Aleck (Alexander) Bell was born on March 3, 1847 in Edingburgh, Scotland. He was named after his grandfather. Aleck was interested in speech and communication from early childhood probably because both his grandfather and his father taught speech. Although his mother was deaf, she home schooled him and his two brothers until he was ten. When he was eleven, he took the middle name of Graham and attended high school which he finished in four years. He spent his fifteenth year with his grandfather in London. He claimed that year was the turning point of his whole career. It stirred a lifelong interest in books and learning and strong, moral ethics.

In 1870, after his two brothers had died of tuberculosis, he sailed with his parents to Canada His parents were concerned about him because he was not strong but his health improved after the move. Three years later he was appointed professor of “Vocal Physiology and Elocution “ at Boston University. Although he was also an inventor, the life long profession he claimed was “teacher of the deaf.”

1877 was an exciting year for Aleck in three ways. He married Mabel Hubbard, a deaf woman that could read lips, and he worked with Thomas Watson an expert electrician to develop the telephone. The famous words he uttered were, “Mr. Watson---Come here---I want to see you.“ His father-in-law filed for the patent because he could not be bothered. He said, “If my ideas are worth patenting, let others do it.” Bell and Watson along with Hubbard and Sanders, who provided the funds, formed the Bell Telephone Company in 1877.

In 1880, the French Government awarded him $10,000 for the renowned Volta Prize. The following year he established a laboratory in Washington, D.C. In 1883 the Volta Bureau was built there. It became the headquarters for the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf.

Although he continued to invent, his dedication to the deaf did not lessen. The 1900 census took him five years to complete because he worked on the statistics of the deaf. He knew that just because someone was deaf they were not dumb. He believed the deaf were intelligent, he claimed he could see it in their eyes. His mother, his wife, and Helen Keller were shining examples of this.

The Bell family owned hundreds of acres in Canada that reminded him of Scotland. They lived there from early spring to November to escape the activity of Washington, D. C. That is where he died August 2, 1922 at the age of 75. At the exact time of his burial all phone service in the United States was halted for one minute.
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