BELL AND HIS TELEPHONE
Alexander Graham Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on March 8, 1847. His mother, who was an accomplished musician and portrait painter, began to lose her hearing when Graham (a name used only by family and close friends) was twelve. His father, who he’d been named for, had a worldwide reputation as an author of books on correct speech and as a teacher. He also invented “invisible speech.”
Alexander was fascinated by electricity and with the communication between people many years before he invented the telephone. As a boy, he built a speaking robot and discovered that if he touched his pet terrier’s throat in a certain way that he could transmit growls into words. Later in life, he obtained a human ear from a medical facility in order to conduct experiments by tracing sound patterns.
In February 1870, Alexander’s brother, Teddy, died. In May of the same year, his brother Mellie, died of tuberculosis. Because Alexander suffered from this ailment, his parents decided to move to Canada at the urging of their friend, Thomas Henderson. Possibly in Canada’s climate, Alexander’s health would improve.
The Bell family landed at Quebec on August 1, 1870. From there, they traveled to Paris, Ontario to visit the Hendersons. While there, they heard of a property that was for sale in Brantford, Ontario and purchased it on April 6, for $2600. The black-trimmed house stood on ten acres of land set well back from the road and was four miles southwest of town. It was screened by tall trees and thick shrubbery and sat high on a bluff overlooking the Grand River. There was also a carriage shed, henhouse, icehouse, pigsty, stable, well and rainwater cisterns on the property. An orchard produced cherries, plums, peaches, pears and apples. Young Alexander called this home his “dreaming place.” Here, he was able to recover from tuberculosis, though symptoms plagued him all of his life. It was here too, that he began to think about the future and the idea of the telephone was conceived.
Alexander Graham Bell began teaching Invisible Speech at the Boston School for Deaf Mutes in 1871. Here, he met and fell in love with Mabel Hubbard, the daughter of Gardiner Hubbard, who would give Alexander financial backing for his experiments with the telephone.
Alexander had often dreamed of transmitting speech electronically. While in Boston, he began to focus on achieving this goal. After Samuel Morse completed his telegraph in 1843, telegraphy became an industry that sent messages long distances almost instantly. The only problem with this technological form of communication was that messages still had to be hand-delivered between the telegraph office and the individual the message was sent to. Also, only one message could be sent at a time. Alexander drew parallels between multiple messages and multiple notes in a musical chord. He named his theory “harmonic telegraph.” This theory is what sparked his idea for the invention of the telephone. It came to him while on vacation at his parent’s home on Tutela Heights in Brantford.
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