Alexander Graham Bell
(1847-1922)

Bell Telephone Company

Achievement: Inventor of the telephone

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Alexander Graham Bell invented one of the most revolutionary and transformative devices of the nineteenth century - on par with the light bulb and the steam engine. Mr. Bell emigrated from Scotland with his parents in 1870 to Brantford, Ontario where he worked as a speech therapist for the deaf. He was interested in "visble speech", encouragine his students to see speech by feeling the vibrations in his throat and mouth as he spoke. He combined this knowledge with his understanding of the electric telegraph and the invention of a successful microphone to turn sound waves into electrical waves for transmission.

Although he was teaching at a school for the deaf in Boston, in 1874 Mr. Bell designed the prototype for the first telephone at his parents' house in Brantford where he spent his summers. Although there is some dispute to whether the first voice transmission occured in Boston and Brantford, the first long-distance call did take place from Brantford to Paris, Ontario in 1876. He patented the telephone in the U.S. and founded the Bell Telephone Co. in 1876. He sold 75 percent of the Canadian patent to his father for one dollar, which was later solf to the Boston-based National Bell Telephone Co. (later known as AT&T).

In 1880 Bell resigned from the Bell Telephone Co. He continued to experiment, working on the photoelectric cell, the iron lung, the desalination of sea water, hydriofoil boats, sheep breeding, and the phonograph. He became intersted in aviation and formed the Aerial Experiment Association in 1907 and the first manned flight in Canada (the Silver Dart) was taken from his Cape Breton Island home in 1909.