Bell, Alexander Graham (1847–1922)

Scottish-born US scientist and inventor. He was the first person ever to transmit speech from one point to another by electrical means. This invention – the telephone – was made in 1876, when Bell transmitted speech from Paris, Ontario, to Brantford, Ontario (a distance of 13 km/8 mi). Later Bell experimented with a type of phonograph and, in aeronautics, invented the tricycle undercarriage.

Bell also invented a photophone, which used selenium crystals to apply the telephone principle to transmitting words in a beam of light. He thus achieved the first wireless transmission of speech.

Born in Edinburgh, Bell was educated at the universities of Edinburgh and London and studied under his father, who developed a method for teaching the deaf to speak. In 1870 the family moved to Canada and Bell went to the USA, where he opened a school in 1872 for teachers of the deaf in Boston. In 1873 he began teaching vocal physiology at Boston University. He became a US citizen in 1882.

Bell also worked on converting seawater to drinking water and on air conditioning and sheep breeding.

Bell was born in Edinburgh, where his grandfather was a speech tutor. As a boy he constructed an automaton simulating the human organs of speech, using rubber, cotton, and a bellows. He was educated at the universities of Edinburgh and London, and in 1870 went first to Canada and then to the USA, where he opened a school for teachers of the deaf in Boston and in 1873 became professor of vocal physiology at the university. With the money he had made from his telephone system, Bell set up a laboratory in Nova Scotia, Canada; in 1880 he established, in addition, the Volta Laboratory in Washington DC.

There, Bell patented the gramophone and wax recording cylinder, which were commercially successful improvements on Thomas Edison's first phonograph and cylinders of metal foil. The laboratory also experimented with flat disc records, electroplating records, and impressing permanent magnetic fields on records – the embryonic tape recorder.

In 1881, Bell developed two telephonic devices for locating metallic masses (usually bullets) in the human body. One, an induction balance method, was first tried out on President Garfield, who was assassinated that year, while the other, a probe, was widely used until the advent of X-rays. Bell also built hydrofoil speedboats and tetrahedral kites capable of carrying a person. He invented an air-cooling system, a way of desalinating sea water, the forerunner of the iron lung, and a sorting machine for punch-coded census cards.

Bell became a US citizen in 1882.