[Bell, Alexander Graham.] On the invention of Bell's great invention, the photophone, as it was described in four issues of the journal Nature from 1880-1881 (including the weekly issues for September 23,1880, November 4 & 18, 1880, and February 10, 1881:
(1) The Photophone, page 481, in the weekly issue of Nature, September 23, 1880;
(2) Bell's Photophone, pp 15-19, in the weekly issue of Nature, November 4, 1880, with illustrations of the apparatus, running approximately 3000 words.
(3) Shelford Bidwell, "Bell's Photophone", in in the weekly issue of Nature 18 November 1880, pp 58-9, approximately 1750 words.
(4) "Photophone Experiments", in in the weekly issue of Nature 10 February 1881, page 354, approximately 400 words, two illustrations.
These are among the earliest articles on Bell's fantastic invention utilizing his discovery of the photoacoustic effect--basically, transmitting wireless telephone conversations on a beam of light, a feat that would not be utilized until the last two decades of the 10th century. Offered here are the four issues, the first in its original wrappers, cleanly removed from a larger bound volume with only trace elements of the removal visible at their spines. Nice copies. $450
Alexander Graham Bell was already mega-famous by the time he unveiled what he considered to be one of his greatest inventions. Working at his L Street lab as well as from his home (which was just a few blocks away from my store in Georgetown, which was at the 34th & Volta Place, also just a few doors away from Alger Hiss' old place, and a few doors the other way from Warren Christopher's house where he slipped and fell on his last day in DC on his snowy steps) he developed the photophone. In the day, in 1880, when it was completed he considered the work so substantial and filled with so much potential that he left his plans on deposit in a sealed something-or-other until he announced the results for real, which came at a public lecture on August 27, 1880. (This perhaps for the big taste of legal trouble he got into with his telephone--troubles and contentiousness that would continue for years. Also there was something in the air about this, so to speak, with an article in Nature attesting to rivals of the ingenious invention coming in the 23 May issue of the same year.) In any event, he found this invention to surpass his telephone and phonograph--except that few people today recall the instrument, much less what it did.
It was a fantastic thing, an elegant device utilizing his discovery of the photoacoustic effect--basically, transmitting wireless telephone conversations, transmitting speech on light rays, a feat that would not be utilized until the last two decades of the 20th century, a precursor to fibre-optic communication--it was just decades away from practical application.
In his article in Nature of September 23, 1880, electrical pioneer Sylvanus Thompson writes (opening that weekly issue) that "sounds can be transmitted from one station to another wherever a beam of light can be flashed; ...we may expect the slow spelling out of words in flashing signals of the heliograph to be superceded by the more expeditious whispers of the photophone" (page 481). Actually it seems that this paper beat the sponsor organization of Bell's August address into general print, though The Electrician seems to have bested them both with an article on September 18.
Bell was happy. According to Ben Richmond (at Motherboard) Bell wrote a lovely note to his father on his success:
“I have heard articulate speech by sunlight! I have heard a ray of the sun laugh and cough and sing! ...I have been able to hear a shadow and I have even perceived by ear the passage of a cloud across the sun's disk.”
- "The photophone is a telecommunications device that allows transmission of speech on a beam of light. It was invented jointly by Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant Charles Sumner Tainter on February 19, 1880, at Bell's laboratory at 1325 L Street in Washington, D.C."--Wiki
- "Imagine a solar-powered telephone, and you're close to understanding the important gadget Alexander Graham Bell invented on June 3, 1880, four years after he had patented the telephone. Bell considered the photophone one of his most important inventions. He's probably right, since the technology behind the photophone led to the technology that helps computers send information around the world today..."--America's Library
- “Bell would have to modulate sound waves like electricity. The telephone transmitted sound through the modulated electrical current sent through telegraph wires. The Selenium receiver would then act like an optic version of the electric coil in a telephone receiver, converting the modulated light back into sound waves...Bell was absolutely correct. In February of 1880, using nothing more than a diaphragm attached to metal grating and a rudimentary selenium receiver, Bell listened as assistant Charles Sumner Tainter’s a cappella version of Auld Lang Syne came blaring through his headphones, transmitted through a single beam of sunlight."--Inverse dot com
- "The photophone was in fact the World’s first device for wireless communications. So optical wireless communications came first and wireless radio communications appeared some years later. Bell did not just invent and patent the concept, he also built the Photophone and demonstrated it transmitting speech over distances of several hundred meters."--Visible Light Communications dot com
Bell's photophone transmitter
