Bell and his legacy¹

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 Solitude². " It is the story of Alexander Graham Bell.
这件事太不足为奇了，所以没有人会去猜想它是怎么发生的。但是电话的背后却有一个引人入胜的故事，可以题名为“征服孤寂”。这就是亚历山大·格雷厄姆·贝尔的故事。

He was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. In 1847, the son of a man who was consumed, passionately³ 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, you see, the deaf lived in permanent solitude. Not only could they not hear, they could not speak. After all, how could they pronounce words, they couldn't hear? Perhaps this obsession⁴ 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!
1847年他生于苏格兰的爱丁堡市。他的父亲全神贯注、满怀激情地全神贯注于研究人的声音的发生和作用过程，特别是教耳聋的人如何运用声音。因为那个时候，耳聋的人生活在永恒的孤寂之中。他们不仅听不见，而且也不会说话。毕竟，他们听不见说的话，又怎么能发得出声来呢?也许，老贝尔的这一执着爱好是促使他日后同成为自己妻子的人结婚的原因之一。因为后来生下电话的发明者的那位妇女……是个聋人！

Young Alexander Graham Bell grew up with his father's passions. In 1870, because of poor health, he migrated to Canada. It was not long before his success in teaching the deal to speak brought him to the attention of a wealthy merchant in Boston who had a deaf daughter, Mabel. Would Mr. Bell please teach Mabel how to speak? Yes, he would. And did. And they fell in love. It was she who inspired him through an of the exhausting experiments. who pulled him through the clepressioljs that often irtflict those whose drive to succeed is so intense, while he developed the then remarkable⁵ instrument that transformed speech into electrical impulses that could then be converted back into human speech at the end of a wire. he had pierced yet another solitude, the one that up until then had denied human speech between people distant from one another. A year later, in 1877, he and Mabel were married. He later became an American citizen.
年轻的亚历山大·格雷厄姆。贝尔带着自己父亲的执着爱好长本。1870年，他由于健康不佳移居加拿大。不久之后，他就以成功地教会耳聋者说话而引起波士顿一位富商的注意。这位商人有个耳聋的女儿梅布尔。可否请贝尔先生教梅布尔说话呢?可以。他愿意教。他教了梅布尔。他们相爱了。是梅布尔鼓舞他进行了所有那些使人精疲力竭的实验，也是梅布尔使他克服了不时产生的沮丧情绪——那种常常困扰着紧张工作去夺取成功的人们的沮丧情绪——使他得以研制出当时很了不起的一种工具。它能把人说的话转变为电脉冲，之后又在金属丝的末端使之还原成人说的话。这样他就打破了又一种孤寂，那种在此之前一直使相距遥远的人无法通话的孤寂。一年之后，1877年，他同梅布尔结为夫妻，他后来成为美国公民。

Oh, ALexander Grahahl Bell was showered with the praise of the world. Honors came to him from all the points of the compass. Yes, he would go on to other discoveries, many of them. But in his own view, he was most proud of his efforts to help the deaf.
啊，全世界的赞美如雨点般倾注下来，荣誉来自四面八方。是的，他后来继续做出发明，多项发明。但是他本人认为，他为帮助聋人所做的努力最使他自豪。

So, when the government of France awarded him the Volta Prize for inventing the telephone, he combined this monetary⁶ award with the money hye made from selling the patent on another invention to establish the Volta Bureau in Washington, D. C. . Its purpose was to fund research on deafness. Today, it is called the Alexander Graham Bell Association. Its role has been changed to providing the latest information to the deaf of the world on how best to cope with their disability.
所以，当法国政府因为他发明了电话而授与他沃尔塔奖金时，他用这笔奖金再加上他通过出售另一项发明所得到的钱，在华盛顿建立起沃尔塔办事处，其目的就是为医治耳聋提供资金。今天这—机构称作“亚历山大·格雷厄姆·贝尔协会”，它的作用已改为，向全世界的聋人提供如何最有效地对付耳聋的最新资料。

Alexander Graham Bell died in 1922: Mabel five months later. She loved him that much. His name is likely to live as long as man recalls history. After all, there is this constant reminder⁷ of how he brought the human family into closer touch.
亚历山大·格雷厄姆·贝尔死于1922年，梅布尔在他去世5个月后也死了，因为她太爱贝尔了。贝尔的名字很可能。会像人类记忆历史那样永世长存。毕竟有了这样一件物品，它经常提醒人们，是贝尔使人类大家庭彼此得以保持更密切的联系。

The first voice to travel over a wire was even a surprise for its inventor. Alexander Graham Bell. He was experimenting in his laboratory late one night, and quite by accident he succeeded in transmitting a message to his assistant in the next room. What Mr. Bell could not know at the time was that that night in 1876 would mark the start of a revolution in communications.
通过电线传送的第一个声音，甚至使它的发明人亚历山大·格雷厄姆·贝尔都感到惊讶。一天深夜，贝尔正在实验室里做实验，他向在隔壁房间里的助手偶然传递的一个口信获得了成功。贝尔先生当时无法知道的是，1876年的那个夜晚将标志着通信革命的开始。

At first, two iron wires connected each pair of telephones. Then switchboards brought phone wires into one location. Other inventions - the vacuum tube to amplify⁸ sound, and coaxial cables to link long distances on land and under the seas -- greatly expanded phone service. Transistors⁹ replaced the old vacuum tubes, and by the 1960s communications satellites eliminated the necessity of landlines. Today, bundles of glass fibers¹⁰ carry calls on laser beams of light.
最初，每一对电话是用两根铁丝连接起来的。然后，交换台使电话线集中到一个地点、其他的发明——如放大声音的真空管和在陆上及海底连接长距离的同轴电缆一一极大地扩展了电话服务。晶体管取代了真空管。到了60年代，通信卫星又消除了对地面线路的需要。今天，一束束的玻璃纤维用激光传递人们彼此间的通话。

Many of these inventions—including sound motion pictures and stereo recording¹¹, along with 23,00 other patents—come from AT&T Bell Laboratories founded in 1925. John Davis is executive director of Bell Laboratories Consumer Products Division. He says, as we move into the 1900s, we can expect even greater flexibility¹² in telecommunications.
这些发明当中有许多项发明——包括有声电影和立体声录音，随同23，000项其他专利——来自1925年建立的AT&T贝尔实验室。约翰·戴维斯是贝尔实验室消费产品部执行主任。他说，当我们进入90年代的时候，可以预期电信将具有更大的灵活性。

It is hard to imagine a world without the telephone. Our lives have grown to depend on computers linked into phone lines to do our shopping, our banking¹³, or helping¹⁴ us through a typical day work.
很难想象没有电话的世界是什么样子。我们的生活已变得要依靠把电脑同电话线连接在一起来购物、办理银行存款、取款手续，或者帮助我们完成一天的工作了。

When you walk into your office, the first thing you do is to turn on the computer and pull up your electronic mail for the day. Of course, your electronic mail does not come in through the mailbox, bit comes in through telephone lines. The nice thing is you can turn them around by simply forwarding back without having to worry about addressing or stamping or enveloping¹⁵ the information to the person that sent you the message.
当你走进办公室后所做的第一件事就是把电脑打开，提取出当天的电子信件。当然，你的电子信件不是通过邮箱送进来的，而是通过电话线输送进来的。好处是，你只需向回输送就能掉转方向把信息发给来信者，而不用费事写地址，贴邮票，装信封。