alexander graham bell biography in english

Alexander Graham Bell

Alexander Graham Bell was one of the primary inventors of the telephone, did important work in communication for the deaf and held more than 18 patents.

(1847-1922)

Who Was Alexander Graham Bell?

Alexander Graham Bell was a Scottish-born scientist and inventor best known for inventing the first working telephone in 1876 and founding the Bell Telephone Company in 1877.

Bell’s success came through his experiments in sound and the furthering of his family’s interest in assisting the deaf with communication. Bell worked with Thomas Watson on the telephone, though his prodigious intellect would allow him to work on numerous other inventions, including flying machines and hydrofoils.

Early Life and Family

Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on March 3, 1847. The second son of Alexander Melville Bell and Eliza Grace Symonds Bell, he was named for his paternal grandfather. The middle name “Graham” was added when he was 10 years old.

He had two brothers, Melville James Bell and Edward Charles Bell, both of whom died from tuberculosis.

During his youth, Bell was strongly influenced by his family and his environs. Bell’s hometown of Edinburgh, Scotland, was known as the “Athens of the North” for its rich culture of arts and science.

His grandfather and father were experts on the mechanics of voice and elocution. And Bell's mother, Eliza, became an accomplished pianist despite being deaf, inspiring him to undertake big challenges.

Though a mediocre student, Bell displayed an uncommon ability to solve problems. At age 12, while playing with a friend in a grain mill, he noticed the slow process of husking the wheat grain. He went home and built a device with rotating paddles and nail brushes that easily removed the husks from the grain.

Early Career

Young Alexander was groomed from a young age to carry on in the family business, but his headstrong nature conflicted with his father’s overbearing manner. Seeking a way out, Alexander volunteered to care for his grandfather when he fell ill in 1862.

The elder Bell encouraged young Alexander and instilled an appreciation for learning and intellectual pursuits. By age 16, Alexander had joined his father in his work with the deaf and soon assumed full charge of his father’s London operations.

On one of his trips to North America, Alexander’s father decided it was a healthier environment and decided to move the family there. At first, Alexander resisted, for he was establishing himself in London. He eventually relented after both his brothers died of tuberculosis.

In 1870, the family settled in Brantford, Ontario, Canada. There, Alexander set up a workshop to continue his study of the human voice.

On July 11, 1877, Bell married Mable Hubbard, a former student and the daughter of Gardiner Hubbard, one of his early financial backers. Mable had been deaf since her early childhood years.

Alexander Graham Bell's Inventions

Bell is credited with inventing the telephone; in all, he personally held 18 patents along with 12 he shared with collaborators.

On March 10, 1876, after years of work, Bell perfected his most well-known invention, the telephone, and made his first telephone call.

Before then, Bell in 1871 started working on a device known as the multiple or harmonic telegraph (a telegraph transmission of several messages set to different frequencies) upon moving to Boston. He found financial backing through local investors Thomas Sanders and Gardiner Hubbard.

Between 1873 and 1874, Bell spent long days and nights trying to perfect the harmonic telegraph. But during his experiments, he became interested in another idea, transmitting the human voice over wires.

Bell’s diversion frustrated his benefactors, and Thomas Watson, a skilled electrician, was hired to refocus Bell on the harmonic telegraph. But Watson soon became enamored with Bell’s idea of voice transmission and the two created a great partnership with Bell being the idea man and Watson having the expertise to bring Bell’s ideas to reality.

'Mr. Watson, come here – I want to see you'

Through 1874 and 1875, Bell and Watson labored on both the harmonic telegraph and a voice transmitting device. Though at first frustrated by the diversion, Bell’s investors soon saw the value of voice transmission and filed a patent on the idea.

For now the concept was protected, but the device still had to be developed. In 1876, Bell and Watson were finally successful.

Legend has it that Bell knocked over a container of transmitting fluid and shouted, “Mr. Watson, come here – I want to see you.” The more likely explanation was Bell heard a noise over the wire and called to Watson. In any case, Watson heard Bell’s voice through the wire and thus, he received the first telephone call.

With this success, Bell began to promote the telephone in a series of public demonstrations. At the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, Bell demonstrated the telephone to the Emperor of Brazil, Dom Pedro, who exclaimed, “My God, it talks!” Other demonstrations followed, each at a greater distance than the last.

The Bell Telephone Company was organized on July 9, 1877. In January 1915, Bell was invited to make the first transcontinental phone call. From New York, he spoke with his former associate Watson in San Francisco.

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Other Inventions

By all accounts, Bell was not a sharp 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, Bell established the Volta Laboratory in Washington, D.C., an experimental facility devoted to scientific discovery.

Later in his life, Bell became fascinated with flight and began exploring the possibilities for flying machines and devices, 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 aircraft flown in Canada. Bell later worked on hydrofoils and set a world speed record for this type of boat.

Legal Challenges

After their 1877 wedding, Alexander and Mable traveled to Europe demonstrating the telephone. Upon their return to the United States, Bell was summoned to Washington D.C. to defend his telephone patent from lawsuits.

Others claimed they had invented the telephone or had conceived of the idea before Bell. Over the next 18 years, the Bell Company faced over 550 court challenges, including several that went to the Supreme Court , but none were successful.

Even during the patent battles, the company grew. Between 1877 and 1886, over 150,000 people in the United States owned telephones.

Improvements were made on the device including the addition of a microphone, invented by Thomas Edison , which eliminated the need to shout into the telephone to be heard.

Throughout his life, Bell continued his family's work with the deaf, establishing the American Association to Promote Teaching of Speech to the Deaf in 1890.

Eight years later, Bell assumed the presidency of a small, little-known U.S. scientific group, the National Geographic Society , and helped make their journal into one of the world's most-loved publications. Bell is also one of the founders of Science magazine .

Bell died peacefully on August 2, 1922, at his home in Baddeck on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada. Shortly after his death, the entire telephone system was shut down for one minute in tribute to his genius.

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QUICK FACTS

• Name: Alexander Graham Bell
• Birth Year: 1847
• Birth date: March 3, 1847
• Birth City: Edinburgh
• Birth Country: Scotland
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Alexander Graham Bell was one of the primary inventors of the telephone, did important work in communication for the deaf and held more than 18 patents.
• Science and Medicine
• Technology and Engineering
• Astrological Sign: Pisces
• Edinburgh University
• Edinburgh Royal High School
• University College in London
• Nacionalities
• Scot (Scotland)
• Interesting Facts
• Alexander’s mother, who was deaf, was a profound influence on him. He later founded the American Association to Promote Teaching of Speech to the Deaf in 1890.
• At his core, Bell was an inventor and loved intellectual pursuits. He didn't care for the business aspect of his growing telecommunications empire.
• After the invention of the telephone, Bell went on to create several flying machines and boats called hydrofoils.
• Death Year: 1922
• Death date: August 2, 1922
• Death City: Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia
• Death Country: Canada

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CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Alexander Graham Bell Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/inventors/alexander-graham-bell
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: September 9, 2019
• Original Published Date: April 3, 2014
• Great discoveries and improvements invariably involve the cooperation of many minds. I may be given credit for having blazed the trail, but when I look at the subsequent developments I feel the credit is due to others rather than to myself.
• Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.
• Sometimes we stare so long at a door that is closing that we see too late the one that is open.
• A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with-a man is what he makes of himself.
• America is a country of great inventors, and the greatest of inventors are the newspaper men.
• Concentrate all your thoughts on the work at hand, the suns rays do not burn until brought to a focus.
• The nation that secures control of the air will ultimately control the world.
• The most successful men in the end are those whose success is the result of steady accretion.
• What this power is I cannot say; all I know is that it exists and it becomes available only when a man is in a state of mind when he knows exactly what he wants and is determined not to quit until he finds it.

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Biography of Alexander Graham Bell, Inventor of the Telephone

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Alexander Graham Bell (March 3, 1847–August 2, 1922) was a Scottish-born American inventor, scientist, and engineer best known for inventing the first practical telephone in 1876, founding the Bell Telephone Company in 1877, and a refinement of Thomas Edison’s phonograph in 1886. Greatly influenced by the deafness of both his mother and his wife, Bell dedicated much of his life’s work to researching hearing and speech and helping the hearing impaired communicate. In addition to the telephone, Bell worked on numerous other inventions, including a metal detector, airplanes, and hydrofoils—or “flying” boats.

