ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL

( 1847 - 1922 )

INVENTION of the TELEPHONE.

Alexander Bell was born a Scot, on the 3rd March, 1847, at 16 South Charlotte Street, Edinburgh, Scotland. His middle name of Graham he added at a later date to give his name more ' class '. Educated at Edinburgh's Royal High School and at the Universities of Edinburgh and London, Bell was interested in helping deaf people. His father, Alexander Melville Bell, was famous in his own right for his work in founding the science of phonetics and devising a Visible Speech Alphabet. After two of his brothers had died of TB, the family moved to Canada in 1870, in an effort to rebuild their lives.

He began teaching at a deaf school in Boston, and lodged with Thomas Saunders, and met Gardiner Hubbard, whose daughter, Mabel, had been deaf since the age of five. Quite unable to speak, she became the pupil of Bell, and after two years of painstakingly hard work, he taught her to talk. He had also fallen in love with her and they were married.

During this time, Bell was tinkering with ways to transmit the human voice, and seeing the possible commercial potential, both Saunders and Hubbard funded Bell's experiments.

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In 1877 his telephone was patented, and the Bell Telephone Company was created, which was to make him millions. In the space of 18 years, Bell had to fight off 600 separate legal actions in relation to his telephone.

He achieved more scientific ' highs ' in his life, but none to equal his invention of the Telephone. 

He was granted the freedom of the City of Edinburgh in 1920, two years before he died at home in Nova Scotia. When he was buried, all telephone traffic in the United States was halted for one minute as a tribute to Bell and his work.

There is a museum named in his honour in Canada, but none in the land of his birth, Scotland.

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