Alexander Graham Bell - Educator, Scientist, Inventor, Linguist - Biography.com 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. IN THESE GROUPS » quotes “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.” Alexander Graham Bell Alexander Graham Bell - Full Episode (TV-14; 43:22) The full biography of Alexander

 Graham Bell.

Synopsis Alexander Graham Bell was born on March 3, 1847, in Edinburgh, Scotland. His education was largely received through numerous experiments in sound and the furthering of his father’s work on Visible Speech for the deaf. Bell worked with Thomas Watson on the design and patent of the first practical telephone. In all, Bell held 18 patents in his name alone and 12 that he shared with collaborators. He died on August 2, 1922, in Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada. Early Life Alexander Graham Bell was born on March 3, 1847, in Edinburgh, Scotland. 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, Alexander Graham Bell experienced strong influences that had a profound effect on his later life. 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. Alexander’s mother, who was nearly deaf, became an accomplished pianist and inspired him to undertake big challenges. Eliza home schooled Alexander and instilled an infinite curiosity of the world around him. He received one year of formal education in a private school and two years at Edinburgh’s Royal High School. Though a mediocre student, he 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 Attempts to Follow His Passion Young Alexander was groomed early 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 America, Alexander’s father discovered its healthier environment and decided to move the family there. At first, Alexander resisted, for he was establishing himself in London, but eventually relented after both his brothers had succumbed to tuberculosis. In July, 1870, the family settled in Brantford, Ontario, Canada. There, Alexander set up a workshop to continue his study of the human voice. (Photo: Time Life Pictures/Mansell/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images) Passion for Shaping the Future In 1871, Alexander Graham Bell moved to Boston and began work on a device that would allow for the telegraph transmission of several messages set to different frequencies. 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. During his experiments, he became interested in another idea, transmitting the human voice over wires. The diversion frustrated Bell’s 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. 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. On March 10, 1876, Bell and Watson were successful. Legend has it that Bell knocked over a container of transmitting fluid and shouted, “Mr. Watson, come here. I want 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. Alexander Graham Bell - America Listens (TV-PG; 1:11) Alexander Graham Bell used all his resources to get Americans to use his new invention, the telephone. With this success, Alexander Graham Bell began to promote the telephone in a series of public demonstrations.

At the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, in 1876, 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. With each new success, Alexander Graham Bell was moving out of the shadow of his father. On July 11, 1877, Alexander Graham Bell married Mable Hubbard, a former student and the daughter of Gardiner Hubbard, his initial financial backer. Over the course of the next year, 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 law suits by others claiming 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 U.S.

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. Read More:undefined Alexander Graham Bell: 5 Facts on the Father of the Telephone Pursuing His Passion in His Final Years By all accounts, Alexander Graham Bell was not a businessman and by 1880 began to turn business matters over to Hubbard and others so he could pursue a wide range of inventions and intellectual pursuits. In 1880, he established the Volta Laboratory, an experimental facility devoted to scientific discovery. He also continued his work with the deaf, establishing the American Association to Promote Teaching of Speech to the Deaf in 1890. In the remaining years of his life Bell worked on a number of projects. He devoted a lot of time to exploring flight, starting with the tetrahedral kite in 1890s. In 1907, Bell formed the Aerial Experiment Association with Glenn Curtiss and several other associates. The group developed several flying machines, including the Silver Dart. The Silver Dart was the first powered machine flown in Canada.

He later worked on hydrofoils and set a world record for speed for this type of boat. In January 1915, Bell was invited to make the first transcontinental phone call. From New York, he spoke with his former associate Thomas Watson in San Francisco. Bell died peacefully on August 2, 1922, at his home in Baddeck on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada, on August 2, 1922. The entire telephone system was shut down for one minute in tribute to his life. Videos Alexander Graham Bell - Inventions - HISTORY.com Alexander Graham Bell A+E Networks Introduction Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922), the Scottish-born American scientist best known as the inventor of the telephone, worked at a school for the deaf while attempting to invent a machine that would transmit sound by electricity. Bell was granted the first official patent for his telephone in March 1876, though he would later face years of legal challenges to his claim that he was its sole inventor, resulting in one of history’s longest patent battles. Bell continued his scientific work for the rest of his life, and used his success and wealth to establish various research centers nationwde.

