The Bell Family Legacies

Extract

Before he became a famous inventor, Alexander Graham Bell opened a school for the deaf in Boston in 1872. He always thought that his main mission in life, and his greatest pleasure, was in teaching the deaf. Royalties from his telegraph and telephone patents allowed him to pursue this mission and make other contributions and discoveries. In 1880 the French government awarded him the Volta prize of 50,000 francs, which was used to help establish the Volta Laboratory for research, invention, and work for the deaf. Bell founded and financed the American Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf in 1890.

Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on March 3, 1847, the same day and month as his grandfather in 1790. His mother had been deaf from an early age. He attended the University of Edinburgh and the University of London in 1868 without earning a university degree (later in life he would receive multiple honorary degrees). Bell moved to Brantford, Ontario, Canada, in 1870, then to Boston in 1871, where he became professor of “vocal physiology and elocution” at Boston University. He married Mabel Hubbard in 1877. She was 4 years old when she lost her hearing to scarlet fever. Alexander, Mabel, and their two daughters first visited Baddeck, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia (“New Scotland”) in 1885, where later they built an estate on nearby Beinn Bhreagh (“beautiful mountain”). Bell conceived of tetrahedral structures for kites, arches, towers, and bridges, and devoted many years on his estate to constructing kites with the intent of learning how to increase the lifting power of aircraft wings. Bell and his closest friend, Samuel Langley, were publicly awarded honorary degrees in aerial architecture. He built a hydrofoil that was clocked at more than 70 mph, and for 12 years it was the fastest boat in the world. Bell also invented a device that performed the same function as an iron lung would years later. He developed methods for detecting icebergs by echolocation, and a way of making freshwater from air vapor for people on life rafts. He even devised an electric apparatus to locate metal, and it was employed (unsuccessfully) to find a bullet in the body of President James Garfield, who was shot by an assassin in 1881. Bell became a U.S. citizen the following year.