Fast Facts: Alexander Graham Bell

• Known For: Inventor of the telephone
• Born: March 3, 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland
• Parents: Alexander Melville Bell, Eliza Grace Symonds Bell
• Died: August 2, 1922 in Nova Scotia, Canada
• Education: University of Edinburgh (1864), University College London (1868)
• Patents: US Patent No. 174,465 —Improvement in Telegraphy
• Awards and Honors: Albert Medal (1902), John Fritz Medal (1907), Elliott Cresson Medal (1912)
• Spouse: Mabel Hubbard
• Children: Elsie May, Marian Hubbard, Edward, Robert
• Notable Quote: “I had made up my mind to find that for which I was searching even if it required the remainder of my life.”

Alexander Graham Bell was born on March 3, 1847, to Alexander Melville Bell and Eliza Grace Symonds Bell in Edinburgh, Scotland. He had two brothers, Melville James Bell and Edward Charles Bell, both of whom would die of tuberculosis. Having been born simply “Alexander Bell,” at age 10, he begged his father to give him a middle name like his two brothers. On his 11th birthday, his father granted his wish, allowing him to adopt the middle name “Graham,” chosen out of respect for Alexander Graham, a family friend.

In 1864, Bell attended the University of Edinburgh along with his older brother Melville. In 1865, the Bell family moved to London, England, where in 1868, Alexander passed the entrance examinations for University College London. From an early age, Bell had been immersed in the study of sound and hearing. His mother had lost her hearing at age 12, and his father, uncle, and grandfather were authorities on elocution and taught speech therapy for the deaf. It was understood that Bell would follow in the family footsteps after finishing college. However, after his brothers both died of tuberculosis, he withdrew from college in 1870 and immigrated with his family to Canada. In 1871, at age 24, Bell immigrated to the United States, where he taught at the Boston School for Deaf Mutes, the Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton, Massachusetts, and at the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut.

In early 1872, Bell met Boston attorney Gardiner Greene Hubbard, who would become one of his primary financial backers and father-in-law. In 1873, he began working with Hubbard’s 15-year-old daughter Mabel Hubbard, who had lost her hearing at age 5 after nearly dying of scarlet fever. Despite the nearly 10-year difference in their ages, Alexander and Mabel fell in love and were married on July 11, 1877, a matter of days after Alexander had founded the Bell Telephone Company. As a wedding present, Bell gave his bride all but ten of his 1,497 shares in his promising new telephone company. The couple would go on to have four children, daughters Elsie, Marian, and two sons who died in infancy.

In October 1872, Bell opened his own School of Vocal Physiology and Mechanics of Speech in Boston. One of his students was the young Helen Keller . Unable to hear, see, or speak, Keller would later praise Bell for dedicating his life to helping the deaf break through the “inhuman silence which separates and estranges.”

Path From Telegraph to Telephone

Both the telegraph and the telephone work by transmitting electrical signals over wires, and Bell's success with the telephone came as a direct result of his attempts to improve the telegraph. When he began experimenting with electrical signals, the telegraph had been an established means of communication for some 30 years. Although a highly successful system, the telegraph was basically limited to receiving and sending one message at a time.

Bell's extensive knowledge of the nature of sound enabled him to imagine the possibility of transmitting multiple messages over the same wire at the same time. Although the idea of a "multiple telegraph" had been in existence for some time, no one had been able to perfect one.

Between 1873 and 1874, with the financial backing of Thomas Sanders and his future father-in-law Gardiner Hubbard, Bell worked on his “harmonic telegraph,” based on the principle that several different notes could be sent simultaneously along the same wire if the notes or signals differed in pitch. It was during his work on the harmonic telegraph that Bell’s interest drifted to an even more radical idea, the possibility that not just the telegraph’s dots-and-dashes, but the human voice itself could be transmitted over wires.

Concerned that this diversion of interest would slow Bell’s work on the harmonic telegraph they were funding, Sanders and Hubbard hired Thomas A. Watson, a skilled electrician, to keep Bell on track. However, when Watson became a devoted believer in Bell’s ideas for voice transmission, the two men agreed to work together with Bell providing the ideas and Watson doing the electrical work necessary to bring Bell’s ideas to reality.

By October 1874, Bell's research had progressed to the extent that he could inform his future father-in-law about the possibility of a multiple telegraph. Hubbard, who had long resented the absolute control then exerted by the Western Union Telegraph Company, instantly saw the potential for breaking such a monopoly and gave Bell the financial backing he needed.

Bell proceeded with his work on the multiple telegraph, but he did not tell Hubbard that he and Watson were also developing a device that would transmit speech electrically. While Watson worked on the harmonic telegraph at the insistent urging of Hubbard and other backers, Bell secretly met in March 1875 with Joseph Henry , the respected director of the Smithsonian Institution, who listened to Bell's ideas for a telephone and offered encouraging words. Spurred on by Henry's positive opinion, Bell and Watson continued their work.

By June 1875, the goal of creating a device that would transmit speech electrically was about to be realized. They had proven that different tones would vary the strength of an electric current in a wire. To achieve success, they needed only to build a working transmitter with a membrane capable of varying electronic currents and a receiver that would reproduce these variations in audible frequencies.

'Mr. Watson, Come Here' 

On June 2, 1875, while experimenting with his harmonic telegraph, Bell and Watson discovered that sound could be transmitted over a wire. It was a completely accidental discovery. Watson was trying to loosen a reed that had been wound around a transmitter when he plucked it by accident. The vibration produced by Watson’s act traveled along the wire into a second device in the other room where Bell was working.

The "twang" Bell heard was all the inspiration that he and Watson needed to accelerate their work. On March 7, 1876, the U.S. Patent Office issued Bell Patent No. 174,465, covering “the method of, and apparatus for, transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically ... by causing electrical undulations, similar in form to the vibrations of the air accompanying the said vocal or other sound.”

On March 10, 1876, three days after he had been granted his patent, Bell famously succeeded in getting his telephone to work. Bell recounted the historic moment in his journal:

"I then shouted into M [the mouthpiece] the following sentence: 'Mr. Watson, come here—I want to see you.' To my delight, he came and declared that he had heard and understood what I said."

Having heard Bell’s voice through the wire, Mr. Watson had just received the first telephone call.

Always the shrewd businessman, Bell took every opportunity to show the public what his telephone could do. After seeing the device in action at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, Emperor of Brazil, Dom Pedro II, exclaimed, “My God, it talks!” Several other demonstrations followed—each successful at a greater distance than the last. On July 9, 1877, the Bell Telephone Company was organized, with Emperor Dom Pedro II being the first person to buy shares. One of the first telephones in a private residence was installed in Dom Pedro’s Petrópolis palace.

On January 25, 1915, Bell successfully made the first transcontinental telephone call. In New York City, Bell spoke into the telephone’s mouthpiece, repeating his famous request, “Mr. Watson, come here. I want you.” From San Francisco, California, 3,400 miles (5,500 km) away, Mr. Watson replied, “It will take me five days to get there now!”

Other Research and Inventions

Alexander Graham Bell’s curiosity also led him to speculate on the nature of heredity, initially among the deaf and later with sheep born with genetic mutations. In this vein, Bell was closely connected with the eugenics movement in the United States. In 1883, he presented data to the National Academy of Sciences indicating that congenitally deaf parents were more likely to produce deaf children and tentatively suggested that deaf people should not be allowed to marry each other. He also conducted sheep-breeding experiments at his estate to see if he could increase the numbers of twin and triplet births.

In other instances, Bell’s curiosity drove him to try to come up with novel solutions on the spot whenever problems arose. In 1881, he hastily constructed a metal detector as a way to try and locate a bullet lodged in President James Garfield after an assassination attempt. He would later improve this and produce a device called a telephone probe, which would make a telephone receiver click when it touched metal. And when Bell's newborn son, Edward, died from respiratory problems, he responded by designing a metal vacuum jacket that would facilitate breathing. The apparatus was a forerunner of the iron lung used in the 1950s to aid polio victims.

Other ideas he dabbled in included inventing the audiometer to detect minor hearing problems and conducting experiments with energy recycling and alternative fuels. Bell also worked on methods of removing salt from seawater.

Flight Technology 

These interests may be considered minor activities compared to the time and effort he put into making advances in manned flight technology. By the 1890s, Bell had begun experimenting with propellers and kites, which led him to apply the concept of the tetrahedron (a solid figure with four triangular faces) to kite design as well as to create a new form of architecture.

