Alexander Graham Bell

Early life

Alexander Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on March 3, 1847.[14] The family home was
at South Charlotte Street, and has a stone inscription marking it as Alexander Graham Bell's
birthplace. He had two brothers: Melville James Bell (1845–1870) and Edward Charles Bell
(1848–1867), both of whom would die of tuberculosis.[15] His father was Professor
Alexander Melville Bell, a phonetician, and his mother was Eliza Grace (née Symonds).[16]
Born as just "Alexander Bell", at age 10, he made a plea to his father to have a middle name
like his two brothers.[17][N 5] For his 11th birthday, his father acquiesced and allowed him
to adopt the name "Graham", chosen out of respect for Alexander Graham, a Canadian
being treated by his father who had become a family friend.[18] To close relatives and
friends he remained "Aleck".[19]

First invention

As a child, young Bell displayed a curiosity about his world; he in gathered botanical
specimens and ran experiments at an early age. His best friend was Ben Herdman, a
neighbour whose family operated a flour mill. At the age of 12, Bell built a homemade device
that combined rotating paddles with sets of nail brushes, creating a simple dehusking
machine that was put into operation at the mill and used steadily for a number of years.[20]
In return, Ben's father John Herdman gave both boys the run of a small workshop in which
to "invent".[20]

From his early years, Bell showed a sensitive nature and a talent for art, poetry, and music
that was encouraged by his mother. With no formal training, he mastered the piano and
became the family's pianist.[21] Despite being normally quiet and introspective, he revelled
in mimicry and "voice tricks" akin to ventriloquism that continually entertained family guests
during their occasional visits.[21] Bell was also deeply affected by his mother's gradual
deafness (she began to lose her hearing when he was 12), and learned a manual finger
language so he could sit at her side and tap out silently the conversations swirling around
the family parlour.[22] He also developed a technique of speaking in clear, modulated tones
directly into his mother's forehead wherein she would hear him with reasonable clarity.[23]
Bell's preoccupation with his mother's deafness led him to study acoustics.

His family was long associated with the teaching of elocution: his grandfather, Alexander
Bell, in London, his uncle in Dublin, and his father, in Edinburgh, were all elocutionists. His
father published a variety of works on the subject, several of which are still well known,
especially his The Standard Elocutionist (1860),[21] which appeared in Edinburgh in 1868.
The Standard Elocutionist appeared in 168 British editions and sold over a quarter of a
million copies in the United States alone. In this treatise, his father explains his methods of
how to instruct deaf-mutes (as they were then known) to articulate words and read other
people's lip movements to decipher meaning. Bell's father taught him and his brothers not
only to write Visible Speech but to identify any symbol and its accompanying sound.[24] Bell
became so proficient that he became a part of his father's public demonstrations and
astounded audiences with his abilities. He could decipher Visible Speech representing
virtually every language, including Latin, Scottish Gaelic, and even Sanskrit, accurately
reciting written tracts without any prior knowledge of their pronunciation.[24]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to a young Bell with his parents.

Education

As a young child, Bell, like his brothers, received his early schooling at home from his father.
At an early age, he was enrolled at the Royal High School, Edinburgh, Scotland, which he left
at the age of 15, having completed only the first four forms.[25] His school record was
undistinguished, marked by absenteeism and lacklustre grades. His main interest remained
in the sciences, especially biology, while he treated other school subjects with indifference,
to the dismay of his father.[26] Upon leaving school, Bell travelled to London to live with his
grandfather, Alexander Bell. During the year he spent with his grandfather, a love of learning
was born, with long hours spent in serious discussion and study. The elder Bell took great
efforts to have his young pupil learn to speak clearly and with conviction, the attributes that
his pupil would need to become a teacher himself.[27] At the age of 16, Bell secured a
position as a "pupil-teacher" of elocution and music, in Weston House Academy at Elgin,
Moray, Scotland. Although he was enrolled as a student in Latin and Greek, he instructed
classes himself in return for board and £10 per session.[28] The following year, he attended
the University of Edinburgh; joining his older brother Melville who had enrolled there the
previous year. In 1868, not long before he departed for Canada with his family, Bell
completed his matriculation exams and was accepted for admission to University College
London.[29]

First experiments with sound

His father encouraged Bell's 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.[30] The rudimentary "mechanical man" simulated a human voice.
Bell was fascinated by the machine and after he obtained a copy of von Kempelen's book,
published in German, and had laboriously translated it, he and his older brother Melville
built their own automaton head. Their father, highly interested in their project, offered to
pay for any supplies and spurred the boys on with the enticement of a "big prize" if they
were successful.[30] While his brother constructed the throat and larynx, Bell tackled the
more difficult task of recreating a realistic skull. His efforts resulted in a remarkably lifelike
head that could "speak", albeit only a few words.[30] The boys would carefully adjust the
"lips" and when a bellows forced air through the windpipe, a very recognizable "Mama"
ensued, to the delight of neighbours who came to see the Bell invention.[31]

Intrigued by the results of the automaton, Bell continued to experiment with a live subject,
the family's Skye Terrier, "Trouve".[32] After he taught it to growl continuously, Bell would
reach into its mouth and manipulate the dog's lips and vocal cords to produce a crude-
sounding "Ow ah oo ga ma ma". With little convincing, visitors believed his dog could
articulate "How are you, grandma?" Indicative of his playful nature, his experiments
convinced onlookers that they saw a "talking dog".[33] These initial forays into
experimentation with sound led Bell to undertake his first serious work on the transmission
of sound, using tuning forks to explore resonance.