Google Bell owes his immortality to his having been the first to design and patent a practical device for transmitting the human voice by means of an electric current. But Bell always described himself simply as a “teacher of the deaf,” and his contributions in that field were of the first order. Did You Know? Though he is credited with its invention, Alexander Graham Bell refused to have a telephone in his study, fearing it would distract him from his scientific work. Bell, who was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, was educated there and at the University of London. He also studied under his grandfather, Alexander Bell, a noted speech teacher. He taught elocution, assisted his father, also a speech teacher and noted phonetician, and taught at a school for the deaf in England, using his father’s methods. In 1870, Bell immigrated with his parents to Canada. Two years later he established a school for the deaf in Boston, Massachusetts , and the following year became a professor in speech and vocal physiology at Boston University. While teaching he experimented with a means of transmitting several telegraph messages simultaneously over a single wire and also with various devices to help the deaf learn to speak, including a means of graphically recording sound waves.

In 1874 the essential idea of the telephone formed in his mind. As he later explained it, “If I could make a current of electricity vary in intensity precisely as the air varies in density during the production of sound, I should be able to transmit speech telegraphically.” Two years later he applied for a patent, which was granted on March 7, 1876. On March 10, the first coherent complete sentence—the famous “Mr. Watson, come here; I want you”—was transmitted in his laboratory. In later years Bell experimented with a means to detect metal in wounds and with a vacuum-jacket respirator that led to the development of the iron lung. He helped bring Thomas A. Edison’s phonograph to commercial practicality and experimented with hydrofoil boats and with airplanes as early as the 1890s. With the wealth derived from the telephone, Bell was able to assist the careers of other scientists. He also founded and helped finance the journal Science, today the premier American scientific journal, and the National Geographic Society. While constantly engaged in scientific experiments, Bell crusaded tirelessly on behalf of the deaf, encouraging their integration into society with the help of lip-reading and other techniques.

In 1890 he founded the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf. He died in 1922 at his summer home on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. People throughout North America were urged to refrain from making phone calls during his burial so that telephones would remain silent as a tribute. Robert V. Bruce, Bell: Alexander Graham Bell and the Conquest of Solitude (1973). John Steele Gordon The Reader’s Companion to American History. Eric Foner and John A. Garraty, Editors. Copyright © 1991 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved. Tags Alexander Graham Bell and the History of the Telephone | ShoreTel Alexander Graham Bell and the History of the Telephone Alexander Graham Bell and the History of the Telephone Alexander Graham Bell was born on March 3, 1847, in Edinburgh, Scotland. He had two brothers, but both passed away from tuberculosis by the time Bell was 20 years old. When he was born, his given name was just Alexander Bell. Both of his brothers had middle names, and Alexander pleaded with his father for a middle name as well.

When Bell was 11 years old, his father allowed him to take the middle name of Graham, which was the last name of a family friend. Bell's mother was deaf, and his father and grandfather were famous in England for their work in a field of speech development called elocution. This inspired Bell to study speech and communication as well. At 12 years old, Bell invented a de-husking machine for his friend's family grain mill. The machine Bell built was used by that family for many years. It was Bell's first in a very long line of practical and famous inventions. In 1867, Bell and his family moved to London so that he and his remaining brother could study at better schools. Prior to moving to London, Bell had been experimenting with using electrical current to send sounds from one place to another. He set up a telegraph wire from his Somerset College room to the room of a friend in a different building. Later that year, Bell's second brother passed away. The family mourned, but Bell and his father were in the middle of a tour of English colleges doing demonstrations on speech innovations, including sign language and advanced lip-reading techniques.