In 1907, four years after the Wright Brothers first flew at Kitty Hawk , Bell formed the Aerial Experiment Association with Glenn Curtiss, William "Casey" Baldwin, Thomas Selfridge, and J.A.D. McCurdy, four young engineers with the common goal of creating airborne vehicles. By 1909, the group had produced four powered aircraft, the best of which, the Silver Dart, made a successful powered flight in Canada on February 23, 1909.

The Photophone

Although working with the deaf would remain Bell's principal source of income, Bell continued to pursue his own studies of sound throughout his life. Bell's unceasing scientific curiosity led to the invention of the photophone , a device that allowed for the transmission of sound on a beam of light.

Despite being known for his invention of the telephone, Bell regarded the photophone as "the greatest invention I have ever made; greater than the telephone." The invention set the foundation upon which today's laser and fiber optic communication systems are rooted, though it would take the development of several modern technologies to fully capitalize on this breakthrough.

With the enormous technical and financial success of his telephone invention, Bell's future was secure enough so that he could devote himself to other scientific interests. For example, in 1881, he used the $10,000 award for winning France's Volta Prize to set up the Volta Laboratory in Washington, D.C.

A believer in scientific teamwork, Bell worked with two associates: his cousin Chichester Bell and Charles Sumner Tainter, at the Volta Laboratory. After his first visit to Nova Scotia in 1885, Bell set up another laboratory there at his estate Beinn Bhreagh (pronounced Ben Vreeah), near Baddeck, where he would assemble other teams of bright young engineers to pursue new and exciting ideas heading into the future. Their experiments produced such major improvements in Thomas Edison's phonograph that it became commercially viable. Their design, patented as the Graphophone in 1886, featured a removable cardboard cylinder coated with mineral wax.

Later Years and Death 

Bell spent the last decade of his life improving the designs of hydrofoil boats. As they gain speed, hydrofoils lift the boat’s hull out of the water, decreasing drag and allowing greater speeds. In 1919, Bell and Casey Baldwin built a hydrofoil that set a world water-speed record that was not broken until 1963.

Bell died of complications arising from diabetes and anemia on August 2, 1922, at his estate in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, at age 75. He was buried on August 4, 1922, atop Beinn Bhreagh mountain, on his estate overlooking Bras d'Or Lake. As the funeral ended, all of the more than 14 million telephones in the United States at the time were silenced for one minute.

Upon learning of Bell's death, Canadian Prime Minister, Mackenzie King, cabled Mabel Bell, saying:

“My colleagues in the Government join with me in expressing to you our sense of the world's loss in the death of your distinguished husband. It will ever be a source of pride to our country that the great invention, with which his name is immortally associated, is a part of its history. On the behalf of the citizens of Canada, may I extend to you an expression of our combined gratitude and sympathy.”

As his once-unimaginable inventions became essential parts of everyday life and his fame grew, honors and tributes to Bell mounted quickly. He received honorary degrees from scores of colleges and universities, fittingly highlighted by a Ph.D. from Gallaudet University for the deaf and hearing-impaired. Along with dozens of major awards, medals, and other tributes, a number of historic sites throughout North America and Europe commemorate Bell.

Bell’s invention of the telephone made instantaneous, long-distance voice communication between individuals, industries, and governments possible for the first time. Today, more than 4 billion people worldwide use telephones every day, either wire-connected landline models based on Bell’s original design or wireless smartphones.

Months before his death in 1922, Bell had told a reporter, “There cannot be mental atrophy in any person who continues to observe, to remember what he observes, and to seek answers for his unceasing hows and whys about things.”

Sources and Further Reference

• “Alexander Graham Bell.” Lemelson—MIT , https://lemelson.mit.edu/resources/alexander-graham-bell.
• Vanderbilt, Tom. “A Brief History of the Telephone, From Alexander Graham Bell to the iPhone.” Slate Magazine , Slate, 15 May 2012, http://www.slate.com/articles/life/design/2012/05/telephone_design_a_brief_history_photos_.html.
• Foner, Eric and Garraty, John A. “The Reader’s Companion to American History.” Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, October 1, 1991.
• "The Bell Family.” Bell Homestead National Historic Site , https://www.brantford.ca/en/things-to-do/history.aspx .
• Bruce, Robert V. (1990). “Bell: Alexander Bell and the Conquest of Solitude.” Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1990.
• "Dom Pedro II and America". The Library of Congress , https://memory.loc.gov/intldl/brhtml/br-1/br-1-5-2.html.
• Bell, Mabel (1922). "Dr. Bell's Appreciation of the Telephone Service". Bell Telephone Quarterly , https://archive.org/stream/belltelephonemag01amer#page/64/mode/2up.

Updated by Robert Longley .

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Alexander Bell added his middle name when he was 11 years old. 'Graham' was the surname of a family friend.

Helen Keller was one of Bell's most famous pupils. When he started as a tutor, she was a young child who could not see, hear or speak.

Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922)

Famous for:

• Inventing the telephone

Alexander Graham Bell is credited with the invention of the telephone . The year was 1876 and he was 29 years old.

However Bell was not content with its success. He continued to test out new ideas throughout his life, exploring communications as well as many other scientific activities.

Alexander Graham Bell's father educated him at home in his early years. Later Alexander enrolled at the Royal High School in Edinburgh. He left school at 15 and travelled to London to live with his grandfather for a year.

Bell's grandfather, uncle and father were all elocutionists, studying speech for a living. It is therefore fitting that this is where Bell's interests would lie.

In 1864, Bell took up a position as a 'pupil-teacher' of elocution and music at Weston House Academy in Elgin, Moray. The following year he attended Edinburgh University.

Emigration abroad

Bell emigrated with his parents to Canada in 1870 after both his brothers died of tuberculosis.

In April 1871 he moved to Boston to take up a position as a teacher at the Boston School for the Deaf, established in 1869. The school still exists. It is now called the Horace Mann School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.

Bell's progress in Boston

In Bell's day, Boston was known as a centre for intellectual activity. Based there were:

• Harvard College – the first institution of higher education in the United States
• The American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Boston Athenaeum
• The Massachusetts Historical Society.

The installation of the first Atlantic telegraph cable in 1866 had caused great excitement in North America. Scientists and businessmen were starting to see opportunities opened by the advent of telegraphy.

In 1872, prompted to begin his own experiments, Bell tried to send multiple telegraph signals over a single wire.

Invention of the telephone

In 1875 Alexander Graham Bell constructed the first telephone with his assistant Thomas Watson.

Two years later he formed the Bell Telephone Company and married Mabel Hubbard.

Later achievements

Bell was one of the founding members of the National Geographic Society in 1888.

Always a keen kite flyer, Bell designed a new type of kite in 1902, based on an assembly of tetrahedral shapes. And in 1919, he and Casey Baldwin set the world water speed record of 70.86mph with the HD-4 hydrofoil .

Alexander Graham Bell died at his estate, Beinn Bhreagh, on Cape Breton Island on 2 August 1922. His wife followed him five months later.

In our public poll , Alexander Graham Bell was voted the third most popular Scottish scientist from the past.

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• Digital gallery

Alexander Graham Bell

By jake rossen | may 21, 2020.

SCIENTISTS (1847–1922); SCOTLAND

For most people, the name Alexander Graham Bell conjures up the man who helped invent the telephone in 1876. And while Bell was responsible for radically changing how the world communicates, there was far more to his life than just one invention, both good and bad. Take a look at some of the lesser-known facts about the inventor who made it possible for us to stay connected.

1. Alexander Graham Bell's inventions go beyond the telephone.

Alexander Graham Bell was born on March 3, 1847, in Edinburgh, Scotland, and from a young age, he was primed for a future in innovative thinking. His father and grandfather, after whom he was named, were experts in voice and elocution, and his mother, Eliza, was a talented pianist. As the family relocated to London, Canada, and the United States, Bell pursued solutions to everyday problems through his inventions. Among some of his more notable inventions:

• The telephone, which debuted in 1876 and was the result of Bell working in tandem with electrician Thomas Watson.
• At age 12, Bell developed a machine that could easily remove husks from wheat grain.
• Bell developed an early version of the metal detector  called an induction balance, which was used in a failed attempt to find the bullet lodged in President James Garfield after he was shot by a man named Charles Guiteau in July 1881. (Garfield  died  80 days after the shooting due to an infection from the wounds.) Bell would later improve upon the invention , and it would eventually be used to successfully detect bullets in soldiers during World War I.
• Bell’s “ice stove” was a precursor to modern air conditioning. At the height of the summer of 1911, Bell publicized the invention  by cooling his office down to a chilly 61°F for an interview with The New York Times .
• With Casey Baldwin, Bell invented the hydrofoil , best described as a boat on skis. At high speed, the boat rose above the water, reducing drag. Their HD-4 unit managed to get up to 70.86 miles per hour in 1919.
• In 1881, Bell coped with his newborn son’s death from tuberculosis by inventing a metal vacuum jacket to help facilitate breathing. It was thought to be the first step toward developing the iron lung.

