Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the first telephone in 1876.
Can’t imagine a day without your phone? You have Alexander Graham Bell to thank for that. He invented the first telephone on March 7, 1876 nearly 150 years ago. To honour his contributions to science and technology, March 7 is celebrated as Alexander Graham Bell Day.
It was on this day that the first words were spoken over a telephone. “Mr. Watson, come here, I want you,” Alexander Graham Bell called out to his assistant, Thomas A. Watson. Both were scientists and they worked on the design and patent of the first practical telephone.
About Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1847, as the second of three sons to his parents. Since both hid brothers Melville and Edward had middle names and he didn’t, he got himself one at the age of 10: Graham. Quite the little inventor, he created a device to de-husk wheat for his neighbour’s grain mill. The gadget was used for years in the mill.
Encouraged by his mother to study literature and music, he became the family pianist at 16. He and his brother tried their hand at building a talking robot. It was at that time he joined his father in his work for the hearing impaired. He was deeply affected by his mother’s gradual hearing loss.
Bell began trying his hand at a device for telegraph transmission of several messages. Then he got interested in transmitting human voice by electricity. At an exhibition in Philadelphia, Bell demonstrated the telephone and Brazil’s Emperor Don Pedro II exclaimed in delight, “My God, it talks!” A microphone, invention of Thomas Edison, was added to the gadget and one didn’t have to shout any more on the phone to be heard.
Within ten years of the invention, over 1,05,000 people in the U.S. alone owned a telephone and Bell became a hero. However, Bell himself did not owe a telephone as he didn’t want to be distracted from his scientific work. He would often describe himself simply as “teacher of the deaf”.
Bell’s other inventions
Following the shooting of the U.S. President James A. Garfield in July 1881, Bell got to work on what he called an electrical bullet probe. He improvised on American inventor Thomas Edison’s phonograph and received a patent in 1886 for his gramophone, a device that could record and playback sound.
He was one of the founding members of the National Geographic Society in 1888, served as its president during the turn of the century and was involved in making the society’s journal National Geographic, a prominent publication. He helped launch the journal Science that later became the official publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Bell was also drawn towards aviation as well and continued experimenting in the field even after the Wright brothers had successfully achieved powered, controlled flight in 1903.
Also read: When Bell(s) went silent
What happened to the first telephone?
For decades after Bell’s death, the whereabouts of his first telephone was unknown. Bell had gifted the first telephone to his childhood friend James Murray, the first editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, in gratitude for teaching him acoustics and electricity during their Edinburgh days.
Mr. Murray had left this device at his Oxford house attic. But when this attic was searched in the 1980s when it was learnt that it could house Telephone Number One, nothing was found.
It is believed that soldiers who had stayed in the house during World War II had used everything that they could find in the attic as firewood to keep themselves warm on an especially cold day. If this were true, the first telephone could well have gone up in flames.
Published – March 07, 2025 10:59 am IST