Bell and his father had created a laboratory where they were conducting their experiments, and they had several techniques that were getting the attention of speech experts from all over the country. In 1870, Bell was working himself to the point of exhaustion. His parents did not want to lose their remaining son, so they decided to sell all of the family's belongings in the United Kingdom and move to Canada. After stopping in the province of Quebec, the Bells settled in Paris, Ontario. Alexander Graham Bell immediately put together a new laboratory and continued his experiments. One of Bell's first accomplishments in Canada was to put the unwritten language of the Mohawk tribe into a format that could be written and reproduced. The Mohawk tribe honored Bell for his accomplishments, and his achievement made him famous in North America. Bell became a professor in elocution at Boston University and decided to split his time between his Ontario home and Boston. By 1873, Bell's working habits and travel schedule had a serious effect on his health. He decided to stay in Boston and advance the work he had started in London on transmitting sound using an electrical current.

By the time he decided to focus on what was referred to as the acoustic telegraph, Bell was forced to give up lecturing and settle into a more relaxing routine. Bell did not want to stop teaching and traveling, but his health forced him to stop. In 1876, Bell had advanced his work to the point where he was able to transmit sounds using a method that involved a needle vibrating in water, which caused the electrical current to change. The change in current was what transmitted the sound. It was this water-based device that Bell used to utter the words "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you" to his assistant, Thomas Watson, who was listening in another room on another of the same device. Bell was awarded his patent for the telephone on March 7, 1876. An inventor named Elisha Gray had filed an intent to get a patent for a very similar invention on February 14, 1876: The U.S. Patent Office's decision to award the patent to Bell remains a point of contention among historians and members of the Gray family to this day.

In August 1876, Bell was able to conduct a demonstration of his telephone by using two telegraph offices that were five miles apart. Using only the existing telegraph lines, Bell was able to conduct the world's first phone call in front of an audience of amazed onlookers. Later that year, Bell and his financial backers offered to sell the patent for the telephone to Western Union, but Western Union dismissed the telephone as a useless toy that would never amount to anything. That inspired Bell and his partners to keep the telephone patent for themselves, and the rest, as they say, is history. Here are some resources you can use to learn more about Alexander Graham Bell and the telephone: Alexander Graham Bell Biography - life, children, parents, wife, school, mother, young, old, information, born Alexander Graham Bell Biography Baddeck, Nova Scotia, Canada Scottish-born American inventor Alexander Graham Bell, Scottish-born American inventor and teacher of the deaf, is best known for perfecting the telephone to transmit, or send, vocal messages using electricity. The telephone began a new age in communications technology. The young man Alexander Graham Bell was born on March 3, 1847, in Edinburgh, Scotland.

His father, Alexander Melville Bell, was an expert on the mechanics of the voice and on elocution (the art of public speaking). His grandfather, Alexander Bell, was an elocution professor. Bell's mother, Eliza, was hard of hearing but became an accomplished pianist (as well as a painter), and Bell took an interest in music. Eliza taught Alexander, who was the middle of three brothers, until he was ten years old. When he was a youth he took a challenge from a mill operator and created a machine that removed the husks from grain. He would later call it his first invention. After studying at the University of Edinburgh and University College, London, England, 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). In London he studied Hermann Ludwig von Helmholtz's (1821–1894) experiments with tuning forks and magnets to produce complex sounds. In 1865 Bell made scientific studies of the resonance (vibration) of the mouth while speaking. Both of Bell's brothers had died of tuberculosis (a fatal disease that attacks the lungs).

In 1870 his parents, in search of a healthier climate, convinced him to move with them to Brantford, Ontario, Canada. In 1871 he went to Boston, Massachusetts, to teach at Sarah Fuller's School for the Deaf, the first such school in the world. He also tutored private students, including Helen Keller (1880–1968). As professor of voice and speech at Boston University in 1873, he 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. Inventing the telephone From 1873 to 1876 Bell experimented with many inventions, including an electric speaking telegraph (the telephone). The funds came from the fathers of two of his students. One of these men, Gardiner Hubbard, had a deaf daughter, Mabel, who later became Bell's wife. Alexander Graham Bell. To help deaf children, Bell experimented in the summer of 1874 with a human ear and attached bones, magnets, smoked glass, and other things.

