Alexander Graham Bell

Alexander Graham Bell was a famous scientist and inventor who is most known for being credited as the creator of the first practical telephone. Although this is what Bell is mostly known for, he also invented many other things in the fields of optical telecommunications, hydrofoils, and aeronautics. Alexander Graham Bell was born on March 3, 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He father was a professor by the name of Alexander Melville Bell, a teacher of physiological phonetics. Bell s first invention was at the young age of 12 when he created a wheat dehusking machine for for his friends family business. As a result of this, his friends father allowed Bell and the friend to run a small work shop where they could invent. As a child Bell took a liking to fine arts, and, without any formal instruction, became a master with the piano. He was also known to perform ventriloquist voice tricks for family guests. Education wise, Bell was not as high performing as other famous scientist and inventors. He even left high school at the age of 15. After leaving school he went to London to live with his grandfather where he developed his love for learning. His grandfather taught him well in the field of elocution, which was what his grandfather, uncle, and father where all long associated with. At the age of 16, Bell received a position as a student teacher in the field of elocution while taking classes in Latin and Greek at the Weston House Academy in Elgin, Moray, Scotland. A year after that, he joined his brother at the University of Edinburgh where he completed his matriculation exams and was accepted into the University of London. Bell took a huge interest in the field of sound from an early age. Experiments with his brother that led to an automaton, a specific type of robot, that could crudely say mama , which in turn led to experiments with the family dog in attempts to teach it how to speak. These two experiments led Bell to experiment with tuning forks in the field of resonance. All of these experiments with sound led Bell to

his experimentation with the telephone. In 1874 Bell began looking towards the telephone. In this year he met Thomas A. Watson, who he hired as his assistant. By 1875 Bell had developed an acoustic telegraph and requested that an associate of his attempt to get a patent for it in Britain and then in the US because Britain would only patent new inventions. Bell managed to get the patent in the US on March 7, 1876. There was much debate on whether he or Elisha Gray has gotten filed for the patent first, but Bell was still awarded the patent. Three days later Bell finally got his telephone to work, sending the message Mr. Watson Come here I want to see you to Watson in an adjacent room.

Bell continued to experiment with the telephone and paved the way for our communications systems of today. Without his work the world would not be the way it is today.