ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL

Alexander Graham Bell.

Alexander graham bell was born on March 3, 1847, in Edinburgh, Scotland, to Prof. Alexander
Melville Bell and his wife Eliza Grace Symonds. He had two brothers—Melville James Bell and
Edward Charles Bell—both of whom died of tuberculosis.
His father taught elocution to the deaf and had developed what was called the ‘Visible Speech’
system to help deaf children learn to speak. He received most of his early education from his
mother who was an unusually gifted painter and pianist, despite her deafness.
Throughout his childhood, he spent short periods of time in traditional educational institutions
including Edinburgh's Royal High School, which he left at the age of 15.
He initially attended University of Edinburgh and then the University College, London,
England, but did not receive a formal education comparable to his peers in Victorian Britain.
In 1870, after the death of two of his brothers, the Bell family moved to Canada for the sake of
his health. Expanding on his father's work of teaching deaf people to communicate, he began
working on transmitting telephonic messages. In 1871 he went to Boston, Massachusetts, to
teach at Sarah Fuller's School for the Deaf, the first such school in the world. He also tutored
private students, including Helen Keller (1880–1968). To help deaf children, Bell experimented
in the summer of 1874 with a human ear and attached bones, magnets, smoked glass, and other
things. He conceived the theory of the telephone: that an electric current can be made to change
its force just as the pressure of air varies during sound production. That same year he invented a
telegraph that could send several messages at once over one wire, as well as a telephonic-
telegraphic receiver. On February 14, 1876, The U.S. Patent Office granted Bell the patent for the
"electric speaking telephone" on March 7. It was the most valuable single patent ever issued. It
opened a new age in communications technology.

Bell continued his experiments to improve the telephone's quality. The first public
demonstration occurred at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences convention in Boston
two months later. Bell's display at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition a month later gained
more publicity. Emperor Dom Pedro of Brazil (1825–1891) ordered one hundred telephones for
his country. The telephone, which had been given only eighteen words in the official catalog of
the exposition, suddenly became the "star" attraction. In 1877, he married Mabel Hubbard, his
deaf student, ten years his junior. She had become deaf at the age of five after contracting scarlet
fever. They had four children including two daughters; Elsie May Bell and Marian Hubbard
Bell. Unfortunately, both their sons, Edward and Robert, died in infancy.

the first telephone was installed in a private home; a conversation took place between Boston
and New York using telegraph lines; in May the first switchboard (a central machine used to
connect different telephone lines), devised by E. T. Holmes in Boston, was a burglar alarm
connecting five banks; and in July the first organization to make the telephone a commercial
venture, the Bell Telephone Company, was formed. That year, while on his honeymoon, Bell
introduced the telephone to England and France. The first commercial switchboard was set up in
New Haven, Connecticut, in 1878, the same year Bell's New England Telephone Company was
organized. Charles Scribner improved switchboards, with more than five hundred inventions.
Thomas Cornish, a Philadelphia electrician, had a switchboard for eight customers and published
a one-page telephone directory in 1878. The Bell Company built the first long-distance line in
1884, connecting Boston and New York. Bell and others organized The American Telephone
and Telegraph Company in 1885 to operate other long-distance lines. By 1889 there were 11,000
miles of underground wires in New York City.

The Volta Laboratory was started by Bell in Washington, D.C., with France awarding the
Volta Prize money (about $10,000) for his invention. At the laboratory Bell and his associates
worked on various projects during the 1880s, including the photophone, induction balance,
audiometer, and phonograph improvements. The photophone transmitted speech by light. The
induction balance (electric probe) located metal in the body. The audiometer, used to test a
person's hearing, indicated Bell's continued interest in deafness. The first successful phonograph
record was produced. The Columbia Gramophone Company made profitable Bell's phonograph
records. With the profits Bell established an organization in Washington to study deafness.

By all accounts, Alexander Graham Bell was not a businessman and by 1880 began to turn
business matters over to Hubbard and others so he could pursue a wide range of inventions and
intellectual pursuits. In 1880, he established the Volta Laboratory, an experimental facility
devoted to scientific discovery. He also continued his work with the deaf, establishing the
American Association to Promote Teaching of Speech to the Deaf in 1890. In the remaining
years of his life Bell worked on a number of projects. He devoted a lot of time to exploring
flight, starting with the tetrahedral kite in 1890s. In 1907, Bell formed the Aerial Experiment
Association with Glenn Curtiss and several other associates. The group developed several flying
machines, including the Silver Dart. The Silver Dart was the first powered machine flown in
Canada. He later worked on hydrofoils and set a world record for speed for this type of boat. In
January 1915, Bell was invited to make the first transcontinental phone call. From New York, he
spoke with his former associate Thomas Watson in San Francisco. Bell died peacefully on
August 2, 1922, at his home in Baddeck on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada, on August
2, 1922. The entire telephone system was shut down for one minute in tribute to his life.
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