Alexander Graham Bell

Inventor of the telephone and pioneer in sound, speech, and heredity.

Alexander Graham Bell was a Scottish-born inventor and teacher of the deaf who patented the first practical telephone in 1876.^[1][2] Bell viewed his telephone as an unwelcome distraction from his genuine scientific pursuits and declined to keep one in his personal workspace.^[3]

Quick Facts

Birth name

Alexander Bell

Born

3 March 1847

Birthplace

Edinburgh, Scotland

Died

2 August 1922

Place of death

Beinn Bhreagh, Nova Scotia, Canada

Citizenship

United Kingdom (1847–1922)
British-subject in Canada (1870–1882)
United States (1882–1922)

Education

University of Edinburgh; University College London

Known for

Invention of the telephone; Co-founder of Bell Telephone Company, Bell Canada and AT&T

Facts from the source article.

Life and work

Bell was born on March 3, 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland to Alexander Melville Bell, a phonetician, and Eliza Grace Bell.^[4] His mother was deaf, and his father and grandfather were elocutionists specializing in voice presentation and speech teaching.^[5] At age 12, he built a dehusking machine that was used for years at a neighbor's flour mill.^[6] Bell opened his "School of Vocal Physiology and Mechanics of Speech" in Boston in October 1872.^[7]

During his childhood, Bell showed an inquisitive nature, collecting plants and conducting early experiments.^[6] Bell became so skilled that he could interpret Visible Speech symbols for nearly any language, accurately reciting written passages without prior knowledge of their pronunciation.^[8] The U.S. Patent Office granted Bell patent number 174,465 for the telephone on March 7, 1876.^[9]

What the cited sources add

The Disabilitymuseum.org account notes that Bell's mother was deaf and that his father and grandfather were elocutionists.^[5] The account explains that Bell used his fame and wealth from the telephone to advocate for teaching deaf children speech and lipreading.^[5] The Surtees biography records that Bell changed his church instead of following his mother's denomination.^[10] That same biography notes that Bell credited his grandfather with sparking the zeal that drove his life's work.^[10]

According to that source, Bell's two siblings died of tuberculosis, which led the family to move to Brantford, Ontario.^[5] In a speech delivered to the National Academy of Sciences in 1883, Bell warned that if deaf individuals continued to marry one another, a deaf variety of the human race might emerge.^[5]

References

Wikipedia, "Alexander Graham Bell" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "The Bell Family", Bell Homestead National Historic Site (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Alexander Graham Bell" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Bruce, "Bell: Alexander Bell and the Conquest of Solitude", Cornell University Press, 1990, p. 391 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Alexander Graham Bell" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: MacLeod, "Alexander Graham Bell: An Inventive Life", Kids Can Press, 1999, p. 19 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Alexander Graham Bell" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Alexander M. Bell Dead. Father of Prof. A. G. Bell Developed Sign Language for Mutes", The New York Times, August 8, 1905; Petrie, "Alexander Graham Bell", Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1975, p. 4 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
"Alexander Graham Bell and His Role in Oral Education", Disabilitymuseum.org. facts only, no text reused. disabilitymuseum.org
Wikipedia, "Alexander Graham Bell" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Bruce 1990, p. 291; Bruce 1990, p. 291 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Alexander Graham Bell" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Petrie 1975, p. 7; Town 1988, p. 12 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Alexander Graham Bell" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Petrie 1975, p. 7 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Alexander Graham Bell" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: MacLeod 1999, p. 12–13 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Surtees, "Bell, Alexander Graham". facts only, no text reused. biographi.ca

Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Alexander Graham Bell (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.