On this day in 1847 the inventor Alexander Graham Bell was born. Although credited with inventing the telephone, Bell always considered it an intrusion on his real work as a scientist and refused to have one in his study.

He had been interested in ‘inventing’ since his childhood in Edinburgh. Much of his early work was helping deaf people and he wrote books on sign language and lip reading.

This is part of a poem which describes how news was delivered before Bell’s time. It has a rousing rhythm and it is a quite a harrowing story, especially for the horses: How We Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix, by Robert Browning:

I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;
I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three;
“Good speed!” cried the watch as the gate-bolts undrew;
“Speed!” echoed the wall to us galloping through;
Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest,
And into the midnight we galloped abreast.
Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace
Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place;
I turned in my saddle and made its girth tight,
Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right,
Rebuckled the cheek-strap, chained slacker the bit,
Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit.
So Joris broke silence with, “Yet there is time!”
By Hasselt, Dirck groaned; and cried Joris, “Stay spur!
Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault’s not in her,
We’ll remember at Aix” – for one heard the quick wheeze
Of her chest, saw the stretched neck and staggering knees,
And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank,
As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank.

Today I will focus on being able to communicate in a simple and direct way in the interests of mutual understanding.