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 Solitude. " It is the story of Alexander Graham Bell. 這件事太不足爲奇了，所以沒有人會去猜想它是怎麼發生的。但是電話的背後卻有一個引人入勝的故事，可以題名爲“征服孤寂”。這就是亞歷山大·格雷厄姆·貝爾的故事。
He was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. In 1847, the son of a man who was consumed, passionately 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 obsession 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年他生於蘇格蘭的愛丁堡市。他的父親全神貫注、滿懷激情地全神貫注於研究人的聲音的發生和作用過程，特別是教耳聾的人如何運用聲音。因爲那個時候，耳聾的人生活在永恆的孤寂之中。他們不僅聽不見，而且也不會說話。畢竟，他們聽不見說的話，又怎麼能發得出聲來呢?也許，老貝爾的這一執着愛好是促使他日後同成爲自己妻子的人結婚的原因之一。因爲後來生下電話的發明者的那位婦女……是個聾人！
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 remarkable 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. 年輕的亞歷山大·格雷厄姆。貝爾帶着自己父親的執着愛好長本。1870年，他由於健康不佳移居加拿大。不久之後，他就以成功地教會耳聾者說話而引起波士頓一位富商的注意。這位商人有個耳聾的女兒梅布爾。可否請貝爾先生教梅布爾說話呢?可以。他願意教。他教了梅布爾。他們相愛了。是梅布爾鼓舞他進行了所有那些使人精疲力竭的實驗，也是梅布爾使他克服了不時產生的沮喪情緒——那種常常困擾着緊張工作去奪取成功的人們的沮喪情緒——使他得以研製出當時很了不起的一種工具。它能把人說的話轉變爲電脈衝，之後又在金屬絲的末端使之還原成人說的話。這樣他就打破了又一種孤寂，那種在此之前一直使相距遙遠的人無法通話的孤寂。一年之後，1877年，他同梅布爾結爲夫妻，他後來成爲美國公民。
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，全世界的讚美如雨點般傾注下來，榮譽來自四面八方。是的，他後來繼續做出發明，多項發明。但是他本人認爲，他爲幫助聾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 monetary 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，當法國政府因爲他發明了電話而授與他沃爾塔獎金時，他用這筆獎金再加上他通過出售另一項發明所得到的錢，在華盛頓建立起沃爾塔辦事處，其目的就是爲醫治耳聾提供資金。今天這—機構稱作“亞歷山大·格雷厄姆·貝爾協會”，它的作用已改爲，向全世界的聾人提供如何最有效地對付耳聾的最新資料。
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 reminder of how he brought the human family into closer touch. 亞歷山大·格雷厄姆·貝爾死於1922年，梅布爾在他去世5個月後也死了，因爲她太愛貝爾了。貝爾的名字很可能。會像人類記憶歷史那樣永世長存。畢竟有了這樣一件物品，它經常提醒人們，是貝爾使人類大家庭彼此得以保持更密切的聯繫。
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. 通過電線傳送的第一個聲音，甚至使它的發明人亞歷山大·格雷厄姆·貝爾都感到驚訝。一天深夜，貝爾正在實驗室裏做實驗，他向在隔壁房間裏的助手偶然傳遞的一個口信獲得了成功。貝爾先生當時無法知道的是，1876年的那個夜晚將標誌着通信革命的開始。
At first, two iron wires connected each pair of telephones. Then switchboards brought phone wires into one location. Other inventions - the vacuum tube to amplify sound, and coaxial cables to link long distances on land and under the seas -- greatly expanded phone service. Transistors replaced the old vacuum tubes, and by the 1960s communications satellites eliminated the necessity of landlines. Today, bundles of glass fibers carry calls on laser beams of light. 最初，每一對電話是用兩根鐵絲連接起來的。然後，交換臺使電話線集中到一個地點、其他的發明——如放大聲音的真空管和在陸上及海底連接長距離的同軸電纜一一極大地擴展了電話服務。晶體管取代了真空管。到了60年代，通信衛星又消除了對地面線路的需要。今天，一束束的玻璃纖維用激光傳遞人們彼此間的通話。
Many of these inventions—including sound motion pictures and stereo recording, 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 flexibility in telecommunications. 這些發明當中有許多項發明——包括有聲電影和立體聲錄音，隨同23，000項其他專利——來自1925年建立的AT&T貝爾實驗室。約翰·戴維斯是貝爾實驗室消費產品部執行主任。他說，當我們進入90年代的時候，可以預期電信將具有更大的靈活性。
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 banking, or helping us through a typical day work. 很難想象沒有電話的世界是什麼樣子。我們的生活已變得要依靠把電腦同電話線連接在一起來購物、辦理銀行存款、取款手續，或者幫助我們完成一天的工作了。
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 enveloping the information to the person that sent you the message. 當你走進辦公室後所做的第一件事就是把電腦打開，提取出當天的電子信件。當然，你的電子信件不是通過郵箱送進來的，而是通過電話線輸送進來的。好處是，你只需向回輸送就能掉轉方向把信息發給來信者，而不用費事寫地址，貼郵票，裝信封。
