Alexander Graham Bell
The Scottish-born thinker whose patent for the telephone sparked a communications revolution, yet whose true passion lay in teaching the deaf to speak.
1847–1922 (age 75)·Inventor of the telephone·Birthday: March 3
Biography
Alexander Graham Bell’s life was framed by sound and silence. Born in Edinburgh in 1847, he was steeped in the study of acoustics; his father developed 'Visible Speech,' a system of symbols to teach speech to the deaf. After losing two brothers to tuberculosis, Bell moved with his family to Canada and later to Boston, where he set up a school for teachers of the deaf. His work with hearing-impaired students, including his future wife Mabel Hubbard, was his lifelong passion and the direct inspiration for his experiments in transmitting sound. In 1876, his patent for an 'improvement in telegraphy'—the telephone—was granted hours before a rival’s filing, a moment of legal fortune that changed history. The founding of the Bell Telephone Company (later AT&T) made him wealthy, but he remained a restless inventor, delving into aviation, hydrofoils, and even early experiments in recording sound on a 'graphophone.' He saw the telephone not as his greatest achievement but as an intrusion on his true work as an educator, a contradiction at the heart of his complex legacy.
#1 When Alexander Was Born
The biggest hits of 1847
Alexander's Life & Times
The world at every milestone
1847Born
1852Started school
1860Became a teenager
1863Could drive
President: Abraham Lincoln
1865Could vote
President: Andrew Johnson
1868Turned 21
President: Andrew Johnson
1877Turned 30
President: Rutherford B. Hayes
1887Turned 40
President: Grover Cleveland
1897Turned 50
President: William McKinley
1907Turned 60
Financial panic grips Wall Street
President: Theodore Roosevelt
1917Turned 70
Russian Revolution overthrows the tsar; US enters WWI
President: Woodrow Wilson
1922Died at 75
King Tut's tomb discovered in Egypt
President: Warren G. Harding"April Showers" — Al Jolson
Key Achievements
- Was awarded the first US patent for the telephone (U.S. Patent No. 174,465) in March 1876.
- Co-founded the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) in 1885, which grew into a global telecommunications monopoly.
- Founded the Volta Laboratory in Washington, D.C., which made significant advancements in sound recording and transmission, leading to the graphophone.
- Played a key role in founding the journal Science, which later became the official publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Did You Know?
His mother and wife were both deaf, profoundly influencing his life's work in speech and hearing.
He refused to have a telephone in his own study, considering it a distraction from his scientific work.
He was one of the founding members of the National Geographic Society and served as its president from 1896 to 1904.
He conducted early experiments with manned kites and helped develop the Silver Dart aircraft, which made the first powered flight in Canada.
“When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.”
