My Inventor

Hello there. My name is Telephone Dan and I have a wonderful story to tell you. It's a story about how the great inventor, Alexander Graham Bell, created me.

This is him, Alexander Graham Bell. He may not look like a big super hero, but he is the reason that I, and all other phones, exist today.

Alexander Graham Bell was born in Scottland on March 3, 1847. His father was a teacher and a famous speech expert and his mother was on her way to becoming completely deaf.

Alexander was extremely bright. He was only 12 years old when he invented his first machine, the wheat husker, in 1859.

One day while playing at a grain mill he noticed that the process for husking wheat was very slow, so he went home and made a machine that could perform the task much quicker!

He eventually went on to study anatomy and physiology at the University of London in England.

Alexander Graham Bell then moved to Quebec, Canada with his family. He was 23 at the time.

In 1871, Alexander moved to Boston, Massachusetts in the United States. Here, he opened The School of Vocal Physiology and Mechanics of Speech in 1872. At his school he taught deaf people how to speak using the oralism method that his father had created.

HOW TO SPEAK

Although helping the deaf and hearing impaired was one of Alexander Graham Bell's greatest passions, he was also driven by his passion to invent. When he was not at the school teaching the deaf, he spent his time working on creating a phonautograph. He desired to make sound waves visible.

This is my favorite part of the story! In May of 1874 Alexander Graham Bell began his work to create the first telephone. Behind me are some of his original plans.

He hired an assistant named Thomas Watson. Watson was a talented electrician and helped Alexander Graham Bell successfully create a functioning telephone.