He conceived the theory of the telephone: that an electric current can be made to change its force just as the pressure of air varies during sound production. That same year he invented a telegraph that could send several messages at once over one wire, as well as a telephonic-telegraphic receiver. Bell supplied the ideas; 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 attorney 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, Massachusetts, 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, Connecticut, in 1878, the same year Bell's New England Telephone Company was organized. Charles Scribner improved switchboards, with more than five hundred inventions. Thomas Cornish, a Philadelphia electrician, had a switchboard for eight customers and published a one-page telephone directory in 1878. Questioning Bell's patent Other inventors had been at work between 1867 and 1873. Professor Elisha Gray (of Oberlin College in Ohio) invented an "automatic self-adjusting telegraph relay," installed it in hotels, and made telegraph printers. He also tried to perfect a speaking telephone from his multiple-current telegraph. The Gray and Batton Manufacturing Company of Chicago developed into the Western Electric Company. Another competitor was Professor Amos E.

Dolbear, who insisted that Bell's telephone was only an improvement on an 1860 invention by Johann Reis, a German who had experimented with pigs' ears and may have made a telephone. Dolbear's own instrument could transmit tones but not voice quality. In 1879 Western Union, with its American Speaking Telephone Company, ignored Bell's patents and hired Thomas Edison (1847–1931), along with Dolbear and Gray, as inventors and improvers. Later that year Bell and Western Union formed a joint company, with the latter getting 20 percent for providing wires, equipment, and the like. Theodore Vail, organizer of Bell Telephone Company, combined six companies in 1881. The modern transmitter was born mainly in the work of Emile Berliner and Edison in 1877 and Francis Blake in 1878. Blake's transmitter was later sold to Bell. The claims of other inventors were contested.

Daniel Drawbaugh, who was from rural Pennsylvania and had little formal schooling, almost won a legal battle with Bell in 1884 but was defeated by a four-to-three vote in the Supreme Court (the highest court in the United States). This claim made for the most exciting lawsuit over telephone patents. Altogether the Bell Company was involved in 587 lawsuits, of which five went to the Supreme Court. Bell won every case. The defending argument for Bell was that no competitor had claimed to be original until seventeen months after Bell's patent. Also, at the 1876 Philadelphia Exposition, major electrical scientists, especially Lord Kelvin (1824–1907), the world's leading authority, had declared Bell's invention to be "new." Professors, scientists, and researchers defended Bell, pointing to his lifelong study of the ear and his books and lectures on speech mechanics. 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. The Volta Laboratory was started by Bell in Washington, D.C., with France awarding the Volta Prize money (about $10,000) for his invention. At the laboratory Bell and his associates worked on various projects during the 1880s, including the photophone, induction balance, audiometer, and phonograph improvements. The photophone transmitted speech by light. The induction balance (electric probe) located metal in the body. The audiometer, used to test a person's hearing, indicated Bell's continued interest in deafness. The first successful phonograph record was produced. The Columbia Gramophone Company made profitable Bell's phonograph records. With the profits Bell established an organization in Washington to study deafness. Bell's later interests Bell was also involved in other activities that took much of his time. The magazine Science (later the official publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science) was founded in 1880 because of Bell's efforts. He made many addresses and published many papers.

As National Geographic Society president from 1896 to 1904, he contributed to the success of the society and its publications. In 1898 he became a member of a governing board of the Smithsonian Institution. He was also involved in sheep breeding, hydrodynamics (the study of the forces of fluids, such as water), and projects related to aviation, or the development and design of airplanes. Aviation was Bell's primary interest after 1895. He aided 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 (1878–1930), Francis Baldwin, and others. Curtiss provided the motor for Bell's man-carrying kite in 1907. Bell died in Baddeck, Nova Scotia, Canada, on August 2, 1922. His contribution to the modern world and its technologies was enormous.

