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Alexander Graham Bell was a scientific genius, master of many inventions and a great innovator. He was the inventor of the telephone and various other inventions.
Place of Birth: Alexander Graham Bell was born on 3rd March 1847 at Edinburgh in Scotland. His parents were Alexander Melville Bell and Eliza Grace Symonds Bell.Alexander Graham Bell birthday is celebrated as one among the Famous birthdays in march, on that day birthday gifts, birthday cards, pictures ofAlexander Graham Bell are distributed or supplied among the school children.
Personal Details: Alexander Graham Bell’s father, grandfather and brother all were involved in study and work on speech and elocution. His mother and wife were deaf and he thus, associated himself with research on hearing and speech. This was why he is often called as the 'father of the deaf'. His wife, Mabel Hubbard, gave him four children. Two sons died in infancy and he was left with only two daughters.
Career: From his very young years, Graham Bell expressed an interest in the world around him. At a young age of 12, he invented a device to remove the husk from wheat and this was used successfully for many years. Bell, thus, became a scientist and an inventor. He worked intensively on research in the fields of speech and hearing and introduced the visible speech system to the Boston school for Deaf Mutes, American Asylum for Deaf Mutes and many more.
In the month of October in 1872, Alexander Graham Bell opened a school for deaf people at Boston. This was called the 'Vocal Physiology and Mechanics of speech’ and consisted of 30 pupils, He also worked as a private tutor and one of his famous pupils was Helen Keller. Helen Keller was unable to speak, hear or see. Later, he became a Boston University school of oratory professor in vocal Physiology and Elocution. Even when he was a professor, he continued his intrinsic research in sound.
Characteristics: Bell was a very hard working person who spent his entire days in experimentation. He spent his entire day and evenings in taking classes in the University and in private tutoring. Then, he sat up late in the night working on his experiments. However, this detrained his health and thus, he had to give up teaching. He retained only two students and both helped him in many ways. One of them, Mabel Hubbard, later became his wife.
Accomplishments: Bell was awarded the first American patent for the invention of the telephone in 1876. It is said that Antonio Marcie was actually the real inventor of the telephone but he did not have any money to protect his invention. Bells groundbreaking research made him invent and innovate many other things too. He did a lot of work in hydrofoils and aeronautics too. Another queer character of Bell was he hated to be disturbed when he was in his study. So, he refused to place a telephone in his study.
Initiatives: Alexander Graham Bell founded the National Geographic society in 1888 along with some other members. Bell was the Chairman of the board of scientific advisors to the Eugenics Record office in New York from 1912 to 1918. He also served as the honorary president of the second international Eugenics congress held under the American Museums of Natural History win 1921.
Awards: Alexander Graham Bell was awarded the Volta Prize in 1880 of 50,000 francs for the invention of the telephone. Along with Gardiner Hubbard, Graham Bell established a publication called 'Science' in 1883. The French Government decorated him as the Legion d’honneur (Legion of Honor). The Albert Medal was awarded by Royal society of Arts in 1902. The University of Wurzburg granted Bell a Ph.D.
Bell’s heath suffered a lot because of his intense workaholic nature. He died of pernicious anemia on the 2nd of August, 1922. Upon the death of Bell, all the American
Telephones stopped their dying for one minute as tributes to the great man "whose yearning to communicate made them possible". |
