Alexander Graham Bell

Alexander Graham Bell

Alexander Graham Bell was a Scottish born American scientist who lived from 1847 to 1922. He is most well known for inventing the telephone. He was working at a school for the deaf while trying to invent a machine that could transmit sound by electricity. In 1876, Bell received the very first official patent for the telephone. However, this resulted in one the longest patent battles of all time as he endured years of legal challenges to prove that he was really the first to invent it. He went on to be a successful and wealthy scientist and established several research centers all around the country (history.com).
Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, March 3rd 1847. He attended the Edinburgh high school and Edinburgh University where he was trained especially under his father’s (Alexander Melville Bell) system in removing speech impediments. He attended the University in London in 1867 but moved to Canada with his father in 1870 due to his health. He later went on to become a vocal physiology professor at Boston University where he introduced his father’s deaf-mute instruction system (alexandergrahambell.org).
Bell’s first order of business was always to be, as he would say, “a teacher of the deaf.” He dedicated most of his studies to this. Even while he was teaching he was always experimenting with ways of transmitting multiple telegraph messages over a single wire, and with devices that helped the deaf learn to speak (history.com). That alone says something about this man, the fact that he dedicated most of his life’s research to helping people less fortunate than himself.

Bell’s idea of the telephone started forming in his head in 1874. He explained it as, “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” (history.com). Bell had developed several things that transmitted sound by electricity...