"I have travelled the globe. I have seen the Canadian and American Rockies, the Andes and the Alps and the highlands of Scotland, but for simple beauty, Cape Breton outrivals them all." — AGB "Every experiment contains a lesson. If we don’t get the results anticipated and stop right there, it is the man that is unsuccessful, not the experiment." — AGB “The day will come when the man at the telephone will be able to see the distant person to whom he is speaking.” — AGB in 1906 “It will not be long until a man can take dinner in New York and breakfast the next morning in Liverpool.” — AGB in 1896 “There is no reason why we should not use the roofs of our houses to install solar apparatus to catch and store heat received from the sun.” — AGB in 1914 “The unchecked burning of fossil fuels would have a sort of greenhouse effect…” — AGB in 1917
The innovative spirit is everywhere.
Building on the legacy of Alexander and Mabel Bell, the AGB Foundation wants to recognize and celebrate Canadian innovators of today and tomorrow. Project Irene: Reclaiming Lost History is a powerful example of what is being done today from innovations of the past.
Project Irene: Reclaiming Lost History
The new Hearing History Exhibit explores how today’s technology lets us listen to the past and Alexander Graham Bell’s role in the evolution of audio recording. Bell’s invention of the graphophone and his use of wax cylinders revolutionized recording arts in the mid-1880s; his invention leads directly to the formation of the oldest surviving name in sound recording, Columbia Records. Unfortunately, the wax cylinders used to store sound became fragile and unplayable as time passed; thus, a significant piece of history risked being lost forever.
Physicist Carl Haber of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory wanted to hear these old recordings. In 2003, he, in partnership with Vitaliy Fadeyev, created IRENE (a backronym for Image, Reconstruct, Erase Noise, Etc.), a non-contact, optical-scanning device that digitizes historical grooved audio formats, like wax cylinders. Project IRENE is reclaiming lost history!
Come visit to learn more about Project IRENE and the lost history it reclaims.
The spirit of innovation is within all of us. Alexander Graham Bell and Mabel lived every day of their lives together, sharing that spirit – never being satisfied – knowing there was always so much more we could be doing to make the world a better place.
We are committed to supporting the creative, innovative spirit of Canadians – young and old – present and future. But it will take the help of people like you to make that a reality. Please consider making a donation in support of the legacy of AGB and the future Canadian innovators ready to change our world.
The Bell legacy is championed by a number of organizations, each preserving and celebrating the memory and accomplishments of this remarkable couple.
