Portal:Alexander Graham Bell
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Introduction
Alexander Graham Bell (March 3, 1847 – August 2, 1922) was a Scottish-born scientist, inventor, engineer, and innovator who is credited with inventing and patenting the first practical telephone. He also founded the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) in 1885.
Bell's father, grandfather, and brother had all been associated with work on elocution and speech and both his mother and wife were deaf, profoundly influencing Bell's life's work. His research on hearing and speech further led him to experiment with hearing devices which eventually culminated in Bell being awarded the first U.S. patent for the telephone in 1876. Bell considered his invention an intrusion on his real work as a scientist and refused to have a telephone in his study.
Selected general articles
David Grandison Fairchild (April 7, 1869 – August 6, 1954) was an American botanist and plant explorer. Fairchild was responsible for the introduction of more than 200,000 exotic plants and varieties of established crops into the United States, including soybeans, pistachios, mangos, nectarines, dates, bamboos, and flowering cherries. Certain varieties of wheat, cotton, and rice became especially economically important. Read more...- The Telephone Cases, 126 U.S. 1 (1888), were a series of U.S. court cases in the 1870s and 1880s related to the invention of the telephone, which culminated in the 1888 decision of the United States Supreme Court upholding the priority of the patents belonging to Alexander Graham Bell. Those telephone patents were relied on by the American Bell Telephone Company and the Bell System—although they had also acquired critical microphone patents from Emile Berliner.
The objector (or plaintiff) in the notable Supreme Court case was initially the Western Union telegraph company, which was at the time a far larger and better financed competitor than American Bell Telephone. Western Union advocated several more recent patent claims of Daniel Drawbaugh, Elisha Gray, Antonio Meucci and Philip Reis in a bid to invalidate Alexander Graham Bell's master and subsidiary telephone patents dating back to March 1876. Had Western Union succeeded it would have immediately destroyed the Bell Telephone Company and then Western Union stood to become the world's largest telecommunications monopoly in Bell's place.
The U.S. Supreme Court came within one vote of overturning the Bell patent, thanks to the eloquence of lawyer Lysander Hill for the Peoples Telephone Company. In a lower court, the Peoples Telephone Company stock rose briefly during the early proceedings, but dropped after their claimant Daniel Drawbaugh took the stand and drawled: "I don’t remember how I came to it. I had been experimenting in that direction. I don’t remember of getting at it by accident either. I don’t remember of anyone talking to me of it". Read more...
Beinn Bhreagh (/ˌbɛnˈvriːə/ ben VREE-ə) is the name of the former estate of Dr Alexander Graham Bell, in Victoria County, Nova Scotia. It refers to a peninsula jutting into Cape Breton Island's scenic Bras d'Or Lake approximately 3 km (1.9 mi) southeast of the village of Baddeck, forming the southeastern shore of Baddeck Bay.
The peninsula was known to the Mi'kmaq as Megwatpatek, roughly translated to "Red Head" due to the reddish sandstone rocks at the tip of the peninsula. The name Beinn Bhreagh—meaning "Beautiful Mountain" in Scottish Gaelic—is thought to have been given to the peninsula by Dr Bell, who purchased approximately 242.8 hectares (600 acres) to form the estate in the late 1880s.
In July 2005, the Nova Scotia Civic Address Project review changed the status of Beinn Bhreagh from a "generic locality" to a "community". Read more...- The Second International Congress on Education of the Deaf was (despite the name) the first international conference of deaf educators held in Milan, Italy in 1880. It is commonly known as "the Milan Conference". After deliberations from September 6 to 11, 1880, the conference declared that oral education (oralism) was superior to manual education and passed a resolution banning the use of sign language in school. After its passage in 1880, schools in European countries and the United States switched to using speech therapy without sign language as a method of education for the deaf. A formal apology was made by the board at the 21st International Congress on Education of the Deaf in Vancouver, BC, Canada, in 2010 accepting the dangerous ramifications of such ban as an act of discrimination and violation of human and constitutional rights. Read more...
Alexander Graham Bell honors and tributes include honours bestowed upon him and awards named for him.
Alexander Graham Bell received numerous tributes during his life, and new awards were subsequently named for him posthumously.
