Alexander Graham Bell

@Inventor of Telephone, Facts and Life

Alexander Graham Bell was a Scottish-American scientist and inventor, referred to as ‘Father of the Telephone’

Mar 3, 1847

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Biography

Personal Details

  • Birthday: March 3, 1847
  • Died on: August 2, 1922
  • Nationality: Canadian, Scottish
  • Famous: Inventor of Telephone, University College London, University Of Edinburgh, University Of Toronto, Electronics Entrepreneurs, Electrical Engineers, Inventors & Discoverers, Scientists
  • Spouses: Mabel Gardiner Hubbard (m. 1877–1922)
  • Siblings: Edward Charles Bell, Melville James Bell
  • Childrens: Edward Bell, Elsie May Bell Grosvenor-Myers, Marian Hubbard Bell Fairchild, Robert Bell

Alexander Graham Bell born at

Edinburgh

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Birth Place

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.

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Personal Life

They had four children including two daughters; Elsie May Bell and Marian Hubbard Bell. Unfortunately, both their sons, Edward and Robert, died in infancy.

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Personal Life

He died on August 2, 1922 at his private estate, Beinn Bhreagh, Nova Scotia, Canada due to complications from diabetics. On his funeral, every phone on the continent of North America was silenced in his honor for one minute.

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Personal Life

He 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.

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Childhood & Early Life

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.

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Childhood & Early Life

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.

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Childhood & Early Life

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.

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Childhood & Early Life

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.

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Childhood & Early Life

In 1872, he founded ‘School of Vocal Physiology and Mechanics of Speech’ in Boston, where he taught elocution to his pupils. In 1873, he was appointed the professor of ‘Vocal Physiology and Elocution’ at the Boston University School of Oratory.

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Career

While pursuing his teaching profession, he conducted his research to perfect the harmonic telegraph, so as to transmit several telegraph messages simultaneously over a single wire. Alongside, he was also drawn towards another idea of transmitting the human voice over wires.

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Career

In 1874, he hired an assistant, Thomas Watson, a skilled electrician, who developed the tools and instruments he needed to continue the project. Over the subsequent years, they formed a great partnership and labored on both the ideas, the harmonic telegraph and a voice transmitting device.

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Career

On March 10, 1876, he produced the first intelligible telephone call, when he summoned his assistant, with words that Bell transcribed in his lab notes as “Mr. Watson—come here—I want to see you”. Watson heard his voice through the wire and thus received the first telephone call.

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Career

A legal battle ensued with inventor Elisha Gray who claimed his invention of the telephone predated Bell's; the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Bell's favor and subsequently ‘Bell Telephone Company’ was formed in 1877.

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Career

He is most famous for his pioneering work on the development of the telephone. He worked with Thomas Watson, his assistant, on the design and patent of the first practical telephone.

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Major Works

Many other inventions marked his later life including the refinement of the phonograph. His other exceptional works were in the field of hydrofoils and aeronautics. In all, he held 18 patents in his name alone and 12 that he shared with collaborators.

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Major Works

He was one of the founders of the National Geographic Society in 1888 and served as its president from 1896 to 1904.

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Major Works