Alexander Graham Bell

Alexander Graham Bell, American inventor and teacher of the deaf, most famous for his invention of the telephone. Since the age of 18, Bell had been working on the idea of transmitting speech. In 1874, while working on a multiple telegraph, he developed the basic ideas for the telephone. His experiments with his assistant Thomas Watson finally proved successful on March 10, 1876, when the first complete sentence was transmitted: "Watson, come here; I want you.".


Inventor: Alexander Graham Bell

Criteria; First practical. Modern prototype. Entrepreneur.

Birth: March 3, 1847, in Edinburgh, Scotland

Death: August 2, 1922, at Baddeck, Nova Scotia, Canada

Nationality: Scottish

Invention: telephone on March 10, 1876

Function: noun / tel·e·phone

Definition: An instrument which converts sound, specifically the human voice, to electrical impulses of various frequencies and then back to a tone that sounds like the original voice.

Patent(s): 174,465 (US) issued March 7, 1876 filed February 14, 1876
161,739 (US) issued April 6, 1875 filed March 6, 1875