Volta Laboratory and Bureau
The Volta Laboratory and the Volta Bureau were created in Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., by Alexander Graham Bell.
The Volta Laboratory was founded in 1880–1881 with Charles Sumner Tainter and Bell's cousin, Chichester Bell, for the research and development of telecommunication, phonograph and other technologies.
Using funds generated by the Volta Laboratory, Bell later founded the Volta Bureau in 1887 "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge relating to the deaf", and merged with the American Association for the Promotion and Teaching of Speech to the Deaf in 1908. It was renamed as the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf in 1956 and then the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in 1999.
History
The current building, a U.S. National Historic Landmark, was constructed in 1893 under the direction of Alexander Graham Bell to serve as a center of information for deaf and hard of hearing persons. Bell, best known for receiving the first telephone patent in 1876, was also a prominent figure of his generation in the education of the deaf. His grandfather, father, and elder brother were teachers of speech and the younger Bell worked with them.Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, Bell moved to Canada with his family in 1870 following the deaths of his brothers, and a year later moved to Boston to teach at a special day school for deaf children. Both Bell's mother and wife were deaf, profoundly influencing his life's work. He became a renowned educator by opening a private normal class to train teachers of speech to the deaf and as a professor of vocal physiology and the mechanics of speech at Boston University. During this time he also invented an improved phonautograph, the multiple telegraph, the speaking telegraph, or telephone, and numerous other devices.
In 1879, Bell and his wife Mabel Hubbard, who had been deaf from early childhood, moved to Washington, D.C. The following year, the French government awarded Bell the Volta Prize of 50,000 francs for the invention of the telephone. Bell used the money to establish a trust fund, the Volta Fund, and founded the Volta Laboratory Association, along with his cousin Chichester A. Bell and Sumner Tainter. The laboratory focused on research for the analysis, recording, and transmission of sound. In 1887, the Volta Laboratory Association transferred the sound recording and phonograph invention patents they had been granted to the American Graphophone Company, which later evolved into Columbia Records. Alexander Bell bent on improving the lives of the deaf, took a portion of his share of the profits to found the Volta Bureau as an instrument "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge relating to the deaf".
The Volta Bureau worked in close cooperation with the American Association for the Promotion of the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf which was organized in 1890, electing Bell as president. The Volta Bureau officially merged with the Association in 1908, and has been known as the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf since 1956, and then as the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing since 1999. Informally it is also called the 'AG Bell'.
Transition from the Volta Laboratory to the Volta Bureau
From about 1879 Bell's earliest physics research in Washington, D.C., was conducted at his first laboratory, a rented house, at 1325 L Street NW, and then from the autumn of 1880 at 1221 Connecticut Avenue NW. The laboratory was later relocated to 2020 F Street NW sometime after January 1886. With most of the laboratory's project work being conducted by his two associates, Bell was able to engage in extensive research into the causes of deafness as well as ways of improving the lives of the deaf, leading him to create the Volta Bureau in 1887. In 1889, Bell and his family moved from their Brodhead-Bell mansion to a new home close to his father, Alexander Melville Bell. Between 1889 and 1893, the Volta Bureau was located in the carriage house to the rear of the home of Bell's father, at 1527 35th Street NW in Washington, D.C. The work of the Bureau increased to such an extent that in 1893 Bell, with the assistance of his father, constructed a neoclassical yellow brick and sandstone building specifically to house the institution.The new bureau building was constructed across the street from his father's home, where its carriage house had been its original headquarters. On May 8, 1893, Bell's 13-year-old prodigy, Helen Keller, performed the sod-breaking ceremony for the construction of the new Volta Bureau building.
The 'Volta Bureau' was so named in 1887 at the suggestion of John Hitz, its first superintendent, and Bell's prior researcher. Hitz remained its first superintendent until his death in 1908. Bell's former trust, the Volta Fund, was also renamed the Volta Bureau Fund when the Bureau was established, except for US$25,000 that Bell diverted to the AAPTSD, one of several organizations for the deaf that Bell ultimately donated some $450,000 to starting in the 1880s.