2. Alexander Graham Bell wasn’t the only person to pursue the idea of a telephone.

Because of his family’s history with voice and speech education—his mother was also deaf—Bell was always intrigued by ways of communicating via alternative means. His harmonic telegraph in 1871 could transmit multiple messages over a wire at once. Soon, Bell wanted to see if he could transmit a voice instead. With the help of investors and electrician Thomas Watson, he was successful in developing a receiver that turned electricity into sound. But other inventors like Antonio Meucci and Elisha Gray had similar ideas. In the end, Bell was the first to the patent office and the first to make a phone call—to Watson. He also ushered in the Bell Telephone Company in 1877. As a result, his is the name most closely identified with the discovery. Roughly 550 challenges to his telephone patent were ultimately unsuccessful.

3. Alexander Graham Bell invented more than one way to communicate.

While Alexander Graham Bell’s legacy will forever be tied to the telephone, he never stopped trying to devise ways to transmit information. His “photophone,” invented in concert with assistant Charles Sumner Tainter, could transmit sound via a beam of light. Bell used a selenium crystal and a mirror that vibrated in response to sound. Bell and Tainter had success sending a message 200 yards using this method in 1881. The achievement is thought to have anticipated the fiber-optic communication system we use today.

4. Alexander Graham Bell wasn’t necessarily the biggest fan of the telephone.

Despite Bell’s breakthrough, he was not one to indulge in its ease of communication. Reportedly, Bell refused to keep a telephone in his work study because he was afraid it would impact his productivity, according to History.com.

5. Alexander Graham Bell had a controversial interest in eugenics.

Given his work on behalf of the deaf community, Bell was curiously blithe about expressing an interest in eugenics, advocating for selective breeding that could potentially exclude diseases and disabilities. He also spoke out against immigration. In 1921, Bell was even named honorary president of the Second International Congress of Eugenics.

6. Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison made each other better.

While Bell gets most of the credit for the telephone, it was fellow inventor Thomas Edison who modified the transmitter for it in 1877, which provided amplification and made the device easier to use. (Inventor Emile Berliner came up with a similar device around roughly the same time.) Likewise, Bell was able to improve on an invention of Edison’s. After Edison invented the phonograph in 1877, using tin foil as the recording medium, it was Bell who came up with the more practical wax recording cylinder nine years later.

7. Alexander Graham Bell’s death in 1922 was honored with a special tribute.

Alexander Graham Bell died on August 2, 1922, at age 75 as a result of complications from diabetes. On the day of his burial, all telephone service in the United States went  silent for one minute as a tribute to just how important Bell’s contributions had been.

Famous Alexander Graham Bell Quotes:

• “Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.”
• “Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.”
• “You cannot force ideas. Successful ideas are the result of slow growth. ”

Alexander Graham Bell

Alexander Graham Bell is best known as the inventor of the telephone — the first to transmit the human voice by means of an electric current — but there was much more to this extraordinary man than his breakthrough in communications technology.

Born on March 3, 1847, in Edinburgh, Scotland, “Alec” Bell (as he was known to his family) was fascinated by sound from a young age, descending from two generations of what today would be called speech pathologists.

His grandfather Alexander Bell was an actor, photography enthusiast and elocution professor who may have been the model for Professor Henry Higgins in Pygmalion by playwright George Bernard Shaw. Alexander Melville Bell, Alec’s father, was an expert on the mechanics of speech who was a voice coach for those with speaking disabilities. Alec’s mother was an accomplished painter as well as pianist, despite her profound deafness; her son inherited his love of music from her, and he could play anything he heard by ear and distinguish variations of pitch and tone.

The middle of the Bells’ three sons, young Alexander invented a “speaking machine” when he was still in his teens. The machine’s imitation of a wailing baby crying “Mama” was so life-like that the Bells’ Edinburgh neighbor complained. The “speaking machine” was only one of several creations: while still a youth, on a challenge from a mill operator, Alexander developed a machine that removed the husks from grain. He was encouraged by his father to study and experiment with anything electrical, including telegraph technology. These illustrated the kind of learning he relished: hands-on discovery.

After studying at the University of Edinburgh and University of London, Bell became his father’s assistant. He taught the deaf to talk by adopting his father’s system of Visible Speech (illustrations of speaking positions of the lips and tongue to systemize speech). In London Bell studied physician and physicist Hermann Ludwig von Helmholtz’s experiments with tuning forks and magnets to produce complex sounds, as well as made scientific studies of the resonance or vibrations of the mouth while speaking.

But during this time, tragedy struck the Bell family: both of Alexander’s brothers died of tuberculosis, a dangerous lung disease that was endemic in Britain’s sooty industrial cities. Alexander himself probably contracted a mild form of the so-called “white plague,” so in 1870 his parents persuaded him to cross the Atlantic with them and settle in Canada’s healthier climate, in the prosperous little town of Brantford, Ontario. Their home is now the  Bell Homestead National Historic Site .

​By 1871 Bell was sufficiently recovered to move to Boston, Mass., to teach lip reading and oral speech at Sarah Fuller’s Boston School for the Deaf. This job reinforced his lifelong commitment to the interests of the deaf community. He also became a professor and president at the Clarke School for the Deaf, now the  Clarke Schools for Hearing and Speech , founded in 1872 in Northampton, Mass., became a professor of voice and speech at Boston University in 1873, and initiated conventions for teachers of the deaf. Throughout his life, he continued to educate the deaf, and he founded the American Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf, which became the  Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing . He also tutored and mentored private students, including Helen Keller (1880–1968), and facilitated her introduction to teacher Annie Sullivan. Bell was a constant source of support for both teacher and student.

Inventing the Telephone

From 1873 to 1876, Bell spent his days teaching hearing-impaired children and his evenings experimenting with sound. The funds for his scientific experiments came from the fathers of two of his students. One of these men was the patent lawyer Gardiner Greene Hubbard, who was also the founder of the Clarke Institution; his daughter, Mabel, would become Alexander Graham Bell’s wife in 1877.

This was a period of intense interest in communications technology, with many inventors scrambling to invent an “electric speaking telephone.” Bell’s critical advantage sprang from his knowledge of the physiology of human speaking and hearing. To help deaf children, Bell had experimented in the summer of 1874 with a human ear and attached bones, along with materials including magnets and smoked glass. It was then that 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 While Bell supplied the ideas, Boston machinist Thomas Watson created the equipment. Working with tuned reeds and magnets to make a receiving instrument and sender work together, they transmitted a musical note on June 2, 1875. Bell’s telephone receiver and transmitter were identical: a thin disk in front of an electromagnet (a magnet created by an electric current).

On February 14, 1876, Bell’s future father-in-law Gardiner Hubbard filed for a patent, or a document guaranteeing a person the right to make and sell an invention for a set number of years. The exact hour was not recorded, but on that same day Elisha Gray (1835–1901) filed his caveat (intention to invent) for a telephone. 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. By accident, Bell sent the first sentence, “Watson, come here; I want you,” on March 10, 1876. 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.

Establishing an Industry

Repeated demonstrations overcame public doubts. The first two-way outdoor conversation was between Boston and Cambridge, Mass., by Bell and Watson on October 9, 1876. In 1877 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, Conn., 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

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.

Alexander Graham Bell far preferred the challenge of invention to the demands of business. In 1880, France awarded him its prestigious Volta Prize; Bell used the $10,000 award to establish the Volta Laboratory in Washington, D.C. Here, he and two associates focused on various projects on the transmission of sound, 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. When President James A. Garfield was wounded by an assassin in 1881, Bell and his induction balance were summoned to the White House to locate the bullet, but it was too deeply imbedded. The invention later went on to be used by military hospitals behind the lines of battles, including the First World War. The audiometer was used to test a person’s hearing. The first successful phonograph record was produced, and the Columbia Gramophone Company made them profitable. With the profits Bell established an organization in Washington to study deafness.

