Alexander Graham Bell

        Alexander Graham Bell

An Inventor, Scientist, and oh’ so much more.

Alexander Graham Bell born in Scotland and later becoming a U.S citizen.  Bell spent his life in pursuit of scientific discovery, and despite his innumerable accomplishments as a scientist and inventor, he saw himself first and foremost as a teacher of the deaf, dedicating the majority of his work to that field.  

Bell’s Early Life

        Bell was born on March 3, 1847 in Edinburgh, the second son of Alexander Melville Bell, and Eliza Grace Symonds, a hearing-impaired pianist. While not the best student in the class, Bell had an extraordinary talent for problem-solving. At age twelve, he invented a farming device for his friend's father that quickly and efficiently removed the husks from wheat grain.

        Bell’s father and grandfather had a very big influence in Bell's life, and like them, He followed in their footsteps and became a teacher for the deaf. After the death of both his brothers, Bell, and his family moved to Ontario, Canada in 1870. A year later, Bell found his way into the U.S and began teaching at the Boston School for Deaf-mutes and similar facilities in the area.

Inventing the Telephone

         While a teacher for the hearing impaired, Bell was asked by a group of investors to help perfect the harmonic telegraph. The device was one of the newest, top of the line inventions, allowing for multiple messages to be sent over wire simultaneously. But Bell paved his own path and decided to develop a voice transmitting device, which he would later call the telephone. In the end, the telephone was a success. As Bell would later explain “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.”

        On March 7, 1876, Bell was awarded a patent on the device, and three days later he made his first successful telephone call to his assistant Thomas Watson, who would hear Bell’s famous word’s transmitted through the wire: ”Mr. Watson, come here. I want you.”

        The telephone was found to be wildly successful, and within 10 years, more than 100,000 people in the United States owned one. A few years after founding his company Bell lost interest in managing the business aspect of his enterprise and sold his shares.