Top 10 Facts about Alexander Graham Bell

Top 10 Facts about Alexander Graham Bell

Alexander Graham Bell was a Scottish scientist and engineer who invented the first practical telephone. He also co-founded American Telephone and Telegraph Company [AT&T] in 1885.

He was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on March 3, 1847. He had two brothers; Melville James Bell and Edward Charles Bell who died due to tuberculosis.

Alexander Graham’s father, grandfather and brother were associated with the work on elocution. His mother and wife were deaf which was a motivation for his life’s work.

He was later awarded the first U.S patent for the invention of the telephone due to his research on speech and hearing after which he experimented on hearing devices.
The following are Alexander Bell’s top ten facts;

1. He picked out his name himself

Alexander Graham Bell Photo By Unknown author – Wikimedia Commons

Alexander Bell longed for a middle name as a child since both his brothers had middle names and to differentiate him from his grandfather Alexander Bell.

At age 10, he made a plea to his father to have a middle name like his two brothers who were named Melville James Bell and Edward Charles Bell.

On his 11th birthday, his father permitted him to take the name Graham in honour of Alexander Bell, a former student who was boarding with the family. His name was his 11th birthday present.

2. He had a long-life commitment to deaf education

Alexander Graham Bell Photo By Unknown author – Wikimedia Commons

Alexander’s mother was extremely hard of hearing [she was reliant on an ear trumpet to hear anything] and his wife was deaf.

Alexander made his primary focus on helping deaf students communicate. Both his mother and wife became the inspiration for his work.

His father and grandfather were speech therapists hence it wasn’t surprising that Graham was committed to exploring psychology in speech and educating deaf students.

He taught at Boston School for Deaf Mutes, Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton, Massachusetts, and the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut.

In 1872, at the age of 25, he established the “School of Vocal Physiology and Mechanics of Speech” in Boston.

3. He designed a speedboat that set the world record

In the 1890’s he experimented on aviation. His dream for aeroplanes that could take off from the water surface at a high speed led him to work on designs on hydrofoil boats.

In 1919 the HD model which he collaborated on reached a speed of more than 70miles per hour during a test in a lake in Nova Scotia. Bell is said to have never ridden the boat and his record stood for a full decade.

The wreckage of the world’s fastest boat can still be seen at Baddeck’s Alexander Graham Bell Historic Site and Museum.

4. He helped invent a metal detecting device to find bullets in gunshot victims

Graham helped mathematics professor Simon Newcomb in inventing the metal detecting device to find bullets in gunshot victims.

Together they made improvements on Newcomb’s metal detecting device [it included the addition of Graham’s telephone to amplify the hum which was produced when the device detected a bullet in any area in the body]

He later demonstrated the device; surgeons adopted it and it was later used to save soldiers during the Boer war [1899-1902] and World War 1[1914-1918]

5. Decibels are named after him

In the 1920s the standard unit for measuring the intensity of sound waves was named the ‘bel’ in honour of Bell’s contribution to acoustical science.

The most commonly used metric for measuring the magnitude of the noise is the decibel, one-tenth of a bel. He remained popular even after he passed away.

6. He developed a wireless telephone

Alexander Graham Bell Photo By Gilbert H. Grosvenor – Wikimedia Commons

Alexander Graham Bell sent the first wireless telephone message on June 3, 1880, using his newly created “photophone,” a gadget that allows sound to be communicated through a beam of light.
For the photophone, Bell had four patents and built it with the help of an assistant, Charles Sumner Tainter.

The wireless telephone he invented transmitted conversations and sounds using beams of light. Bell considered this photophone one of the greatest inventions better than the phone.

Bell and his assistant transmitted a wireless voice message over a distance of 200 meters by light beam [this was a precursor to fibre optics one hundred years later; this was from a school roof to their laboratory

7. Phone companies paid tribute after his death

An actor portraying Alexander Graham Bell Photo By Unknown author – Wikimedia Commons

Bell died on 2nd August 1922 in his adopted home in Nova Scotia.

Two days later, during his funeral, all phones in North America were silenced for a minute in honour of him at the exact moment when he was lowered in his grave.

About 60000 telephone operators stood at attention for that one minute since no new calls were connected as the continent’s 13 million telephones went silent.

8. He faced more than 600 lawsuits

Judge gavel Photo By QuinceCreative on Pixaby

On Feb 14th 1876, Bell’s patent application for the telephone was filed; this was hours after his rival filed a caveat [a document saying he was going to file for a patent 3 months later for a similar invention] for an invention.

Five of them made it to the United States Supreme Court, which ultimately upheld Bell’s claims in one of the country’s longest patent battles.

His patent 174465 was filed and this caused more than 500 lawsuits all of which were unsuccessful.

9. He was an immigrant

Bell was born in Edinburg, Scotland on March 3rd 1987. He went to school in Scotland and London. In 1870, he later moved to Canada with his parents at the age of 23 years.

In 1871 he moved to the United States to teach at Boston School for the deaf. After he gained fame he became a naturalized U.S citizen in 1882.

10. He contributed to the success of National Geographical Magazine.

Bell worked tirelessly to further scientific knowledge throughout his life. He was a supporter of Science, which later became the official publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

He took over as president of the National Geographic Society from his father-in-law, Gardiner Hubbard, who died in 1898.

In 1903, his son-in-law, Gilbert H. Grosvenor, took over as editor-in-chief of the National Geographic Magazine, and Bell encouraged Grosvenor to make the magazine more popular by including more photographs and fewer scholarly articles.