Alexander Graham Bell was a Scottish-born American scientist, inventor, and engineer. He is known for patented the first practical telephone.
Alexander Graham Bell Net Worth
Alexander Graham Bell ’s net worth is reported to be around $100 million. He invented the telephone and refined the phonograph. He is also known for co-founding the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, more commonly known as AT&T, in 1885.
Bell also worked as a teacher for the deaf. He had extensive research on hearing devices. He also had major contributions in the field of aeronautics, hydrofoils, and optical telecommunications.
He had a huge influence on the founding of the National Geographic Society, and served as the organization’s president from January 7, 1898, until 1903.
Personal Life
Alexander Graham Bell was born on March 3, 1847, in Edinburgh, Scotland. His father was a professor and a phonetician named Alexander Melville Bell and his mother was Eliza Grace Bell. He has two brothers, Melville James Belland Edward Charles Bell, who both died of tuberculosis. His original birth name was only Alexander Bell, so when he was 10 he pleaded for his father to give him a middle name just like his brothers. When he was 11, his father gave him the name Graham.
As a child, he was very curious. He gathered various botanical specimens and did experiments.
He entered the Royal High School at Edinburgh. He received low grades and showed indifference. He left school at age 15 without graduating. In 1865, their family moved to London. In 1868, Bell got admitted at the University College London, but he did not complete his studies, because their family immigrated to Canada after his brothers’ deaths. They settled at Brantford, Ontario.
Professional Career
Alexander Graham Bell moved to Boston in 1871, where he taught at the Boston School for Deaf Mutes. He also taught at the Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton, Massachusetts, and at the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut.
After six months in Boston, Bell returned to Brantford and worked on harmonic telegraph.
He returned to Boston to continue teaching. One of his students was Mabel Hubbard who is the daughter of Gardiner Greene Hubbard, the founder of the Clarke School. Mabel and Alexander fell in love.
Bell’s father helped him set up his private practice. The School of Vocal Physiology and Mechanics of Speech opened in October 1872. One of his pupils was Helen Keller when she was a young child.
In 1872, he became professor of Vocal Physiology and Elocution at the Boston University School of Oratory. He spent a lot of time in Boston, and went home to Brantford during summers. While teaching, he continued experimenting on how to transmit several telegraph messages simultaneously using a single wire.
On March 7, 1876, the U.S. Patent Office gave Bell the patent for the telephone. Gardiner Hubbard, his father in law, helped establish the Bell Telephone Company in 1877 to sell Bell’s telephone.
Was Alexander Graham Bell Married?
Alexander Graham Bell was married to Mabel Hubbard. She was Bell’s student who became deaf at age 5.
They got married on July 11, 1877 and had two daughters, Elsie and Marian, and two sons who died at infancy.
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