Alexander Graham Bell

Three generations of Bells taught elocution. His father built a written alphabet of the positions of the mouth and called it Visible Speech. His mother started going deaf when he was 12. He learned a finger alphabet to tap the parlour conversation to her, and found that if he spoke in low, level tones into her forehead she could follow him. He built a dehusking machine for a neighbour's mill. At 16 he translated a German treatise on speaking machines and built a talking head, then made the family terrier growl while he worked its lips until visitors swore it said how are you grandmama. Tuberculosis killed both his brothers. In 1870 his father, who had cured his own bad health by convalescing in Newfoundland, moved the family to Ontario.

The patent, 174,465, issued on March 7, 1876. The company followed in 1877. He was 30 and done with telephones — he kept none in his study and called the instrument an intrusion on his real work. He ran the National Geographic Society from 1898 to 1903 and wrote for the magazine as H. A. Largelamb, an anagram of his name. Shortly before he died he told a reporter that the photophone, which carried speech on a beam of light, was the greatest invention he ever made. BriefHistory has the telephone and the patent war. This page has the rest.

He called himself a teacher of the deaf to the end, and the deaf have been arguing with him ever since. In November 1883 he read a paper to the National Academy of Sciences titled Upon the Formation of a Deaf Variety of the Human Race, which held that deaf people marrying one another would breed a deaf variety, and which attacked the residential schools that gathered deaf children together. He pressed lip-reading and speech over sign language. In 1910 Charles Davenport made him chairman of the scientific board of the Eugenics Record Office, and in 1921 he was honorary president of the Second International Congress of Eugenics. Historians note that he opposed marriage laws, never wrote about sterilization, and refused to back policy limiting the rights of deaf people. His mother was deaf. So was his wife.

Mabel said do not leave me. He signed no, and died at two in the morning on August 2, 1922, of diabetes complications. His staff built the coffin from Beinn Bhreagh pine and lined it with the red silk of his tetrahedral kites, and his widow asked mourners not to wear black. The credit fight outlived him. The Bell company beat back 587 challenges over 18 years, five of them in the Supreme Court, and survived a federal suit to void the patent for fraud. The examiner who handled the application swore afterward that he had shown Bell his rival's caveat and taken 100 dollars, which Bell denied. In 2002 the House resolved that Antonio Meucci's work should be acknowledged.

Alexander Graham Bell's life against the full span of the corpus.

• U.S. Patent 174,465 patent
  Transmitting vocal sounds telegraphically by electrical undulations 1876
• Bell Telephone Company company
  The root of Bell Canada and AT&T 1877
• Photophone invention
  Speech carried on a light beam, with Charles Sumner Tainter. He rated it above the telephone. 1880
• Induction-balance metal detector invention
  Built to find the bullet in President Garfield 1881
• Upon the Formation of a Deaf Variety of the Human Race book
  Read to the National Academy of Sciences in November 1883 1884
• Aerial Experiment Association company
  Formed at Baddeck at Mabel Bell's suggestion and on her money 1907

• 1863 aged ~16 Sees Wheatstone's speaking automaton and builds one with his brother He translated von Kempelen's German book to do it.
• 1870 aged ~23 The family emigrates to Ontario after tuberculosis kills both his brothers
• October 1872 aged 25 Opens a school in Boston to train teachers of the deaf Mabel Hubbard, 15 and deaf, was one of the two pupils he kept.
• February 14, 1876 aged 28 His lawyer files the application the same morning Elisha Gray files a caveat
• July 11, 1877 aged 30 Marries Mabel Hubbard days after the company is formed
• June 21, 1880 aged 33 A voice crosses 213 metres of Washington air on a beam of light The photophone, transmitted from the roof of the Franklin School.
• November 1883 aged 36 Reads his paper on a deaf variety of the human race to the National Academy of Sciences
• 1910 aged ~63 Chairs the scientific board of the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor Charles Davenport wanted his name on it.
• August 2, 1922 aged 75 Dies at Beinn Bhreagh at two in the morning

• Helen Keller 1880–1968
  Deafblind author and lecturer who became the leading American advocate for blind and disabled people. sent her family to Perkins
• Thomas Edison 1847–1931
  Inventor and scientist whose research laboratory model and electrical innovations transformed modern life. competitor
• Samuel Morse 1791–1872
  Painter and inventor who developed the telegraph and Morse code, enabling instant long-distance communication. built on his wires
• Nikola Tesla 1856–1943
  Serbian-American inventor who developed alternating current electrical systems and numerous electrical innovations. rival in the electrical age
• Buckminster Fuller 1895–1983
  Popularized the geodesic dome and promoted resource-efficient structural design. successor in flight experiments