

Alexander Graham Bell's Delightfully Weird Sketchbooks - gatsby
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/03/alexander-graham-bells-wonderfully-weird-sketchbooks/72281/

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ChuckMcM
I've always been a big fan of keeping a notebook around to sketch ideas, write
down thoughts, etc.

There was a interesting couple of sketches in the slide show that highlight,
"CABLE GUY" and "SELF PORTRAIT". What the journalist didn't "get" was that he
was looking at Bell's conception of the 'cell' phone or portable phone.

In the "SELF PORTRAIT" we see a person speaking into an apparatus which no
doubt modulates a current on the giant open air inductor slung over this poor
chap's shoulder. By modulating a current in that inductor a field is created
that has the sounds modulating it. In "CABLE GUY" we have another person
carrying another giant inductor which is connected to a speaker. Presumably
Bell was imagining that some how one would talk at a distance without wires
but carrying around giant antenna equivalents :-). This was an area where
Tesla was working and I don't doubt that Bell was thinking about ways to work
this problem as well.

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Kafka
As far as I can tell the triangles in triangles shaped aircraft sketch
predates Sierpinski's discovery. <http://bit.ly/hhH779> \- the sketch
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierpinski_triangle> \- "who described it in
1915"

Maybe Bell studied 13th-century Cosmati mosaics.