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HMCS Bras d'Or (FHE 400) was a hydrofoil that served in the Canadian Forces from 1968 to 1971. During sea trials in 1969, the vessel exceeded 63 knots (117 km/h; 72 mph), making her the fastest unarmed warship in the world.
The vessel was originally built from 1960 to 1967 for the Royal Canadian Navy, as a project for the testing of anti-submarine warfare technology on an ocean-going hydrofoil. The RCN was replaced on 1 February 1968 by the unified Canadian Armed Forces, and Bras d'Or was commissioned into that service several months later. Changes in priorities and cost overruns later led to the project's cancellation.
Bras d'Or was named in honour of Bras d'Or Lake on Nova Scotia's Cape Breton Island, where inventor Alexander Graham Bell performed hydrofoil experiments in the early 20th century near his estate and new laboratory at Beinn Bhreagh, setting the world watercraft speed record in the process. In 1909 the lake was also the historic site of the first flight of an aircraft in Canada and the British Commonwealth; the airplane, named the Silver Dart, was built by the Aerial Experiment Association under Dr. Bell's tutelage. The lake's name was thus fitting for a hydrofoil vessel which could 'fly' above an ocean's surface. Read more...
The Bell Memorial, also known as the Bell Monument and Telephone Monument, is a memorial designed by Walter Seymour Allward to commemorate the invention of the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell at the Bell Homestead National Historic Site, in Brantford, Ontario, Canada.
In 1906, the citizens of the Brantford and Brant County areas formed the Bell Telephone Memorial Association, which commissioned the memorial. By 1908, the association's designs committee asked sculptors on two continents to submit proposals for the memorial. The submission by Canadian sculptor Walter Seymour Allward of Toronto won the competition. The memorial was originally scheduled for completion by 1912 but Allward, aided by his studio assistant Emanuel Hahn did not finish it until five years later. The Governor General of Canada, Victor Cavendish, 9th Duke of Devonshire, unveiled the memorial on 24 October 1917.
Allward designed the monument to symbolize the telephone's ability to overcome great distances. A series of steps lead to the main section where the floating allegorical figure of Inspiration appears over a reclining male figure representing Man, transmitting sound through space, discovering his power to transmit sound through space, and also pointing to three floating figures, the messengers of Knowledge, Joy, and Sorrow positioned at the other end of the tableau. Additionally, there are two female figures mounted on granite pedestals representing Humanity positioned to the left and right of the memorial, one sending and the other receiving a message. Read more...- Clarke Schools for Hearing and Speech (formerly Clarke School for the Deaf) is a national nonprofit organization that specializes in educating children who are deaf or hard of hearing using listening and spoken language (oralism) through the assistance of hearing technology such as hearing aids and cochlear implants. Clarke's five campuses serve more than 1,000 students annually in Northampton, Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Jacksonville. Clarke is the oldest and largest school of its kind in the U.S. Read more...
The National Telephone Company (NTC) was a British telephone company from 1881 until 1911 which brought together smaller local companies in the early years of the telephone. Under the Telephone Transfer Act 1911 it was taken over by the General Post Office (GPO) in 1912. Read more...
Glenn Hammond Curtiss (May 21, 1878 – July 23, 1930) was an American aviation and motorcycling pioneer, and a founder of the U.S. aircraft industry. He began his career as a bicycle racer and builder before moving on to motorcycles. As early as 1904, he began to manufacture engines for airships. In 1908, Curtiss joined the Aerial Experiment Association, a pioneering research group, founded by Alexander Graham Bell at Beinn Bhreagh, Nova Scotia, to build flying machines.
Curtiss made the first officially witnessed flight in North America, won a race at the world's first international air meet in France, and made the first long-distance flight in the United States. His contributions in designing and building aircraft led to the formation of the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company, now part of Curtiss-Wright Corporation. His company built aircraft for the U.S. Army and Navy, and, during the years leading up to World War I, his experiments with seaplanes led to advances in naval aviation. Curtiss civil and military aircraft were predominant in the interwar and World War II eras. Read more...- Thomas C. Cowherd (March 20, 1817 – April 4, 1907) was a British-born tinsmith and poet, and father to 16 children in Brantford, Ontario, Canada, including James H. Cowherd, the second earliest manufacturer of telephones to Alexander Graham Bell. Read more...