Bell’s Later Interests

By now, Alexander Graham Bell was one of the most famous people in the world. For the rest of his life, he continued to concentrate on his scientific work. But frequently he found himself distracted from his inventions by requests to head organizations, address scientific meetings and publish papers.

In 1880, the magazine Science (later the official publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science) was established because of Bell’s efforts. As the National Geographic Society president from 1896 to 1904, he contributed to the success of the society; he insisted that the society’s magazine, National Geographic Magazine, should be a popular publication with lots of “pictures of life and action…pictures that tell a story!” He also coined its slogan: “The world and all that is in it.” In 1898 Bell became a member of a governing board of the Smithsonian Institution. He was also studied hydrodynamics (the study of the forces of fluids, such as water) and built speed record-breaking hydrofoils, or hydrodromes, as he called them. His research was the foundation for the development of naval prototypes after the Second World War, as well as sailboats for the most recent America’s Cup.

Aviation was Bell’s primary interest after 1895. He first emphasized the singular strength of the tetrahedral for kites, and his research is reflected today in the construction of the Space Station. He worked with physicist and astronomer Samuel Langley (1834–1906), who experimented with heavier-than-air flying machines; invented a special kite (1903); and founded the Aerial Experiment Association (1907), bringing together aviator and inventor Glenn Curtiss, Casey Baldwin, Douglas McCurdy and Lt. Thomas Selfridge. Curtiss provided the motors for Bell’s aircraft, including the Silver Dart, which flew February 23, 1909 and became the first manned flight in the United Kingdom. He also achieved the first public flight in the U.S. with the “June Bug” flown by Curtiss, which won the Scientific American Cup, the first aeronautical prize ever awarded in the United States, and preceded Wilbur Wright’s first public flight.

Bell saw knowledge, technology and invention as the means to empower the individual and better humanity. In 1878, Bell envisioned a future when “a man in one part of the country may communicate by word of mouth with another in a distant place.” By the time Bell died in Baddeck, Nova Scotia, Canada, on August 2, 1922, his most famous invention had allowed for the transmission of the human voice, easily and safely, and had profoundly impacted the interdependence of personal relationships and the social fabric of society. Today, it is nearly inconceivable not to have voice communication anywhere in the world.

But Bell was far more than the telephone. As he often told his first grandchild, Melville Bell Grosvenor, “I could no more stop inventing than breathing.” Bell’s extensive laboratory notebooks demonstrate that he was driven by a genuine and rare intellectual curiosity that kept him regularly searching, striving and wanting always to learn and create. He will also be remembered for these other significant inventions:

Bell and his colleagues developed the hinged flight control surface usually forming part of the trailing edge of each wing of a fixed-wing aircraft, which was adopted by the Wright brothers and is still used on aircraft today.

Graphophone and Cylinder Record

While Edison invented the principle of the phonograph using tinfoil, Bell improved on Edison’s invention with new recording methods and media—especially wax cylinders and disc records—making sound recording practical. His graphophone was a commercial success and led to the Dictaphone and Columbia Records companies. Produced on an experimental wax disc, this is the only confirmed recording of Bell’s voice.Bell made this recording in 1885 to test the kind of clarity that recording could capture with spoken numbers. On the recording, after several minutes of counting, Bell concludes: “This record has been made by Alexander Graham Bell in the presence of Dr. Chichester A. Bell—on the fifteenth of April, 1885, at the Volta Laboratory, 1221 Connecticut Ave., Washington, D.C. In witness whereof—hear my voice. Alexander Graham Bell.”

AudiometerBell invented this apparatus to test hearing ability. Because it was the first device to accurately measure levels of sound, the scientific community named the “decibel” in Bell’s honor.

Metal DetectorWhen President James Garfield was dying from an assassin’s bullet that doctors could not locate, Bell hurriedly invented a device to detect metal objects when they came in contact with an electromagnetic field. While the metal springs in Garfield’s bed hampered this first attempt to use what later become the metal detector, the device would later save many lives before the introduction of the x-ray machine.

RespiratorWhen the Bells’ son, Edward, was born prematurely and died from weak lungs, Bell designed a “vacuum jacket” to facilitate breathing. The apparatus was the forerunner of the iron lung, and of respirators used in hospitals around the world to save the lives of premature babies, accident victims, and others with impaired breathing.

Bell would continue to test out new ideas throughout his long and productive life. He also pursued other scientific and humanitarian endeavors, including work with tetrahedral structures, sheep-breeding, desalinization and water distillation, hydrofoils, as well as energy recycling and alternative fuels, coining in a 1911 speech, the phrase “greenhouse effect.”

But Bell was reluctant to move his ideas from the lab to the marketplace. His other technologies – such as the photophone, vacuum jacket (respirator), tetrahedral construction, hydrodrome, flying machine adaptations, disc record and graphophone – were exploited by others after his patents had expired. As biographer Charlotte Gray observed, Bell’s genius as an inventor was “his creative leaps of imagination.” And Bell’s imagination, “like his spirit,” Gray continued, “knew no bounds.”

For More Information

• Bruce, Robert V. Bell: Alexander Graham Bell and The Conquest of Solitude. Cornell University Press. 1973, 1990.
• Gray, Charlotte. Reluctant Genius and the Passion for Invention. Arcade Publishing. New York. 2006, 2011.
• Grosvenor, Edwin S., and Morgan Wesson. Alexander Graham Bell. New York. Harry Abrams. 1997, 2016.
• Weaver, Robyn M. Alexander Graham Bell. San Diego. Lucent. 2000.

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• Alexander Graham Bell

Article by Donald J.c. Phillipson

Updated by Tabitha de Bruin, Laura Neilson, Jessica Poulin

Published Online July 28, 2010

Last Edited September 29, 2022

Alexander Graham Bell, teacher of the deaf, inventor, scientist (born 3 March 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland; died 2 August 1922 near Baddeck , NS ). Alexander Graham Bell is generally considered second only to Thomas Alva Edison among 19th- and 20th-century inventors. Although he is best known as the inventor of the first practical telephone , he also did innovative work in other fields, including aeronautics, hydrofoils and wireless communication (the “photophone”). Moreover, Bell himself considered his work with the deaf to be his most important contribution. Born in Scotland, he emigrated to Canada in 1870 with his parents. Bell married American Mabel Hubbard in 1877 and became a naturalized American citizen in 1882. From the mid-1880s, he and his family spent their summers near Baddeck on Cape Breton Island , where they built a large home, Beinn Bhreagh. From then on, Bell divided his time and his research between the United States and Canada. He died and was buried at Baddeck in 1922.

Bell’s Childhood and Family Background

Alexander Graham Bell was born in 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland, to mother Eliza Grace Symonds and father Alexander Melville Bell . He was the middle of three children, between elder brother Melville James (born 1845) and younger brother Edward Charles (born 1848). Unlike his brothers, Alexander was not given a middle name at birth, but added “Graham” in 1858.

Both his father and grandfather were experts in speech and elocution (the skill of clear, expressive speech, focusing on pronunciation and articulation). His grandfather — also named Alexander — had done pioneering work in speech impediments and in 1835 published The Practical Elocutionist , which used symbols to indicate word groupings. This would be the basis of a system of “visible speech” developed by Alexander Melville Bell, which he (and later his son) would use in teaching the deaf.

The Bell children received their early schooling at home from both their father and their mother, an accomplished painter who was partially deaf. As a teenager, Alexander Bell attended the Royal High School in Edinburgh. Although Bell loved both music and science, he was an indifferent student and prone to daydreaming. Outside school, however, he demonstrated a keen mind. In 1858, at age 12, he invented a process to remove the husks at a flour mill owned by his friend’s father, adding wire brushes to an existing machine.

At age 15, Bell was sent to London, where he lived for a year with his grandfather. Around this time, Bell met telegraph researcher Charles Wheatstone, who had produced a version of Wolfgang von Kempelen’s Speaking Machine, an instrument that mechanically produced human speech. This inspired Bell and his brother Melville to develop their own “talking larynx” —an artificial windpipe that produced a small number of recognizable words when air was blown through it.

Bell began teaching elocution at age 16, while also researching the physiology of speech. His work so impressed phonetician Alexander John Ellis, that he invited the young man to join the Philological Society in 1866. The following year, he began teaching his father’s “visible speech” method to deaf students in London, where the family was then located. Sadly, Bell’s younger brother Edward died the same year of tuberculosis. Bell took anatomy and physiology at University College in London from 1868 to 1870, but didn’t finish his degree.

