Today, the telephone is a part of everyday life. We use the telephone so much that it is difficult to imagine life without it.

It was Friday afternoon on 10 March 1876. Aleck was sitting in one room testing a transmitter. Wires connected it to a receiver in another room where Thomas Watson was working. Just then, Aleck knocked over a bottle of acid. Without thinking, he shouted into his mouthpiece, ``Mr. Watson, come here, t want to see you``. To his great surprise, Watson came into the room. He had heard Aleck’s voice over the telephone.

In great excitement, the two men took turns to speak into the telephone. At first, the sound was fuzzy and muffled. Then Aleck heard Watson ask, ``Mr. Bell, do you understand what I say?’’ the words were loud and clear.

Aleck was only 32 years old. He set up an inventions factory were inventors could work on their ideas.

Aleck’s other inventions included a gramophone for recording and playing sounds, and a metal detector for finding bullets in people who had been shot. He also invented a respirator. This was a machine that helped people with breathing problems to breathe artificially.

The telephone brought Aleck fame and fortune. But first he had to show it off. To begin with, people were suspicious of the telephone. Some even thought it was a hoax. Aleck had to convince them that his invention could really change their lives.

Soon everyone wanted to know about the telephone. Over the next four years, Alecks was asked to give many lectures and demonstration, including one to Queen Victoria.

Aleck was always busy. But he still had one burning ambition. He wanted to make a flying machine. He really worked hard for it. In 1908, he and some friends won a trophy or building a plane that flew further than a kilometer.

Aleck died in 1922 at the age of 75 years. He had carried on working right till the end. As a sign of respect, all telephones in the USA were silent for a minute at his funeral.

Bell’s name will always be linked to the telephone. But he never stopped his work for the deaf. Alexander Graham bell Association for the Deaf and hard of Hearing in Washington DC is still a worldwide centre for the study of hearing difficulties.

Hoax

Something which is fake, it is an attempt to trick a person.