to the dialog depicted in the subtitles. During a love scene in one Mary Pickford film, both Bells suddenly burst into laughter. Although Pickford, according to the caption, was assuring Douglas Fairbanks that she loved him dearly, Mabel had watched Pickford say, “Get off my foot, stupid, you’re hurting me.”

The Bell clan in 1918. Top row (left to right): Dr. David Fairchild, Mabel Grosvenor, Daisy Bell Fairchild, Elsie Bell Grosvenor, Melville Grosvenor, Gilbert Grosvenor, Gertrude Grosvenor. Seated: Alexander Fairchild, Mabel Bell holding Gloria Grosvenor, Lilian Grosvenor, Carol Grosvenor, Alexander Graham Bell, Nancy Bell Fairchild. At Alec’s feet: Barbara Fairchild.

It was now years since Alec had had anything to do with telephones. Since 1894, when his patents and the Bell Company’s monopoly had expired, telephone development in the United States had surged. By 1902, more than a thousand new independent telephone companies had emerged, usually to service areas ignored by the Bell system. In 1894, there had been 285,000 telephones in the country, primarily serving businesses and news organizations. By January 1911, there were 7.6 million, with fewer than half in the Bell system. Alec’s invention had truly changed the world. Telephone wires crisscrossed North America, linking families and friends. (And, often, strangers. Many of the non-business lines were party lines, shared between several households, each of which had a particular ring. This offered irresistible opportunities to eavesdrop on other people’s conversations.) Since Alec’s voice had traveled the eight miles from Brantford to Paris, Ontario, in the first-ever long-distance telephone call in 1877, more powerful voice amplifiers had steadily increased the distance possible between callers. In May 1911, Damon Runyon, then a reporter with the Hearst daily the
New York American,
had placed a historic 2,066-mile telephone call to a fellow reporter in Denver, Colorado. The next goal that telephone engineers scrambled to achieve was coast-to-coast transmission.

Finally, in 1915, new telephone technology made a transcontinental call possible. Alec was generally reluctant to appear at staged press events—his telephone years were behind him, he insisted. Anyway, he hated dressing up. He always preferred the simplicity of elastic-sided pull-on boots to shoes that demanded lacing, and he refused to wear any necktie that he had to tie himself. But on this occasion, the Grand Old Man of telephony agreed to officiate at the inaugural transcontinental call. Resplendent in a frock coat and white waistcoat, at 4:30 p.m. on January 25, 1915, he took his seat at a long table at the New York City headquarters of AT&T—the American Telephone and Telegraph company—which had become, by now, a mighty monopoly. He was not in the best of moods: the event organizer had suggested a scripted conversation and had given him some draft dialog. Alec threw aside the script and declared that if the telephone didn’t work, he wasn’t going to pretend. So nobody knew what Alexander Graham Bell, the founding father of telephony, was going to say when, flanked by company directors, he picked up the telephone.

There was no reason for concern. Alec knew exactly what to say to the man specially selected to receive the call at the other end. With a smile, Alec inquired, “Hoy! Hoy! Mr. Watson, are you there? Do you hear me?”

The historic words sped along copper wires via Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Chicago, Omaha, Denver, and Salt Lake City to the Pacific coast—a distance of over 3,000 miles, straddled by more than 130,000 telephone poles. This time, unlike the very first time these same men had been linked by a telephone wire, the call was two-way. In San Francisco, Thomas Watson, Alec’s assistant in the early Boston experiments, lifted the telephone in front of a crowd of reporters and replied, “Yes, Mr. Bell, I hear you perfectly. Do you hear me well?”

“Yes, your voice is perfectly distinct,” responded Alec. “It is as clear as if you were here in New York instead of being more than three thousand miles away. You remember, Mr. Watson, that evening thirty-eight years ago when we conversed through a telephone on a real line for the first time?”

“Yes, indeed,” said Thomas. “That line was two miles long, running from Boston to Cambridge. You were overjoyed at the success of the experiment.”

The men chatted for a few minutes. If the nation’s press corps hadn’t been watching, each might have risen to do a few steps of the old Mohawk war dance. Instead, Alec repeated the words he had spoken on March 10, 1876: “Mr. Watson, come here, I want you.” But in 1915, Thomas Watson had to reply, “It would take me a week to get to you this time.”

Alec was still chuckling when another voice came on the line: that of his political hero, President Woodrow Wilson. Speaking from the White House, the president congratulated Alexander Graham Bell on “this notable consummation of your long labors.”

The event triggered a burst of pride and patriotic hyperbole. The
San Francisco Examiner
stated that the telephone company men grouped around Thomas Watson were as “jubilant as a lot of boys on an unexpected holiday.”
Bell Telephone News
declared that the transcontinental telephone system was “the highest achievement of practicalscience up to today—no other nation has produced anything like it, nor could any other nation.” Oblivious to the years during which the young Alec had lived in Scotland, England, and Canada, the company newsletter insisted that the system was “sui generis, it is gigantic—and it is entirely American.”