AEA member John Alexander Douglas McCurdy at the controls of the AEA Silver Dart during an aviation 'meet' near Toronto, Ontario, Canada, c. August 1911. The starboard-side "shoulder-yoke" structure for aileron control is visible beside the seated pilot.
The Aerial Experiment Association (AEA) was a Canadian-American aeronautical research group formed on 30 September 1907, under the leadership of Dr. Alexander Graham Bell.
The AEA produced several different aircraft in quick succession, with each member acting as principal designer for at least one. The group introduced key technical innovations, notably wingtip ailerons and the tricycle landing gear.
According to Bell, the AEA was a "co-operative scientific association, not for gain but for the love of the art and doing what we can to help one another." Although the association had no significant commercial impact, one of its members, Glenn Curtiss, later established the large and successful aeronautical manufacturing company Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company. The AEA was disbanded on 31 March 1909. Read more...- The Bell Boatyard was a boatbuilding facility which operated as part of Alexander Graham Bell's laboratories in Baddeck, Nova Scotia from 1885 to 1928. The boatyard built experimental craft, lifeboats and yachts during the first part of the twentieth century. The Bell yard was notable for its dual focus on both experimental and traditional boats and for its employment of large numbers of female boatbuilders. Read more...
- Walter Kendall Myers (born April 15, 1937) is a former U.S. State Department employee who, with his wife, Gwendolyn, was arrested and indicted on June 4, 2009, on charges of spying for Cuba for nearly 30 years. He was convicted of spying and sentenced to life imprisonment by a U.S. federal court in July 2010. The judge told the couple: "I see no sense of remorse. You were proud of what you did". Read more...
- The White Wing (or Aerodrome #2) was an early US aircraft designed by Frederick W. Baldwin and built by the Aerial Experiment Association in 1908. Unusual for aircraft of its day, it featured a wheeled undercarriage. The wings were equipped with ailerons controlled by a harness worn around the pilot's body; leaning in one direction would cause the aircraft to bank to follow.
First piloted by Baldwin himself on 18 May and the aircraft flew very well. White Wing was then piloted by Lt Thomas Selfridge at Hammondsport, New York, on 19 May 1908 (becoming the first US Army officer to fly an airplane) and then Glenn Curtiss made a flight of 1,017 ft (310 m) in it on 21 May. On 23 May, it crashed during a landing by John McCurdy and was damaged beyond repair. Read more...
The Red Wing (or Aerodrome #1) was an early aircraft designed by Thomas Selfridge and built by the Aerial Experiment Association in 1908. It was named for the bright red color of its silk wings - chosen to achieve the best result with the photographic materials and techniques of the day.
On 12 March 1908 Frederick W. Baldwin piloted the aircraft off the frozen Keuka Lake near Hammondsport, New York in what would be the first public demonstration of a powered aircraft flight in the United States as well as the first flight by a Canadian pilot.
Contemporary accounts described the flight as the "First Public Trip of Heavier-than-air Car in America." Reports entitled "Views of an Expert" stated that Professor Alexander Graham Bell's new machine, the Red Wing, built from plans by Lieutenant Selfridge, was "shown to be practicable by flight over Keuka Lake, Hammondsport, New York, 12 March 1908 by F. W. Baldwin, the engineer in charge of its construction." Read more...- Alexander Graham Bell Fairchild (August 17, 1906 – February 10, 1994) was an American entomologist, and a member of the Fairchild family, descendants of Thomas Fairchild of Stratford, Connecticut and one of two grandsons of the scientist and inventor, Alexander Graham Bell, for whom he was named, and son of David Fairchild, a botanist and plant explorer. Read more...
HD-4 at Baddeck, Nova Scotia, in 1919
HD-4 or Hydrodome number 4 was an early research hydrofoil watercraft developed by the scientist Alexander Graham Bell. It was designed and built at the Bell Boatyard on Bell's Beinn Bhreagh estate near Baddeck, Nova Scotia. In 1919, it set a world marine speed record of 70.86 miles per hour (114.04 km/h). Read more...
