Alexander Graham Bell Inventor of the Telephone

On March 3, 1847, the man who invented the telephone was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, to parents Alexander Melville and Eliza Bell. His father, like his grandfather, was a professor of elocution, simply the art of speaking clearly. His mother was deaf and Alec, as he was called, learned to teach the deaf using what his father called the Visible Speech Method. When he was 23 years old, he began to show signs of tuberculosis, the disease that had already caused the death of his two brothers. His family made the decision to move to Ontario, Canada, where he recovered from the illness. In 1871, the future inventor moved to Massachusetts in the United States to teach. About a year later, he opened a school for the deaf in Boston. He was intrigued by the idea of sending multiple telegraph messages all at once over one wire and also believed that it was possible to transmit voice by wire.

Alexander Graham Bell invented the first practical telephone in 1876, after which he formed the Bell Telephone Company in 1877. He received the official United States Patent No. 174.465 for the Bell telephone on March 7, 1876, and three days later recorded in his notebook that he and his assistant had succeeded in transmitting the first understandable sentence. Bell married shortly after this, became an American citizen in November 1882 and lived a very successful life, filled with experiment and invention, until his death in 1922. In their book Edison: His Life and Inventions, Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin write that while speaking about the future of his invention in 1878, Bell said, "I believe in the future wires will unite the head offices of telephone companies in different cities, and a man in one part of the country may communicate by word of mouth with another in a distant place." He was right about that, but could he have imagined that this type of communication would someday be possible without wires?

• The Telephone: An overview of the invention from the Federal Communications Commission Kids Zone.
• Invention Time Line: Follow this time line of invention over to 1876 and see where the telephone fits.
• Path to the Telephone: How did Alexander Graham Bell come to invent the telephone? Learn the details here.
• Everyday Mysteries: So who is credited with inventing the telephone? The Library of Congress provides the answer to this science mystery.
• Invention of the Telephone: An Inventor's Story about Alexander Graham Bell and telephone, with photos of his invention.
• Telephone History: A slideshow of telephone pictures and dates from 1875 to 1995.
• Alexander Graham Bell Bio: An extensive biography of the famous inventor from the dictionary of Canadian Biography.
• Case File: All about Alexander Graham Bell and his inventions from The Case Files of the Franklin Institute.
• Bell Invents the Telephone: Interesting insight into the background of Alexander Graham Bell.
• Hall of Fame: Biography, biographical video and lots of photos of Alexander Graham Bell.
• The Telephone: Alexander Graham Bell is Inventor of the Week from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 
• Bell's Box: What is the most important patent ever issued by the U.S. Patent Office? History Wired say they know.
• Patent: Learn more about the patent for the telephone and examine the document.
• Communication WebQuest: An adventure to learn about inventors and their inventions related to communication, includes Alexander Graham Bell and the telephone.
• Alexander Graham Bell: A page about the inventor from The Greatest Inventors and Inventions.
• Timeline Biography: A biographical timeline for the life of the inventor from the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.
• Telephone Patent: A Mass Moment entry about the anniversary of the day the telephone patent was received, along with biographical history.
• The Invention: Background information about Alexander Graham Bell and the telephone.