Alexander Graham Bell

=== First experiments with sound === Bell's father encouraged his interest in speech and, in 1863, took his sons to see a unique automaton developed by Sir Charles Wheatstone based on the earlier work of Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen.

family1863

Although the offer was made by Georgie's mother and followed the year-long arrangement in 1872 where her son and his nurse had moved to quarters next to Bell's boarding house, it was clear that Mr.

marriage1872

The Bell Telephone Company was created in 1877, and by 1886, more than 150,000 people in the U.S.

career1877

== Family life == On July 11, 1877, a few days after the Bell Telephone Company was established, Bell married Mabel Hubbard (1857–1923) at the Hubbard estate in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

marriage1877

They had four children: Elsie May Bell (1878–1964) who married Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor of National Geographic fame.

marriage1878

The Bell family home was in Cambridge, Massachusetts, until 1880 when Bell's father-in-law bought a house in Washington, D.C.; in 1882 he bought a home in the same city for Bell's family, so they could be with him while he attended to the numerous court cases involving patent disputes.

academic1880

In 1880, Bell received the Volta Prize with a purse of 50,000 French francs (approximately US$350,000 in today's currency) for the invention of the telephone from the French government.

career1880

Two sons who died in infancy (Edward in 1881 and Robert in 1883).

health1881

He also co-founded the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) in 1885.

career1885

Returning in 1886, Bell started building an estate on a point across from Baddeck, overlooking Bras d'Or Lake.

career1886

During a deposition filed for the 1887 trial, Italian inventor Antonio Meucci also claimed to have created the first working model of a telephone in Italy in 1834.

career1887

In 1891, Bell established the American Association for the Promotion of the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf (AAPTSD) in New York and endowed the organization with a gift of $25,000.

marriage1891

The French government conferred on him the decoration of the Légion d'honneur (Legion of Honour); the Royal Society of Arts in London awarded him the Albert Medal in 1902; the University of Würzburg, Bavaria, granted him a PhD, and he was awarded the Franklin Institute's Elliott Cresson Medal in 1912.

career1902

The extent of the [area that produced a response from the detector] having been so small, as compared with the area of the bed, it seemed reasonable to conclude that the steel mattress had produced no detrimental effect." In a footnote, Bell adds, "The death of President Garfield and the subsequent post-mortem examination, however, proved that the bullet was at too great a distance from the surface to have affected our apparatus." === Hydrofoils === The March 1906 Scientific American article by American pioneer William E.

health1906

Bell was later awarded the AIEE's Edison Medal in 1914 "For meritorious achievement in the invention of the telephone".

career1914

These included statuary monuments to both him and the new form of communication his telephone created, including the Bell Telephone Memorial erected in his honour in Alexander Graham Bell Gardens in Brantford, Ontario, in 1917.

career1917

from Boston) that he showed Bell Gray's caveat and that Bell paid him $100 (equivalent to $2,900 in 2025).

marriage2025