Now hear this, all ye!

Alexander Graham Bell — inventor of the telephone, scientist, teacher of the deaf, refiner of the phonograph (record player) — is born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on March 3 1847 to Professor Alexander Melville and Eliza Grace Bell. His mother was almost totally deaf and his father taught elocution to the deaf. He immigrates to Canada with his parents in 1870 after both his brothers die of tuberculosis (in 1867 and ‘70). In April 1871 Bell moves to the US to teach at the Boston School for Deaf Mutes (and later at the Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton and the American School for the Deaf in Hartford). On July 11 1877 he marries Mabel Hubbard, 19, who became deaf at age five as a result of a near-fatal bout of scarlet fever. His research on hearing and speech leads to experiments with hearing devices which culminates in Bell being awarded the first patent for the telephone in the US on March 7 1876. The patent covers “the method of, and apparatus for, transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically ... by causing electrical undulations, similar in form to the vibrations of the air accompanying the said vocal or other sound”. The first demonstration of voices replying over his apparatus is done in Brantford, Canada,

(where his parents settled and he works in the summer) on August 3 1876. Considering his invention an intrusion on his work as a scientist, Bell refuses to have a telephone in his study.