Saturday Scenes

On the 3rd of March in 1847, Alexander Bell was born in Edinburgh. His mother, who lost her hearing during his childhood, strongly influenced his interest in hearing devices leading to the invention of the telephone. In a remarkable coincidence, his first successful telephone attempt also falls on a Saturday! On the 10th of March in 1876, he phoned his assistant who was in the next room, and said “Mr Watson – Come here!” He later rigged a telephone from his home to Brantford, stringing wire for 4 miles / 6 km in order to prove that the telephone could work over long distances.

Alexander Graham Bell – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bell and his partners, Hubbard and Sanders, offered to sell the patent outright to Western Union for $100,000. The president of Western Union balked, countering that the telephone was nothing but a toy.

Two years later, he told colleagues that if he could get the patent for $25 million he would consider it a bargain.

Alexander Graham Bell went on to create many more innovations, including inventing a metal detector, a phonograph, indoor air conditioning and, shortly before his death, he expressed the idea that solar panels could be used to heat houses. However, the technology for which he was most famous had its downside. “In retrospect, Bell considered his most famous invention an intrusion on his real work as a scientist and refused to have a telephone in his study.”

I think we all know how that feels.

But stop what you are doing right now: this is not an intrusion. Or maybe it is but it’s worth it.

On the 3rd of March in 2012, many photographs were taken and quite a few of them were taken on telephones! Take a look:

And here are the brilliant people who took them:

• JanetIsserlis
• embee
• raumsinn
• ClareRevell
• kyleorchid
• icklemouse
• SockYarnShop
• annemnicholas
• sahfenn
• craftychai
• oxonlady
• Pewari
• rOcKeTmAn_76
• akrabat
• Korwhai
• akaSylvia
• dudleypj
• UKMelia
• noirem
• waleedalzuhair
• ernmander
• JeannieKelly
• HeideSpruck
• evenstar84
• BucksWriter
• timewind
• jamesnnb
• drewbenn
• thermalhound
• robdavies
• carocat
• mousewords
• pixelesh

Would you like to see your photograph featured here?

Simply take a photo on a Saturday and tweet it to @SatScenes! Every week I retweet the Saturday Scenes and then collect them all for a special post here. We’d love to see yours.