For More Information Alexander Graham Bell Facts for Kids - Telephone, Inventions, Quotes Check out our fun facts for kids that feature interesting trivia, quotes and information related to a range of famous scientists. Alexander Graham Bell Facts Learn about the man credited with the invention of the first practical telephone with our Alexander Graham Bell facts for kids. Find out about his life growing up in Scotland, his move to Canada, his study of sound and his many experiments and inventions. Read on and enjoy our range of interesting facts and information related to Alexander Graham Bell. Alexander Graham Bell was an influential scientist, engineer and inventor. He was born on March 3, 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He died on August 2, 1922 at the age of 75. He is widely credited with the invention of the first practical telephone. Bell’s mother and wife were both deaf, this had a major influence on his work. He didn’t have the middle name “Graham” until he turned 11 when his father gave it to him as a birthday present. He’d earlier asked to have a middle name like his two brothers. Bell became an excellent piano player at a young age.

When he was 23, Bell and his parents moved to Canada. Bell studied the human voice and worked with various schools for the deaf. Bell experimented with sound, working with devices such as a ‘harmonic telegraph’ (used to send multiple messages over a single wire) and a ‘phonautograph’ (used to record sound). He worked on acoustic telegraphy with his assistant, an electrical designer named Thomas Watson. On February 14, 1876, Bell and an American electrical engineer named Elisha Gray both filed patents with the U.S. Patent Office covering the transmission of sounds telegraphically. There is debate about who got there first but the patent was awarded to Bell. A few days later he succeeded in getting his telephone to work using elements similar to those of Gray’s water transmitter. Bell’s first words with the working telephone were spoken to his assistant Watson and were along the lines of “Mr Watson, come here. I want to see you.” Bell improved on the design and by 1886 more than 150000 people owned telephones in the United States.

Bell also had a strong interest in other scientific fields, conducting medical research, searching for alternative fuel sources, experimenting with metal detectors, developing hydrofoil watercraft and much more. Famous Alexander Graham Bell quotes include: "Before anything else, preparation is the key to success." "A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with - a man is what he makes of himself." "The day will come when the man at the telephone will be able to see the distant person to whom he is speaking." "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." Alexander Graham Bell Alexander Graham Bell | American inventor | Britannica.com Alexander Graham Bell Anne Sullivan Macy Alexander Graham Bell, (born March 3, 1847, Edinburgh, Scotland —died August 2, 1922, Beinn Bhreagh, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia , Canada ), Scottish-born American inventor, scientist, and teacher of the deaf whose foremost accomplishments were the invention of the telephone (1876) and the refinement of the phonograph (1886). Alexander Graham Bell. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Overview of the invention of the telephone, with a focus on the work by Alexander Graham Bell. Contunico © ZDF Enterprises GmbH, Mainz Alexander (“Graham” was not added until he was 11) was born to Alexander Melville Bell and Eliza Grace Symonds. His mother was almost deaf, and his father taught elocution to the deaf, influencing Alexander’s later career choice as teacher of the deaf. At age 11 he entered the Royal High School at Edinburgh , but he did not enjoy the compulsory curriculum, and he left school at age 15 without graduating.

In 1865 the family moved to London. Alexander passed the entrance examinations for University College London in June 1868 and matriculated there in the autumn. However, he did not complete his studies, because in 1870 the Bell family moved again, this time immigrating to Canada after the deaths of Bell’s younger brother Edward in 1867 and older brother Melville in 1870, both of tuberculosis . The family settled in Brantford , Ontario, but in April 1871 Alexander moved to Boston, where he taught at the Boston School for Deaf Mutes. He also taught at the Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton , Massachusetts, and at the American School for the Deaf in Hartford , Connecticut. One of Bell’s students was Mabel Hubbard , daughter of Gardiner Greene Hubbard, a founder of the Clarke School. Mabel had become deaf at age five as a result of a near-fatal bout of scarlet fever . Bell began working with her in 1873, when she was 15 years old.