In May 1870, his older brother Melville died of tuberculosis , and his parents decided to leave Britain, fearing that their remaining son would succumb to the illness as well. In August 1870, he and his parents (and his widowed sister-in-law) moved to Canada and settled in Brantford , Ontario . Not long before they left, the family dined with Alexander Ellis, who pointed Bell towards the work of German scientist Hermann von Helmholtz — work that inspired Bell’s interest in electromagnetism and electricity and his belief that people would soon be able to “talk by telegraph.”

Teacher of the Deaf

In 1871, Alexander Graham Bell accepted a position teaching at a school for the deaf in Boston, Massachusetts, beginning a long career as an educator of the deaf in the United States. He spent summers with the family at Brantford , Ontario , retreating there to rest when his tendency to overwork left him exhausted.

Around this time, many American experts believed that deaf people (then referred to as “deaf mutes”) could not be taught to speak. The oldest school for the deaf, the American Asylum for the Education and Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb (later the American School for the Deaf) in Hartford, Connecticut, exclusively taught sign language. There were others, however, who believed that the deaf could and should be taught oral skills. This included Gardiner Greene Hubbard, who founded the Clarke Institution for Deaf-Mutes (later the Clarke School for the Deaf) in Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1867.

Bell (like his father) taught "visible speech" to the deaf by illustrating, through a series of drawings, how sounds are made, essentially teaching his students to speak by seeing sound. He helped them become aware of the sounds around them by feeling sound vibrations. One teaching aid was a balloon— by clutching one tightly against their chests students could feel sound.

In the spring of 1872, Bell taught at the American Asylum for the Education and Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb in Hartford and the Clarke Institution for Deaf-Mutes in Northampton. That fall, he opened his own School of Vocal Physiology in Boston, and in 1873, he became a professor of vocal physiology and elocution at Boston University. The same year, he began tutoring Mabel Hubbard , a deaf student who was the daughter of Clarke School founder Gardiner Greene Hubbard. Bell was quickly captivated by the young Mabel, who was 10 years his junior (they married in 1877).

When Bell was not teaching, he spent much of his free time researching the electrical transmission of sound, eventually leading to the development of the telephone (see below). Yet while he is best known for his inventions, he remained committed to education of the deaf throughout his life. In 1887, for example, he established the Volta Bureau for research, information and advocacy for the deaf in Washington, DC. He was also president of the American Association for the Promotion of the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf (now the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing), which was founded in 1890.

Bell also had a close relationship with Helen Keller, whom he met in 1887; the two communicated frequently and Keller visited Bell’s home several times. Keller’s The Story of My Life (1903) was dedicated to Bell, “who has taught the deaf to speak and enabled the listening ear to hear speech from the Atlantic to the Rockies.”

The Multiple Telegraph

Much of Alexander Graham Bell's work can be described as a series of observations leading one to another. His combined interest in sound and communication developed his interest in improving the telegraph, which ultimately led to his success with the telephone.

When Bell began to experiment with electrical signals, the telegraph had existed for more than 30 years. Although it was a successful system, the telegraph was limited to receiving and sending one message at a time, using Morse code. By the early 1870s, a number of inventors (including Thomas Edison and Elisha Gray) were working on a telegraph that that could transmit simultaneous messages.

Even before coming to Canada, Bell had been intrigued by the idea of using a well-known musical phenomenon to transmit multiple telegraph messages simultaneously. He knew that everything has a natural frequency (how quickly something vibrates) and that a sound's pitch relies on its frequency. By singing into a piano he discovered that varying the pitch of his voice made different piano strings vibrate in return. His observations led to the idea of sending many different messages along a single wire, with identical tuning forks tuned to different frequencies at either end to send and receive, a system he called the "harmonic telegraph."

By October 1874, Bell's research had been so successful that he informed his future father-in-law, Gardiner Greene Hubbard, about the possibility of a multiple telegraph. Hubbard resented the Western Union Telegraph Company's communications monopoly and gave Bell the financial backing he needed. Hubbard was joined by leather merchant Thomas Sanders, who was also the father of one of Bell's deaf students in Boston. Bell worked on the multiple telegraph with a young electrician, Thomas Watson. At the same time, he and Watson were exploring the possibility of a device that would transmit speech electrically.

Development of the Telephone

According to Alexander Graham Bell, inspiration struck on 26 July 1874 during a summer visit to Brantford . While watching the currents in the Grand River , Bell reflected on sound waves moving through the air and realized that with electricity, "it would be possible to transmit sounds of any sort" by controlling the intensity of the current. Based on his new insight, he sketched a primitive telephone .

The first major breakthrough occurred on 2 June 1875. Bell and Watson were preparing an experiment with the multiple telegraph by tuning reeds on three sets of transmitters and receivers in different rooms. One of Watson's reeds, affixed too tightly, was stuck to its electromagnet. With the transmitters off, Watson plucked the reed to free it, and Bell heard a twang in his receiver. They had inadvertently reproduced sound and proved that tones could vary the strength of an electric current in a wire. The next step was to build a working transmitter with a membrane that could vary electronic currents and a receiver that could reproduce the variations in audible frequencies. Within days Watson had built a primitive telephone.

Bell continued research on the telephone, and on 14 February 1876 Hubbard submitted an application to the US Patent Office on his behalf for an undulatory current, variable resistance liquid transmitter. Hours later, Elisha Gray’s attorney submitted an application for a similar transmitter. On 7 March, Bell received Patent No. 174,465, “Improvements in Telegraphy.” Although he hadn’t yet succeeded in building a working telephone (neither had Gray), the patent established intellectual and commercial rights to the technology. He and Watson continued their work, and on 10 March 1876, Bell spoke into the first telephone, uttering the now-famous instruction to his assistant: "Mr. Watson — come here — I want to see you."

Bell's work culminated in not only the birth of the telephone, but the death of the multiple telegraph. The communications potential of being able to "talk with electricity" overcame anything that could be gained by simply increasing the capacity of a dot-and-dash system.

Bell, Hubbard, Sanders and Watson formed the Bell Telephone Company on 9 July 1877. The following day, Bell gave his father, Melville , most of his Canadian rights to the telephone. On 11 July, he married Mabel Gardiner Hubbard (1857–1923) and embarked on a yearlong honeymoon in Europe. Over the next several years, the Bell company fought and won hundreds of telephone patent lawsuits in the courts, making Bell rich by age 35. By that point, however, he had largely withdrawn from the business and turned to other interests.

Volta Laboratory

Alexander Graham Bell might easily have been content with the financial success of his invention. His many laboratory notebooks reveal the depth of the intellectual curiosity that drove him to learn and create. In 1880, Bell received the Volta Prize from the French government, in recognition of his achievements in electrical science (particularly the invention of the telephone ). Bell used the prize money to found the Volta Laboratory Association with his cousin, Chichester A. Bell, and Charles Sumner Tainter. Based in Washington, DC (where the Bell family now lived), the laboratory was dedicated to acoustic and electrical research.

In 1880, Alexander Graham Bell and Tainter developed a device they called the "photophone," which transmitted sound on a beam of light. In February, they successfully sent a photophone message nearly 200 metres between two buildings. Bell considered the photophone "the greatest invention [he had] ever made, greater than the telephone." Although the photophone was not commercially viable, it did demonstrate that one could use light to transmit sound. Their invention is therefore considered to be the forerunner of fibre optics and wireless communications.

Metal Detector

In July 1881, Alexander Graham Bell and Tainter developed an electrical bullet probe, in an effort to save the life of US President James A Garfield, who had been shot. The probe was unable to find the bullet and Garfield eventually died of infection. However, Bell continued to tinker with his device, and demonstrated it a few weeks later in New York. The device was commercially produced by a Dr. John H. Girdner and used by military surgeons during several wars over the next few years.

Graphophone

Alexander Graham Bell, his cousin Chichester A. Bell, and Tainter also developed the graphophone, improving on the phonograph patented by Thomas Edison in 1878. ( See also Recorded Sound Technology and its Impact .) Edison’s phonograph had a cylinder covered in tinfoil, upon which a rigid stylus cut a groove. Bell and his colleagues used waxed-coated cylinders, which produced a better recording, and a floating instead of a rigid stylus; they also added an electric motor instead of a manual crank. The group received patents in 1886, and founded the Volta Graphophone Company with James Saville and Charles J. Bell. The following year, the American Graphophone Company was established to manufacture the graphophones, one of which became popular as a dictating machine. In 1888, Jesse Lippincott licensed the patents, with Bell using his share of the proceeds to found the Volta Bureau.

