Alexander Graham bell 1847 - 1922

Born in Edinburgh in 1847, Alexander Graham Bell’s family were specialists in elocution and the teaching of the deaf - both his father and his grandfather were authorities on the subject. After an education at Edinburgh and London universities Bell himself became a teacher of the deaf.


Bell emigrated to Canada in 1870 and then on to the United States in 1871 where in 1872 he founded a school for deaf mutes in Boston, Massachusetts. The school eventually became part of Boston University and Bell was appointed Professor of Vocal Physiology there.


Since an early age Bell had been experimenting with the transmission of speech, and in 1874 he developed the basic idea of the telephone. Success was to come after many years of experimenting, for in 1876 he transmitted to his assistant Thomas Watson the complete sentence: “Watson, come here; I want you”. Later demonstrations, in particular the one in 1876 at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, introduced the telephone to the world – this led to the founding of the Bell Telephone Company in 1877.


Others had tried to create similar communication devices, notably Antonio Meucci, who produced an acoustic device in the early 1870s and Elisha Gray, who filed a claim for the invention of the telephone just hours after Bell. Bell's patent was upheld by the United States Supreme Court and he has come to be widely known as the inventor of the telephone.


Alexander Graham Bell died in August 1922 at Baddeck where there is a museum dedicated to him, it contains many of his original inventions and it’s maintained by the Canadian government.