Alexander Graham Bell was born on March 3, 1847 in Scotland. His mother, who was deaf, was a musician and a painter. His father, who taught deaf people how to speak, invented ‘Visible Speech’. This was a code that showed how the tongue, lips, and throat were positioned to make speech sounds. Graham was interested in working with the deaf throughout his life.
He only attended school for five years; from the time he was 10 until he was 14, but he never stopped learning. He read the books in his grandfather’s library and studied tutorials.
At the age of 22 he went to Boston to open a school for teachers of the deaf and then became a professor at Boston University. It was at this time that he met Mabel Hubbard, one of his students who was 10 years younger than he. Mabel had become deaf at the age of four due to scarlet fever. Five years later they were married.
Thomas Watson became an associate of Bell. He made parts and built models of Bell’s inventions. One day, while they were working, Bell accidently heard the sound of a plucked reed coming over the telegraph wire. Watson had been tuning the metal reeds in the next room. Bell drew up a plan for the telephone and they continued to experiment. The next day he transmitted the famous words, “Mr. Watson, come here. I want you!” A few months later on Feb. 14, 1876, he applied for a patent on his telephone.
He knew that he would have to work quickly to get the patent because other people were also trying to make an invention to transmit the human voice.
Because Bell had the patent, he had the right to be the only one to produce telephones in the U.S. for the next 19 years.
He showed the invention to Queen Victoria of England and she wanted lines to connect her castles.
By 1917, nearly all of the United States had telephone service.
He continued to invent other things. He developed a method of making phonograph records on a wax disc. He made an iron breathing lung, and a device for locating icebergs at sea. He experimented with sheep. He was interested in kites that could lift a man, and he invented a hydrofoil that set a world speed record of over 70 miles per hour.
He along with others started the National Geographic Society and he served as its president for several years.
He died on August 2, 1922 in Canada at the age of 75.