Aerodromes and Hydrodromes

From the mid-1890s, Alexander Graham Bell’s primary research interest was aviation and flight. In 1907, Bell and his wife co-founded the Aerial Experiment Association (AEA) in partnership with J.A.D. McCurdy , F.W. Baldwin and a few other young engineers, such as Glenn H. Curtiss, an American builder of motorcycle engines, and Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge, who acted as observer from the American army. The team split their time between the United States and the Bell estate at Baddeck .

The association's first experimental flight was conducted on 6 December 1907. The test aircraft, the Cygnet I , was a large, tetrahedral kite placed on pontoons that attained a height of 51 metres and stayed in the air for seven minutes. In 1908, the association built and flew several aircraft, with varying success. They achieved a record on 4 July 1908 when Curtiss flew the June Bug to become the first aircraft to fly one kilometre in the western hemisphere, for which the association was awarded the Scientific American Trophy.

On 23 February 1909, McCurdy flew the Silver Dart at Baddeck — what is generally accepted as the first powered, heavier-than-air flight in Canada (the first such flight in history was achieved in 1903 by American inventors Orville and Wilbur Wright at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina).

Although the AEA disbanded in 1909, Baldwin and McCurdy continued to work as the Canadian Aerodrome Company (CAC) for another year, supported by Bell. The CAC hoped to convince the Canadian government to invest in their airplanes, demonstrating both the Silver Dart and the Baddeck No. I at Camp Petawawa. However, the government lost interest and the CAC dissolved in 1910. ( See also Alexander Graham Bell, Aviation Pioneer .)

Bell and Baldwin continued work at Baddeck, focusing on “hydrodromes” or hydrofoils (the Bell team had begun work on hydrodromes in 1908). In 1919, one of their hydrofoils , the HD-4, set a world water-speed record of 114.04 km/h, at a time when the world's fastest steamships travelled at only 48 km/h. That record was not approached by any other boat for more than a decade.

Commitment to Scientific Research

Alexander Graham Bell worked on a number of different inventions, including the audiometer and a “vacuum jacket” (a precursor of the iron lung) following the death of his infant son in 1881. He also researched the desalination of seawater and attempted to breed a "super race" of sheep at Baddeck. Bell supported the experiments of others as well, funding the early atomic experiments of A.M. Michelson, among other projects. He also supported the journal Science , which would become America’s foremost journal of scientific research.

Bell helped found the National Geographic Society in 1888 and was its second president (1898–1903). The first president of the society was his father-in-law, Gardiner Greene Hubbard. Bell wanted the society’s magazine to appeal to the general public, not just to professional geographers and geologists, and promoted the use of photography in the magazine. In 1899, he hired Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor, who would become editor-in chief in 1903 and president of the society in 1920. Grosvenor (who married Bell’s daughter, Elsie May, in 1900) was a pioneer of photojournalism. Under his leadership, the National Geographic Magazine became widely popular, increasing its circulation from under a thousand readers to more than two million.

Alexander Graham Bell married Mabel Gardiner Hubbard (1857–1923) in July 1877. Mabel Bell shared her husband’s scientific interests, and was co-founder (and funder) of the Aerial Experiment Association. She also undertook her own horticultural experiments. They enjoyed a close relationship with both sets of parents. Bell worked closely with his father-in-law, while his own parents moved to Washington, DC, to be close to their son and his family.

The Bells had two daughters — Elsie May Bell (1878–1964) and Marian Hubbard “Daisy” Bell (1880–1962) — and two sons, Edward (1881) and Robert (1883), who both died in infancy. Elsie married Gilbert Grosvenor, who would become editor-in-chief of the National Geographic Society Magazine, and had seven children. Daisy married botanist David Grandison Fairchild, whom she met through the National Geographic Society; the couple had three children.

Death and Significance

Alexander Graham Bell died in 1922 at Beinn Bhreagh, due to complications from diabetes. Best known as the inventor of the telephone , he spent much of his life teaching the deaf and considered it his most important contribution. Moreover, the telephone was only one of Bell’s many inventions and innovations. In fact, he refused to have one in his own study, as he found it intruded on his scientific work. Fittingly, all telephones in North America were silenced for a brief time at the conclusion of his funeral. His wife, Mabel , died in January 1923, just five months later. Both were interred in Nova Scotia , on a hill overlooking Baddeck Bay. The Beinn Bhreagh estate is still owned by descendants of the family and in 2015, it was declared a provincial heritage property.

For his contributions, Bell received several awards and recognitions. He was the recipient of numerous honorary degrees from universities in Canada and abroad. Bell was also recognized posthumously. He was designated a national historic person by the Government of Canada in 1977. He was also inducted into Canada’s Aviation Hall of Fame in 1974, the Canadian Science and Engineering Hall of Fame in 1992, Canada’s Walk of Fame in 2001.

Further Reading

Mary Kay Carson, Alexander Graham Bell: Giving Voice to the World (2007)

J.H. Parkin, Bell and Baldwin: Their Development of Aerodromes & Hydrodromes at Baddeck, Nova Scotia (1964)

Judith Tulloch, The Bell Family in Baddeck (2006)

Charlotte Gray, Reluctant Genius: The Passionate Life and Inventive Mind of Alexander Graham Bell (2006)

Lilias M. Toward, Mabel Bell, Alexander’s Silent Partner (1996)

Terrance MacDonald, Firsts in Flight: Alexander Graham Bell and his Innovative Airplanes (2017)

Naomi Pasachoff, Alexander Graham Bell. Making Connections (1996)

Robert V. Bruce, Bell: Alexander Graham Bell and the Conquest of Solitude (1990)

External Links

Canada's Aviation Hall of Fame Alexander Graham Bell.

Dictionary of Canadian Biography “Alexander Graham Bell”.

Library of Congress “Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers at the Library of Congress"

Associated Collections

Invention and innovation in canada, recommended, edward samuel rogers, charles fenerty.

Alexander Graham Bell and the Invention of the Telephone

Mabel hubbard bell, john alexander douglas mccurdy, frederick walker baldwin, alexander melville bell, inventions and devices.

Alexander Graham Bell

1847 – 1922

Inventor of the Telephone

Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) is best known for inventing the telephone in 1876, while in the Boston, MA area. Bell had been inventing since his youth. The electrical transmission of the human voice over a distance was the result of his work with human speech, telegraphy, and electromagnetism. His study of how the ear worked led him to design a diaphragm moved by speech whose motion was turned into an electrical signal that moved a receiving diaphragm producing sound waves for the listener. The success of his invention established the Bell Telephone Company and later AT&T.

Bell was born and grew up in Edinburgh, Scotland. He went to University of Edinburgh and later to University of London. To escape tuberculosis, Bell and his parents moved to Brantford, Canada, in 1870. This eventually brought Bell to the Boston area where he met his wife Mabel Hubbard. After his success with the telephone, Bell turned his attention to other inventions at a family compound on Bras D’Or Lake in Nova Scotia, Canada. His later inventions include kite designs, hydrofoil boats, and, with Mabel, Bell organized a team to bring aviation to Canada. The result was Silver Dart’s first flight at the lake in 1907; a first flight for the British Empire. Bell had broad interests; he established the magazine Science and was the second president of the National Geographic Society.

References: Alexander Graham Bell. Wikipedia. 

Biography Online

Alexander Bell Biography

Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) Scottish inventor, most notably credited with inventing the modern telephone.

In 1870, after suffering from tuberculosis (which killed his brother), he went to live in Canada with his brother’s widow. He enjoyed living and Canada, and he began to develop a method of teaching speech to the deaf. In 1873, he became a professor of vocal physiology at Boston University. In 1873, he also met and began courting Mabel Hubbard. They married in 1877 and had four children.

In 1876 he submitted a patent for the acoustic telephone, something he had developed during long evening sessions with the mechanic Thomas Watson.

The first telephone call was made on August 3rd, 1876, where he successfully placed a call to another house 6km away on an improvised piece of telephone wire. The first spoken words were:

“Mr. Watson — Come here — I want to see you.”