The building, a neoclassical Corinthian templum in antis structure of closely matching golden yellow sandstone and Roman brick with architectural terracotta details, was built in 1893 to a design by Peabody and Stearns of Boston. Its design is unique in the Georgetown area of Washington, due to its Academic Revival style. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1972.
While the Volta Bureau's assigned mission was to conduct research into deafness as well as its related pedagogical strategies, Bell would continue with his other scientific, engineering and inventive works for the remainder of his life, conducted mainly at the newer and larger laboratory he built on his Nova Scotia estate, Beinn Breagh. Although Bell self-described his occupation as a "teacher of the deaf" throughout his life, his foremost activities revolved around those of general scientific discovery and invention.
By 1887 the Volta Laboratory Association's assets had been distributed among its partners and its collective works had ceased. In 1895 Bell's father, noted philologist and elocutionist Alexander Melville Bell, who had authored over 45 publications on elocution, the use of visible speech for the deaf and similar related subjects, assigned all his publication copyrights to the Volta Bureau for its financial benefit. The Volta Bureau later evolved into the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, and its works have actively continued to the present day under its own charter.
Laboratory projects
The Volta Laboratory Association, or Volta Associates, was created by formal legal agreement on October 8, 1881, constituting the Volta Laboratory Association to be the owner of its patents. It was dissolved in 1886 when its sound recording intellectual property assets were transferred into the Volta Graphophone Company. The association was composed of Alexander Graham Bell, Charles Sumner Tainter, and Bell's cousin, renowned British chemist Dr. Chichester Bell.During the 1880s the Volta Associates worked on various projects, at times either individually or collectively. Originally, work at the laboratory was to focus on telephone applications, but then shifted to phonographic research at the prompting of Tainter. The laboratory's projects and achievements included :
- the 'intermittent-beam sounder' – used in spectral analysis and in the generation of pure tones ;
- the Photophone – an optical, wireless telephone, the precursor to fiber-optic communications ;
- experiments in magnetic recording – attempts at recording sounds permanently fixed onto electroplated records ;
- an artificial respirator that Bell termed a "vacuum jacket", created after one of his premature sons died due to his immature lungs ;
- the 'spectrophone' – a derivative of the Photophone, used for spectral analysis by means of sound ;
- an improved induction balance – an audible metal detector created in a bid to save President James A. Garfield's life ;
- a 'speed governor' for record players ;
- the 'air-jet record stylus', an electric-pneumatic phonograph stylus designed to reduce background noise while playing a record, resulting in U.S. Patent # 341,212 granted on May 4, 1886 ;
- an audiometer – used in both telecommunications and to assist in studies of deafness,
Tainter's move to the laboratory
Earlier Bell had met fellow Cambridge resident, Charles Sumner Tainter, a young self-educated instrument maker who had been assigned to the U.S. Transit of Venus Commission geodetic expedition to New Zealand to observe the planet's solar transit in December 1874. Tainter subsequently opened a shop for the production of scientific instruments in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts. He later wrote of his first meeting with Bell: "... one day I received a visit from a very distinguished looking gentleman with jet black hair and beard, who announced himself as Mr. A. Graham Bell. His charm of manner and conversation attracted me greatly.... ".Shortly after the creation of the Bell Telephone Company, Bell took his bride, Mabel Hubbard, to Europe for an extended honeymoon. At that time he asked Tainter to move from Cambridge to Washington to start up the new laboratory. Bell's cousin, Chichester Bell, who had been teaching college chemistry in London, also agreed to come to Washington as the third associate. The establishment of the laboratory was comparatively simple; according to Tainter's autobiography:
Bell appeared to have spent little time in the Volta Laboratory. Tainter's unpublished manuscript and notes depict Bell as the person who suggested the basic lines of research, furnished the financial resources, and then allowed his associates to receive the credit for many of the inventions that resulted. The experimental machines built at the Volta Laboratory include both disc and cylinder types, with some of the disc type turntables rotating vertically about a horizontal axis, as well as a hand-powered, non-magnetic tape recorder. The records and tapes used with the machines were donated to the collections of the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of Natural History, and were believed to be the oldest reproducible bona fide sound recordings preserved anywhere in the world. While some were scratched and cracked, others were still in good condition when they were received.