Today, I am thankful for those who’ve taught us how to turn up the volume.
The face is a truly stunning portion of the human body. Within a span of a few inches, we have organs that allow us to see and hear the world around us (let alone smell, taste, and communicate). But, let’s just settle on our eyes and ears for the moment.
For most of us, these two organs perform well throughout the course of our lives. However, some of us are born with deficits in sight or hearing. Others of us lose our ability to use these organs over time. So, today, I’m thankful to all those who have identified ways for us to amplify these organs in times of need. I pay homage to inventors like Benjamin Franklin, who created the first pair of bifocals in 1784 to allow us to see near and far at the same time. Or Louis Braille, who created a language to allow the blind to read and write.
Similar innovations have come about to assist those with hearing impairments. In 1800, Frederick Rein invented the first collapsible ear trumpet. Nearly 75 years later, the inventor Alexander Graham Bell would dedicate his life to find a better tool to assist the deaf – a task near and dear to him as both his mother and wife suffered from deafness. In turn, he would invent devices to control the frequency, volume, and distortion of sound, eventually leading to the birth of the telephone in 1876.
Even more amazingly, the inventions that would come forth from Bell’s amplification efforts would change the world. After filing a patent for the telephone, Bell would create the Bell Telephone Company, which included a small research division to continue measures to improve the telephone technology. As the Company grew, the research division remained a core element for innovation in telecommunications. This premier research facility, known aptly as Bell Laboratories, would develop a wide array of revolutionary technologies, such as the laser, solar cells, the operating system unit Unix, and, of course, the transistor. This last one changed the world.
In the early 1940s, the main method by which devices amplified an electrical current was through vacuum tubes. These tubes were bulky, unreliable, & inefficient. Eventually, an engineer at Bell Laboratories named Walter Brattain, together with 2 austere colleagues (John Bardeen & William Shockley) would use quantum physics to develop a better amplifier – the transistor. Their small device comprised of semiconductor elements (silicon and germanium) would eventually power telephones, radios, televisions, the personal computer, and, of course, better hearing aids. Today (Feb 10), Walter Brattain would have celebrated his 118th birthday.
In sum, the amplification efforts led by Bell Laboratories changed the world. Now, tell me, don’t you think their efforts deserve a hardy shout out?
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