This proved it was possible to communicate over long distances for the first time. His wife Mabel encouraged Bell (despite his great reluctance) to take and exhibit his telephone in a Boston exhibition. The new invention won a prize and much commercial publicity, which helped early sales.

In 1879, the Bell Telephone company bought Edison’s patent for carbon microphone, and this enabled a big improvement to Bell’s initial telephone design. The Bell telecommunications company proved very successful. By 1886, over 150,000 people in the US, owned a telephone. It went on to become one of the most successful modern inventions. However, with many people working on similar patents for telephones at the same time. Bell’s patent for the telephone was frequently challenged in the court. Bell himself had to attend many court sessions, and this encouraged him to resign from the company.

Ironically, Bell wasn’t over-keen on his invention. He later felt it detracted from his other scientific works, and he himself wouldn’t have a telephone in his office.

Bell was also the second president of the National Geographic Magazine from 1898, until 1903. He helped develop and shape the magazine into an influential and popular scientific magazine.

“A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with — a man is what he makes of himself.”

– Alexander Bell

Later inventions of Bell included the photophone, a device that transmitted sound on a beam of light and the gramophone, which recorded sound on a wax disc. He made many important discoveries and inventions throughout his life. He wrote of his passion for inventing:

“The inventor…looks upon the world and is not contented with things as they are. He wants to improve whatever he sees, he wants to benefit the world; he is haunted by an idea. The spirit of invention possesses him, seeking materialization.”

Towards the end of his life, he continued to carry out varied scientific research in the field of aerodynamics, looking at giant kites and hydrofoils. He even speculated about the potential for using solar power to heat houses and ways to capture waste gases from farms and industry.

Bell died of anaemia on 2nd August 1922, in his Scottish estate of Beinn Bhreagh, Nova Scotia.

Citation:  Pettinger, Tejvan  “Alexander Bell Biography”, Oxford, UK. www.biographyonline.net – Published 10 March 2015. Updated 1 February 2018.

Alexander Bell

Alexander Bell – Always Inventing  at Amazon.com

Related pages

Inventions that changed the world  – Famous inventions that made a great difference to the progress of the world, including aluminium, the telephone and the printing press.

Alexander Graham Bell

• Occupation: Inventor
• Born: March 3, 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland
• Died: August 2, 1922 in Nova Scotia, Canada
• Best known for: Inventing the telephone
• The Metal Detector - Bell invented the first metal detector which was used to try and find a bullet inside of President James Garfield.
• Audiometer - A device used to detect hearing problems.
• He did experimental work on aeronautics and hydrofoils.
• He invented techniques which helped in teaching speech to deaf persons.
• He made a device to help find icebergs.

• Bell made the first transcontinental telephone call on January 15, 1915. He called Thomas Watson from New York City. Watson was in San Francisco.
• He helped form the National Geographic Society.
• Bell did not like to have a telephone in his study as he found it intrusive!
• He did not get the middle name Graham until he was 10 years old, when he asked his father to give him a middle name like his brothers.
• At his wife's request, Bell went by the nickname Alec.
• Upon his death, every phone in North America was silenced for a short period to honor him.
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10 Things You May Not Know About Alexander Graham Bell

By: Christopher Klein

Updated: April 25, 2024 | Original: March 3, 2017

1. He was an immigrant.

Bell was born on March 3, 1847, in Edinburgh, Scotland. After attending school in Scotland and London, the 23-year-old immigrated to Canada with his parents in 1870. The following year, Bell moved to the United States to teach at the Boston School for the Deaf. After gaining fame for developing the telephone, the inventor became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1882.

2. Bell’s middle name was a birthday present.

Baptized Alexander Bell, the inventor longed for a middle name as a child, perhaps to differentiate himself from his father and grandfather, who were both named Alexander. On the boy’s 11th birthday, Bell’s father allowed the youngster to adopt the middle name “Graham” in honor of Alexander Graham, a former student of his who was boarding with the family.

3. Bell’s mother and wife were both hearing-impaired.

A childhood illness left Bell’s mother mostly deaf and reliant on an ear trumpet to hear anything. Young Alexander would speak close to his mother’s forehead so she could feel the vibrations of his voice. Bell’s father and grandfather were both distinguished speech therapists, and from a young age the future inventor joined in the family business. Bell became a voice teacher and worked with his father, who developed Visible Speech, a written system of symbols that instructed the deaf to pronounce sounds. In 1873 he became a professor of vocal physiology at Boston University where he met his future wife, Mabel Hubbard, a student 10 years his junior who had completely lost her hearing from a bout of scarlet fever. Living and working with the hearing impaired sparked Bell’s interest in the principles of acoustics and his experiments in transmitting sound waves over wires.

4. He faced more than 600 lawsuits over his telephone patent.

Bell’s patent application for the telephone was filed on February 14, 1876, just hours before rival inventor Elisha Gray filed a caveat with the U.S. Patent Office that announced he was working on a similar invention. On March 7, the 29-year-old Bell was awarded the first U.S. patent for the telephone, and three days later Bell’s assistant, Thomas Watson, clearly heard the inventor’s voice crackle across a wire in their Boston laboratory in the first successful telephone transmission. The message? "Mr. Watson, come here, I need you.” It didn’t take long for the first of hundreds of legal challenges to Bell’s patent to begin. Five of them reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which ultimately upheld Bell’s claims in one of the longest patent battles in American history.

5. Bell developed a wireless telephone.

More than a century before the proliferation of cell phones, Bell invented a wireless telephone that transmitted conversations and sounds by beams of light. Bell proclaimed his “photophone” (from the Greek words for “light” and “sound”), which was patented in 1880, to be “the greatest invention I have ever made; greater than the telephone.” He told the Boston Traveller that he foresaw its application for navigators communicating from sea to shore and “in times of war, when telegraph lines are down and the country is desolated.” Given the technology of the time, however, the photophone’s utility proved limited. It wasn’t until fiber-optic technology was developed many decades later that the transmission of sound by light found its first wide-scale commercial application.

6. He invented a rudimentary metal detector in a quest to save the life of a president.

In the weeks that followed the July 2, 1881, shooting of President James Garfield, the chief executive’s condition worsened as doctors made repeated probes with unsterilized fingers and instruments in order to find the location of one of the bullets. Believing that “science should be able to discover some less barbarous method” for locating the bullet, Bell developed an electromagnetic machine that he tested on Civil War veterans who still had bullets lodged in their bodies. Bell was twice summoned to Garfield’s White House bedside with his machine, but his “induction balance” failed to locate the bullet, in part due to interference caused by steel wires in the bed mattress and the president’s chief physician only permitting a search of the right side of the president’s body where he was convinced the bullet was lodged. After Garfield’s death on September 19, the bullet was found to be on his left side.

7. Bell connected Helen Keller with Annie Sullivan.

In spite of gaining fame as the inventor of the telephone, Bell continued his lifelong work to help the hearing impaired. In 1887, Captain Arthur Keller traveled from Alabama to meet with Bell in order to seek help for his 6-year-old daughter, Helen, who had become blind and mute at the age of 19 months, possibly from scarlet fever. Bell directed them to Boston’s Perkins School for the Blind, where they met recent graduate Anne Sullivan, the miracle-working tutor who would teach Helen to write, speak and read Braille. Keller dedicated her autobiography to Bell, whom she credited with opening the “door through which I should pass from darkness into light,” and the two remained lifelong friends.

8. A Bell-designed speedboat set a world record.

Bell began experimenting in aviation in the 1890s, even developing giant manned tetrahedral kites. His dreams of airplanes that could take off from water led him to work on the designs of winged hydrofoil boats that skipped across the water surface at high speeds. The HD-4 model on which he collaborated reached a speed of more than 70 miles per hour during a 1919 test on a lake in Nova Scotia, a world water-speed record that stood for more than a decade.

9. North American telephones were silenced in Bell’s honor following his death.

Bell died at his summer home in Nova Scotia on August 2, 1922. Two days later all telephone service in the United States and Canada was suspended for a full minute at the precise moment when Bell was lowered into his grave. An army of 60,000 telephone operators stood silently at attention and did not connect any new calls as the continent’s 13 million telephones went quiet.

10. Decibels are named after him.

Bell’s name remained in the popular lexicon after his death. To honor the inventor’s contributions to acoustical science, the standard unit for the intensity of sound waves was named the “bel” in the 1920s. The decibel, one-tenth of a bel, is the most commonly used metric for measuring the magnitude of noise.

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