Alexander Graham Bell School, also known as Bell School is a public school located in the North Center neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois, United States; it is a part of the Chicago Public Schools. It offers grades kindergarten through grade eight. It also has a deaf department for students in preschool through grade eight and additionally a Regional Gifted Center (Options) for students in grades kindergarten through eight.
The elementary school was founded in 1917 with 24 classrooms for hearing students and 15 classrooms for deaf students, after the Chicago School Board allocated US$285,000 for it in 1915 (approximately $Expression error: Unrecognized punctuation character ",". in current dollars).[1]
The school, one of the largest built in the Chicago Public School system at the time, was dedicated on April 1, 1918 by its name source Alexander Graham Bell, advocate of education for deaf students. Read more...
The first session of Canada's 37th Parliament unanimously passed a Canadian Parliamentary Motion on Alexander Graham Bell on June 21, 2002, to affirm that Alexander Graham Bell was the inventor of the telephone.
The symbolic motion was a response to the 107th United States Congress' earlier resolution (HRes 269) of June 11, 2002, which recognized the contributions of Antonio Meucci. Due to a misleading press release issued by U.S. Congressman Vito Fossella, this was interpreted by some as establishing priority for the invention of the telephone to Meucci. The House of Representatives' Resolution and the Parliamentary Motion which followed were both opinions and did not carry any legal weight. The resolution also did not annul or modify any of Bell's patents for the telephone.
During the 108th Congress another almost identical resolution, SRes 223 was introduced in the United States Senate, but which was then sent to a committee where it died, unenacted. Read more...
Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor (/ˈɡroʊvnər/; October 28, 1875 – February 4, 1966), father of photojournalism, was the first full-time editor of National Geographic (1899–1954). Grosvenor is credited with having built the magazine into the iconic publication that it is today.
As President of the National Geographic Society, he assisted its rise to one of the world's largest and best known science and learning organizations, aided by the chronicling in its magazine of ambitious natural and cultural explorations around the globe. Read more...- A Bell System logo (called the Blue Bell), used from 1889 to 1900. The Bell Telephone Company and its successors created the Bell System and drove its expansion.
The Bell Telephone Company, a common law joint stock company, was organized in Boston, Massachusetts on July 9, 1877, by Alexander Graham Bell's father-in-law Gardiner Greene Hubbard, who also helped organize a sister company — the New England Telephone and Telegraph Company. The Bell Telephone Company was started on the basis of holding "potentially valuable patents", principally Bell's master telephone patent #174465.
The two companies merged on February 17, 1879, to form two new entities, the National Bell Telephone Company of Boston, and the International Bell Telephone Company, soon after established by Hubbard and which became headquartered in Brussels, Belgium. Theodore Vail then took over its operations at that point, becoming a central figure in its rapid growth and commercial success.
The National Bell Telephone Company merged with American Speaking Telephone Company on March 20, 1880, to form the American Bell Telephone Company, also of Boston, Massachusetts. Read more...
The Hubbard Monoplane (Hubbard II), also nicknamed "Mike", was an early aircraft designed by John McCurdy and built by the Canadian Aerodrome Company.
The Hubbard Monoplane was commissioned by Gardiner Greene Hubbard II of Boston. The monoplane was constructed at the Beinn Bhreagh estate of Alexander Graham Bell in Baddeck, Nova Scotia, by John McCurdy and F. W. "Casey" Baldwin. The aircraft was the third to be built by the Canadian Aerodrome Company, and the first to represent an indigenous design, although loosely based on the Blériot XI. The aircraft made two brief flights on 3 March 1910, flown by McCurdy.
After it was shipped to Montreal for the 1910 Montreal Air Meet, Hubbard was unsuccessful in flying the aircraft, it possibly being too low-powered to do more than taxiing. Shortly after, Hubbard had the aircraft dismantled and shipped to Boston, making it the first Canadian aircraft sold and built for export. The intent was to enter the aircraft at the Harvard-Boston Aero Meet in Boston. The aircraft was displayed at the aero meet, and was included in the photographs of the flight line, but it did not leave the ground. Read more...- The Story of Alexander Graham Bell is a somewhat fictionalized 1939 biographical film of the famous inventor. It was filmed in black-and-white and released by Twentieth Century-Fox. The film stars Don Ameche as Bell and Loretta Young as Mabel, his wife, who contracted scarlet fever at an early age and became deaf. Read more...
