26. In 1876, $\qquad$ obtained a U.S. patent for inventing a device to transmit voice over wires.
A. Bill
B. Beck
C. Bell
D. Lane
【Answer】C
【Analysis】Bell was born into an acoustic family in Britain and later moved to the United States. In Boston, he once opened a school to train teachers of the deaf. Due to his profession, he studied the physiological functions of hearing and speaking. Later, he was hired as a professor of vocal physiology at Boston University. In 1873, he resigned from his professorship and began to focus on the development of the telephone. To invent the telephone, it was necessary to first convert sound signals into electrical signals and then convert electrical signals back into sound signals. Before Bell, many people had already been researching this problem. In 1875, Bell was inspired by the use of electromagnets in telegraph machines, which could convert electrical signals and mechanical movements. Bell began designing an electromagnetic telephone. Initially, he placed a tuning fork in front of a coil with an iron core. The vibration of the tuning fork caused the iron core to move correspondingly, generating an induced current. The current signal was transmitted to the other end of the wire and converted back into a sound signal. Subsequently, Bell replaced the tuning fork with a metal plate that could vibrate with sound and changed the iron core to a magnetic bar. After repeated experiments, he created a practical telephone device. On February 14, 1876, he applied for a telephone patent at the U.S. Patent Office. On March 7, 1876, Bell obtained the patent for inventing the telephone, with patent number NO. 174655. He also established the world's first telephone company, the Bell Telephone Company, which was the predecessor of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T). This achievement realized the ancient Chinese myth of the "Wind Listener."