Despite a 10-year age difference, they fell in love and were married on July 11, 1877. They had four children, Elsie (1878–1964), Marian (1880–1962), and two sons who died in infancy. While pursuing his teaching profession, Bell also began researching methods to transmit several telegraph messages simultaneously over a single wire—a major focus of telegraph innovation at the time and one that ultimately led to Bell’s invention of the telephone. In 1868 Joseph Stearns had invented the duplex, a system that transmitted two messages simultaneously over a single wire. Western Union Telegraph Company , the dominant firm in the industry, acquired the rights to Stearns’s duplex and hired the noted inventor Thomas Edison to devise as many multiple-transmission methods as possible in order to block competitors from using them. Edison’s work culminated in the quadruplex, a system for sending four simultaneous telegraph messages over a single wire. Inventors then sought methods that could send more than four; some, including Bell and his great rival Elisha Gray , developed designs capable of subdividing a telegraph line into 10 or more channels.

These so-called harmonic telegraphs used reeds or tuning forks that responded to specific acoustic frequencies. They worked well in the laboratory but proved unreliable in service. Britannica Stories Scientists Ponder Menopause in Killer Whales A group of investors led by Gardiner Hubbard wanted to establish a federally chartered telegraph company to compete with Western Union by contracting with the Post Office to send low-cost telegrams. Hubbard saw great promise in the harmonic telegraph and backed Bell’s experiments. Bell, however, was more interested in transmitting the human voice. Finally, he and Hubbard worked out an agreement that Bell would devote most of his time to the harmonic telegraph but would continue developing his telephone concept. From harmonic telegraphs transmitting musical tones, it was a short conceptual step for both Bell and Gray to transmit the human voice. Bell filed a patent describing his method of transmitting sounds on February 14, 1876, just hours before Gray filed a caveat (a statement of concept) on a similar method. On March 7, 1876, the Patent Office awarded Bell what is said to be one of the most-valuable patents in history.

It is most likely that both Bell and Gray independently devised their telephone designs as an outgrowth of their work on harmonic telegraphy. However, the question of priority of invention between the two has been controversial from the very beginning. Alexander Graham Bell’s sketch of a telephone. He filed the patent for his telephone at the U.S. … © Photos.com/Jupiterimages Listen: Thomas A. Watson describing invention of the telephone Thomas A. Watson, assistant to Alexander Graham Bell, discussing the birth of the telephone, … Despite having the patent, Bell did not have a fully functioning instrument. He first produced intelligible speech on March 10, 1876, when he summoned his laboratory assistant, Thomas A. Watson , with words that Bell transcribed in his lab notes as “Mr. Watson—come here—I want to see you.” Over the next few months, Bell continued to refine his instrument to make it suitable for public exhibition. In June he demonstrated his telephone to the judges of the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, a test witnessed by Brazil’s Emperor Pedro II and the celebrated Scottish physicist Sir William Thomson .

In August of that year, he was on the receiving end of the first one-way long-distance call, transmitted from Brantford to nearby Paris, Ontario, over a telegraph wire. Alexander Graham Bell, inventor who patented the telephone in 1876, lecturing at Salem, … © Photos.com/Jupiterimages Editor Picks: Exploring 10 Types of Basketball Movies Gardiner Hubbard organized a group that established the Bell Telephone Company in July 1877 to commercialize Bell’s telephone. Bell was the company’s technical adviser until he lost interest in telephony in the early 1880s. Although his invention rendered him independently wealthy, he sold off most of his stock holdings in the company early and did not profit as much as he might have had he retained his shares. Thus, by the mid-1880s his role in the telephone industry was marginal. Alexander Graham Bell, who patented the telephone in 1876, inaugurating the 1,520-km (944-mile) … Photos.com/Thinkstock By that time, Bell had developed a growing interest in the technology of sound recording and playback.