- The Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell controversy concerns the question of whether Gray and Bell invented the telephone independently. This issue is narrower than the question of who deserves credit for inventing the telephone, for which there are several claimants.
At issue are roles of each inventor's lawyers, the filing of patent documents, and allegations of theft. Read more...
The Bell System was the system of companies, led by the Bell Telephone Company and later by AT&T, which provided telephone services to much of the United States and Canada from 1877 to 1984, at various times as a monopoly. On December 31, 1983, the system was divided into independent companies by a U.S. Justice Department mandate.
The general public in the United States often used the colloquial term Ma Bell (as in "Mother Bell") to refer to any aspect of this conglomerate, as it held a near-complete monopoly over telephone service in most areas of the country, and is still used by many to refer to any telephone company. Ma Bell is also used to refer to the various female voices in recordings for the Bell System: Mary Moore, Jane Barbe, and Pat Fleet, the current voice of AT&T. Read more...
Gardiner Greene Hubbard (August 25, 1822 – December 11, 1897) was an American lawyer, financier, and community leader.
He was a founder and first president of the National Geographic Society; a founder and the first president of the Bell Telephone Company which later evolved into AT&T, at times the world's largest telephone company; a founder of the journal Science, and an advocate of oral speech education for the deaf.
One of his daughters, Mabel Gardiner Hubbard, also became the wife of Alexander Graham Bell. Read more...- Chichester Alexander Bell (1848–1924) was a chemist, first cousin of Alexander Graham Bell, and instrumental in developing improved versions of the phonograph. Read more...
Walter Seymour Allward, CMG RCA (18 November 1876 – 24 April 1955) was a Canadian monumental sculptor widely praised for his "original sense of spatial composition, his mastery of the classical form and his brilliant craftsmanship".[attribution needed]
Allward's 1917 heroic monument, the Bell Telephone Memorial, has been seen as the finest example of his early works. It brought the sculptor to fame and led to Allward later creating the Canadian National Vimy Memorial in France, his most renowned work. Some of the sculptor's works have also been acquired by the National Gallery in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Allward has been described as "probably Canada's most important monumental sculptor in the first third of [the 20th] century".[attribution needed] Read more...
Alexander Graham Bell (March 3, 1847 – August 2, 1922) was a Scottish-born scientist, inventor, engineer, and innovator who is credited with inventing and patenting the first practical telephone. He also founded the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) in 1885.
Bell's father, grandfather, and brother had all been associated with work on elocution and speech and both his mother and wife were deaf, profoundly influencing Bell's life's work. His research on hearing and speech further led him to experiment with hearing devices which eventually culminated in Bell being awarded the first U.S. patent for the telephone in 1876. Bell considered his invention an intrusion on his real work as a scientist and refused to have a telephone in his study.
Many other inventions marked Bell's later life, including groundbreaking work in optical telecommunications, hydrofoils, and aeronautics. Although Bell was not one of the 33 founders of the National Geographic Society, he had a strong influence on the magazine while serving as the second president from January 7, 1898, until 1903. Read more...- The Canadian Aerodrome Company was the first commercial enterprise in the British Empire to design and manufacture aircraft. The company was formed following the dissolution of Alexander Graham Bell's Aerial Experiment Association. The company was established by Frederick W. "Casey" Baldwin and J.A.D. McCurdy in 1909, with the financial backing of Alexander Graham Bell. The company was headquartered in Baddeck, Nova Scotia at the Kite House at Bell's Beinn Bhreagh estate.
The Canadian Aerodrome Company manufactured aircraft based on the AEA Silver Dart, producing the Baddeck No. 1, and the Baddeck No. 2 as well as a separate commissioned design, the Hubbard Monoplane (Hubbard II) before the company was dissolved in 1910. Read more...
The June Bug (or Aerodrome #3) was an early US aircraft designed and flown by Glenn H. Curtiss and built by the Aerial Experiment Association (A.E.A) in 1908. The June Bug is famous for winning the first aeronautical prize, the Scientific American Cup, ever awarded in the United States. Read more...
