Alexander Graham Bell and the Assassination of President James A. Garfield
While boarding a train in Washington D.C. on July 2nd, 1881, President James A. Garfield was shot twice, once in the back. The assassin was Charles Guiteau, a man of questionable sanity whom had repeatedly requested Garfield appoint him to an ambassadorship, only to be rejected. Garfield had been in office less than four months. He died on September 19th, 1881.
During the nearly three months that Garfield lay ill, his case became one of national interest, and caught the attention of one of the United States’ most famous residents: Alexander Graham Bell, the Scotsman from Great Britain by way of Canada, inventor of the telephone.
Bell reasoned that the technology used in his telephone could actually be used in construction of a device that would be able to detect metal and thus find the bullet lodged in Garfield’s chest, a device first proposed by Simon Newcomb. Although he and Newcomb would succeed in creating the device, he would fail to safe Garfield’s life.
President James A. Garfield
James A. Garfield is one of the lesser known Presidents in American history. 20th President of the United States, his prior career had been a strong but unspectacular one. He entered politics in the 1859 as an Ohio Congressman. During the Civil War he joined the Union Army, then returned to politics afterward. His election to the Presidency in 1880 was the highpoint of his political career.
His Presidency would be a brief one. Immediately upon entering office he began being hounded by Charles Guiteau. Guiteau is an interesting figure, a vagrant living off of money given to him by his parents trying at and failing in a number of endeavors. He had unofficially campaigned for Garfield’s election in 1880, and saw himself as the sole reason for his success. In his mind, then, it only served as natural that he should be given a job in payment for his services.
Garfield recognized that the man had absolutely no qualifications, and repeatedly assigned others the positions which Guiteau sought. At one point he was personally told by Secretary of State James Blaine never to return to the White House. Finally Guiteau came to the conclusion that he must assassinate Garfield, and this he did on July 2nd, 1881. Garfield had been in office just under 4 months on the date of the assassination.
One after-effect of the assassination was the passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, which reformed the way people received government appointments, now using a merit system. This ended the spoils system that had existed previously, where no qualifications were required for positions and important posts were often given as rewards for loyal service.
Alexander Graham Bell and the Creation of the First Metal Detector
In 1881, Alexander Graham Bell was somewhat of a celebrity in the United States and throughout the world. Born in Scotland, he moved to Canada at the age of 23 and eventually came to Boston in the United States to continue research on a device that would use electric impulses to send articulate speech across wires. He had previously succeeded in sending musical notes in this manner during experiments in Brantford, Ontario.
While in Boston Bell read a newspaper report of attempts to find the bullet that had been lodged in Garfield’s chest. A man by the name of Simon Newcomb in Baltimore had created a device that might possibly be of assistance in finding the bullet, however the device was not functional enough to be of assistance and it was Newcomb’s belief that it could not be perfected in time.
Bell approached Newcomb and offered his assistance in the creation of a metal detector to find the bullet. Newcomb’s primary concern was that while he knew he could detect metal, the signals sent by the device were so faint as to be unable to inform the user where exactly the metal was buried. Bell’s telephone, however, used wires to amplify sound, and he believed that this same technology could be used to build a functional metal detector. Newcomb accepted Bell’s offer and the pair went to work.
The pair succeeded in crafting a device that would be able to detect metal up to five inches away, sufficient to find the bullet in Garfield. Before bringing the device to the President, however, a series of tests were performed. First either Bell or Garfield would hide a bullet in their mouth or armpit and have the other attempt to find it. They would then fire rounds into grain sacks and the like and attempt to find the bullet. As a final test they went to Civil War veterans who might still have bullets in them from the war, and used the device to find these bullets.
In all of these tests the device was a success. They had created a device that would be able to find the bullet still in Garfield that was so slowly leading to his death.
They brought the metal detector to Garfield, and attempted to find the bullet. There was a problem, however. No matter where they placed the device on Garfield’s body, they received a positive reading. They moved it all over and everywhere there was a positive reading. The device was not working.
The device was brought back to the lab and more tests were conducted. Again the device was again successful in these instances. Bell and Newcomb did not understand, and returned to the President to once again try to find the bullet. Everywhere they looked they received a positive reading.
Bell left to return to Boston, not understanding why his device had not succeeded in finding the bullet in the President’s body. Garfield would die a few weeks after Bell’s final unsuccessful attempt.
What no one at the time realized, however, was that the device was working perfectly fine when it was used on the President. The President, however, was lying on a coil spring mattress, an extreme rarity at the time. Because the mattress was composed of metal springs, anywhere the device was used the signal from this metal had been picked up. If Garfield had been moved to the floor or another non-coil spring mattress the device would have worked, the bullet found and his life possibly saved.