Although Edison had invented the phonograph in 1877, he soon turned his attention to other technologies, especially electric power and lighting, and his machine, which recorded and reproduced sound on a rotating cylinder wrapped in tinfoil, remained an unreliable and cumbersome device. In 1880 the French government awarded Bell the Volta Prize, given for achievement in electrical science . Bell used the prize money to set up his Volta Laboratory, an institution devoted to studying deafness and improving the lives of the deaf, in Washington, D.C. There he also devoted himself to improving the phonograph. By 1885 Bell and his colleagues (his cousin Chichester A. Bell and the inventor Charles Sumner Tainter ) had a design fit for commercial use that featured a removable cardboard cylinder coated with mineral wax. They called their device the Graphophone and applied for patents, which were granted in 1886. The group formed the Volta Graphophone Company to produce their invention. Then in 1887 they sold their patents to the American Graphophone Company, which later evolved into the Columbia Phonograph Company. Bell used his proceeds from the sale to endow the Volta Laboratory.

The vertical “hill-and-dale” groove, as played by a Columbia Graphophone, c. 1902. … Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Facebook Twitter YouTube Instagram Pinterest Bell undertook two other noteworthy research projects at the Volta Laboratory. In 1880 he began research on using light as a means to transmit sound. In 1873 British scientist Willoughby Smith discovered that the element selenium , a semiconductor , varied its electrical resistance with the intensity of incident light. Bell sought to use this property to develop the photophone, an invention he regarded as at least equal to his telephone. He was able to demonstrate that the photophone was technologically feasible , but it did not develop into a commercially viable product. Nevertheless, it contributed to research into the photovoltaic effect that had practical applications later in the 20th century. Bell’s other major undertaking was the development of an electrical bullet probe for surgical use. The origin of this effort was the shooting of U.S. President James A. Garfield in July 1881. A bullet lodged in the president’s back, and doctors were unable to locate it through physical probing.

Bell decided that a promising approach was to use an induction balance, a by-product of his research on canceling out electrical interference on telephone wires. Bell determined that a properly configured induction balance would emit a tone when a metal object was brought into proximity with it. At the end of July, he began searching for Garfield’s bullet, but to no avail. Despite Garfield’s death in September, Bell later successfully demonstrated the probe to a group of doctors. Surgeons adopted it, and it was credited with saving lives during the Boer War (1899–1902) and World War I (1914–18). Trending Topics Open Door policy In September 1885 the Bell family vacationed in Nova Scotia, Canada, and immediately fell in love with the climate and landscape. The following year, Bell bought 50 acres of land near the village of Baddeck on Cape Breton Island and began constructing an estate he called Beinn Bhreagh, Scots Gaelic for “Beautiful Mountain.” The Scottish-born inventor had been an American citizen since 1882, but the Canadian estate became the family’s summer retreat and later permanent home.

During the 1890s Bell shifted his attention to heavier-than-air flight . Starting in 1891, inspired by the research of American scientist Samuel Pierpont Langley , he experimented with wing shapes and propeller blade designs. He continued his experiments even after Wilbur and Orville Wright made the first successful powered, controlled flight in 1903. In 1907 Bell founded the Aerial Experiment Association , which made significant progress in aircraft design and control and contributed to the career of pioneer aviator Glenn Hammond Curtiss . Throughout his life, Bell sought to foster the advance of scientific knowledge. He supported the journal Science, which later became the official publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science . He was one of the founders of the National Geographic Society in 1888 and succeeded his father-in-law, Gardiner Hubbard, as president of the society between 1898 and 1903. In that year his son-in-law, Gilbert H. Grosvenor , became editor in chief of the National Geographic Magazine . Bell died at his Nova Scotia estate, where he was buried.

Question: In which country was the inventor Alexander Graham Bell born?
Answer: Scotland