Thomas A Augustus Watson (January 18, 1854 – December 13, 1934) was an assistant to Alexander Graham Bell, notably in the invention of the telephone in 1876. He is best known because, as the recipient of the first telephone call – although coming from just the next room – his name became the first words ever said over the phone. "Mr. Watson – Come here – I want to see you,"
Bell said when first using the new invention, according to Bell's laboratory notebook. There is some dispute about the actual words used, as Thomas Watson, in his own voice, remembered it as "Mr. Watson – Come here – I want you," in a film made for Bell Labs in 1931 which is referenced below in "The Engines of our Ingenuity." Read more...- Anthony Pollok (1829 – July 4, 1898) was an American patent attorney who, with Marcellus Bailey, helped prepare Alexander Graham Bell's patents for the telephone and related inventions. Read more...
The National Geographic Society (NGS), headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States, is one of the largest non-profit scientific and educational organizations in the world. Founded in 1888, its interests include geography, archaeology, and natural science, the promotion of environmental and historical conservation, and the study of world culture and history. The National Geographic Society's logo is a yellow portrait frame—rectangular in shape—which appears on the margins surrounding the front covers of its magazines and as its television channel logo. In partnership with 21st Century Fox, the Society operates the magazine, TV channels, a website that features extra content, worldwide events, and other media operations. Read more...
Edwin S. Grosvenor is a writer, photographer, and President and Editor-in-Chief of American Heritage. He has published nine books and is best known for writing on his great-grandfather, Alexander Graham Bell, including two books and several magazine articles. Early in his career, Grosvenor worked as a freelance photographer for National Geographic, completing 23 assignments. He has been interviewed on History Channel, CBS News Sunday Morning, AARP Radio, AP Radio, CBC, NBC Radio Network, NPR, and Voice of America, and has lectured at the Smithsonian Institution, Boston Museum of Science, and other venues. Read more...
Graham Bell Island (Russian: Остров Греэм-Белл, Ostrov Greem-Bell) is an island in the Franz Josef Archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, and is administratively part of Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia. Read more...
Mabel Gardiner Hubbard (c. 1917), who became completely deaf at age five.
Mabel Gardiner Hubbard (November 25, 1857 – January 3, 1923), was the daughter of Boston lawyer Gardiner Greene Hubbard, who was the first president of the Bell Telephone Company. As the wife of Alexander Graham Bell, an eminent scientist and the inventor of the first practical telephone, she took the married name Mabel Bell.
From the time of Mabel's courtship with Graham Bell in 1873, until his death in 1922, Mabel became and remained the most significant influence in his life. Folklore held that Bell undertook telecommunication experiments in an attempt to restore her hearing which had been destroyed by disease close to her fifth birthday, leaving her completely deaf for the remainder of her life. Read more...
Bras d'Or Lake /brəˈdɔːr/ is an inland sea, or large body of partially fresh/salt water in the centre of Cape Breton Island in the province of Nova Scotia, Canada. Bras d'Or Lake is sometimes referred to as the Bras d'Or Lakes or the Bras d'Or Lakes system; however, its official geographic name is Bras d'Or Lake, as it is a singular entity. Canadian author and yachtsman Silver Donald Cameron describes Bras d'Or Lake as "A basin ringed by indigo hills laced with marble. Islands within a sea inside an island." The lake is connected to the North Atlantic by natural channels; the Great Bras d'Or Channel north of Boularderie Island and the Little Bras d'Or Channel to south of Boularderie Island connect the northeastern arm of the lake to the Cabot Strait. The Bras d'Or is also connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Strait of Canso by means of a lock canal completed in 1869—the St. Peters Canal, at the southern tip of the lake.
There are several competing explanations of the origin of the name "Bras d'Or". The most popular is that the first Europeans to discover and subsequently settle the area were French, naming the lake Bras d'Or, meaning "arm of gold"; this likely referring to the sun's rays reflected upon its waters. However, on the maps of 1872 and earlier, the lake is named "Le Lac de Labrador" (or more simply "Labrador"), and this is more likely the true derivation of the present name. The literal meaning of Labrador is "Laborer."