At age 19, Bell wrote a report on his work and sent it to philologist Alexander Ellis, a
colleague of his father (who would later be portrayed as Professor Henry Higgins in
Pygmalion).[33] Ellis immediately wrote back indicating that the experiments were similar to
existing work in Germany, and also lent Bell a copy of Hermann von Helmholtz's work, The
Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music.[34]

Dismayed to find that groundbreaking work had already been undertaken by Helmholtz who
had conveyed vowel sounds by means of a similar tuning fork "contraption", Bell pored over
the German scientist's book. Working from his own erroneous mistranslation of a French
edition,[35] Bell fortuitously then made a deduction that would be the underpinning of all
his future work on transmitting sound, reporting: "Without knowing much about the subject,
it seemed to me that if vowel sounds could be produced by electrical means, so could
consonants, so could articulate speech." He also later remarked: "I thought that Helmholtz
had done it ... and that my failure was due only to my ignorance of electricity. It was a
valuable blunder ... If I had been able to read German in those days, I might never have
commenced my experiments!"[36][37][38][N 6]

Family tragedy

In 1865, when the Bell family moved to London,[39] Bell returned to Weston House as an
assistant master and, in his spare hours, continued experiments on sound using a minimum
of laboratory equipment. Bell concentrated on experimenting with electricity to convey
sound and later installed a telegraph wire from his room in Somerset College to that of a
friend.[40] Throughout late 1867, his health faltered mainly through exhaustion. His younger
brother, Edward "Ted," was similarly bed-ridden, suffering from tuberculosis. While Bell
recovered (by then referring to himself in correspondence as "A. G. Bell") and served the
next year as an instructor at Somerset College, Bath, England, his brother's condition
deteriorated. Edward would never recover. Upon his brother's death, Bell returned home in
1867. His older brother Melville had married and moved out. With aspirations to obtain a
degree at University College London, Bell considered his next years as preparation for the
degree examinations, devoting his spare time at his family's residence to studying.

Helping his father in Visible Speech demonstrations and lectures brought Bell to Susanna E.
Hull's private school for the deaf in South Kensington, London. His first two pupils were deaf-
mute girls who made remarkable progress under his tutelage. While his older brother
seemed to achieve success on many fronts including opening his own elocution school,
applying for a patent on an invention, and starting a family, Bell continued as a teacher.
However, in May 1870, Melville died from complications due to tuberculosis, causing a
family crisis. His father had also suffered a debilitating illness earlier in life and had been
restored to health by a convalescence in Newfoundland. Bell's parents embarked upon a
long-planned move when they realized that their remaining son was also sickly. Acting
decisively, Alexander Melville Bell asked Bell to arrange for the sale of all the family
property,[41][N 7] conclude all of his brother's affairs (Bell took over his last student, curing
a pronounced lisp),[42] and join his father and mother in setting out for the "New World".
Reluctantly, Bell also had to conclude a relationship with Marie Eccleston, who, as he had
surmised, was not prepared to leave England with him.[43]

Canada

Main article: Bell Homestead National Historic Site

Melville House, the Bells' first home in North America, now a National Historic Site of
Canada

In 1870, 23-year-old Bell travelled with his parents and his brother's widow, Caroline
Margaret Ottaway,[44] to Paris, Ontario,[45] to stay with the Reverend Thomas Henderson,
a family friend. The Bell family soon purchased a farm of 10.5 acres (42,000 m2) at Tutelo
Heights (now called Tutela Heights), near Brantford, Ontario. The property consisted of an
orchard, large farmhouse, stable, pigsty, hen-house, and a carriage house, which bordered
the Grand River.[46][N 8]

At the homestead, Bell set up his own workshop in the converted carriage house near to
what he called his "dreaming place",[48] a large hollow nestled in trees at the back of the
property above the river.[49] Despite his frail condition upon arriving in Canada, Bell found
the climate and environs to his liking, and rapidly improved.[50][N 9] He continued his
interest in the study of the human voice and when he discovered the Six Nations Reserve
across the river at Onondaga, he learned the Mohawk language and translated its unwritten
vocabulary into Visible Speech symbols. For his work, Bell was awarded the title of Honorary
Chief and participated in a ceremony where he donned a Mohawk headdress and danced
traditional dances.[51][N 10]

After setting up his workshop, Bell continued experiments based on Helmholtz's work with
electricity and sound.[52] He also modified a melodeon (a type of pump organ) so that it
could transmit its music electrically over a distance.[53] Once the family was settled in, both
Bell and his father made plans to establish a teaching practice and in 1871, he accompanied
his father to Montreal, where Melville was offered a position to teach his System of Visible
Speech.