Biography of Alexander Bell:

Alexander Graham Bell was born in 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was educated at the University of Edinburgh and University College, London. He worked in London with his father where he taught the deaf to talk. In 1870 he went to Canada and in 1871 he gave lectures to the teachers of deaf students in Boston and other cities. During the next few years he conducted his own school of vocal physiology in Boston, he also lectured at Boston University and also worked on his inventions. In 1865 Bell believed that speech could be transmitted by electric waves. By March 10, 1876 he developped an apparatus where the first complete sentence "Watson, come here: I want you," was clearly heard by his assistant. The first demonstration took place before the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Boston on May 10, 1876, and a more significant one, at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition the same year, introduced the telephone to the world. The Bell Telephone Company was organized in July, 1877. With the 50,000 francs awarded to him as a Volta prize for his invention, he established in Washington D.C., the Volta laboratory, where the first successful sound recorder, the Graphophone , was produced. Bell invented the photophone, which transmitted speech by light rays; the audiometer, which was another invention for the deaf, the induction balance, used to find metallic objects in the human body, and the flat and the cylindrical wax recorders for phonographs. He was president of the National Geographic Society from 1898 to 1903 and was made a regent of the Smithsonian Institution in 1898. After 1895 his interest was occupied largely by aviation. He invented the tetrahedral kite. The Aerial Experiment Association, founded under his patronage in 1907, brought together G. H. Curtiss, F. W. Baldwin, and others, who invented the aileron principle and developed the

hydroplane. Applying the principles of aeronautics to marine propulsion, his group started work on hydrofoil boats, which travel above the water at high speeds. His final full-sized "hydrodrome", developed in 1917, reached speeds in excess of 113 km/hr and for many years was the fastest boat in the world. He died on August 2, 1922, at Baddeck, where a museum containing many of his original inventions is maintained by the Canadian government.