A 1922 edition of Place-Names of the Province of Nova Scotia quotes a paper by a Dr. Patterson prepared for the Nova Scotia Historical Society, referring to his analysis that the name Bras d'Or came from the Breton form of Bras 'd'eau, literally an “arm of water”, as it is an arm of the sea.
The Mi'kmaq Nation named it Pitu'pok, roughly translated as "long salt water". Read more...
Phonograph cylinders are the earliest commercial medium for recording and reproducing sound. Commonly known simply as "records" in their era of greatest popularity (c. 1896–1915), these hollow cylindrical objects have an audio recording engraved on the outside surface, which can be reproduced when they are played on a mechanical cylinder phonograph. In the 1910s, the competing disc record system triumphed in the marketplace to become the dominant commercial audio medium. Read more...
Thomas Etholen Selfridge (February 8, 1882 – September 17, 1908) was the first person to die in an airplane crash. A first lieutenant in the U.S. Army, he was also the first Active Duty member of the U.S. military to die in a crash while on duty. He was killed while seated as a passenger in the Wright Flyer, on a demonstration flight piloted by Orville Wright. Read more...
Visible Speech is a system of phonetic symbols developed by Alexander Melville Bell in 1867 to represent the position of the speech organs in articulating sounds. Bell was known internationally as a teacher of speech and proper elocution and an author of books on the subject. The system is composed of symbols that show the position and movement of the throat, tongue, and lips as they produce the sounds of language, and it is a type of phonetic notation. The system was used to aid the deaf in learning to speak.
In 1864 Melville promoted his first works on Visible Speech, in order to help the deaf both learn and improve upon their speech (since the profoundly deaf could not hear their own pronunciation). To help promote the language, Bell created two written short forms using his system of 29 modifiers and tones, 52 consonants, 36 vowels and a dozen diphthongs: they were named World English, which was similar to the International Phonetic Alphabet, and also Line Writing, used as a shorthand form for stenographers.
Melville's works on Visible Speech became highly notable, and were described by Édouard Séguin as being "...a greater invention than the telephone by his son, Alexander Graham Bell". Melville saw numerous applications for his invention, including its worldwide use as a universal language. However, although heavily promoted at the Second International Congress on Education of the Deaf in Milan, Italy in 1880, after a period of a dozen years or so in which it was applied to the education of the deaf, Visible Speech was found to be more cumbersome, and thus a hindrance, to the teaching of speech to the deaf, compared to other methods, and eventually faded from use. Read more...
Pioneers, a Volunteer Network, also known as the Telephone Pioneers of America, or simply as the Telephone Pioneers, is a non-profit charitable organization based in Denver, Colorado, U.S.A. It was founded in Boston in 1911 as the Telephone Pioneers of America, with 734 members, including Alexander Graham Bell who received membership card No. 1.
As of 2009 it has grown to an organization of about 620,000 members, consisting primarily of actively employed and retired employees in the telecommunications industry, making it one of the world's largest corporate volunteer organization. Pioneers volunteer more than 10 million hours annually responding to the individual needs of their communities throughout the United States and Canada. It is funded through company sponsors and public charitable donations. In the United States, the organization is registered as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Read more...
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Selected images
Photophone receiver, one half of Bell's wireless optical communication system, ca. 1880
The Bell Museum, Cape Breton, part of the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site
Bell, top right, providing pedagogical instruction to teachers at the Boston School for Deaf Mutes, 1871. Throughout his life, he referred to himself as "a teacher of the deaf".
Melville House, the Bells' first home in North America, now a National Historic Site of Canada
Bell HD-4 on a test run ca. 1919
Alexander Graham Bell, his wife Mabel Gardiner Hubbard, and their daughters Elsie (left) and Marian ca. 1885
Bell statue by A. E. Cleeve Horne, similar in style to the Lincoln Memorial, in the front portico of the Bell Telephone Building of Brantford, Ontario, The Telephone City. (Courtesy: Brantford Heritage Inventory, City of Brantford, Ontario, Canada)
Bell, an alumnus of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, receiving an honorary Doctor of Laws degree (LL.D.) at the university in 1906
A quote by Alexander Graham Bell engraved in the stone wall within the Peace Chapel of the International Peace Garden (in Manitoba Canada and North Dakota, USA).
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