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Alexander Graham Bell was born in 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland to Alexander Melville Bell and Eliza Grace Symonds Bell. His father, Melville, was an author, a teacher and had invented visible speech. Bell’s mother, Eliza, was deaf but that did not stop her from being an accomplished pianist. Both of his parents had a significant impact throughout his life. Another influential person in Bell's life was his grandfather, Alexander Bell, an elocutionist who taught Bell much about elocution, Shakespeare, treatments of speech impediments, and about general morality. These were some of the most inspirational teachers and motivators in Bell's life. They helped encourage Bell in all of his aspirations. Eliza, despite her disability, pursued to keep her son humble and aware of struggles that goes beyond their own.
Education & Subsequent Years Bell in his early age was mostly educated at home by his parents. He did attend school for two years in Royal High School. Later he took a few vocal anatomy lecture classes at the University of Edinburgh and the University of London. In 1870, Bell and his family had moved to Canada because it seemed that everyone in his family’s health was aggravating in Scotland. Both of Bell’s brothers had died in the duration of five years and Bell’s health was also weakening. Therefore, they moved to Canada, but soon after Bell received a teaching position at the Pemberton Avenue School for the Deaf in Boston and he moved to Boston.
While working in Pemberton as a professor Bell began experimenting with a harmonic telegraph, an experiment that would later change the face of the earth. During day time, he would teach his students and at nightfall he would stay up researching and experimenting his ideas. After years of working on his ideas, he created a machine that could transmit indistinct, voice-like sounds, later known as the telephone. His success with the telephone financially opened many other doors for him. With his earning from the telephone, he built labs, performed experiments in other subjects and founded The Aerial Experiment Association. Moreover, he didn't abandon his thoughts of innovating. In 1892, Bell created a metal vacuum jacket after the death of his son due to respiratory problems. |
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"When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us."
- Alexander Graham Bell