ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL

Every time Canadians make a telephone call, they can afford to feel a little national pride.

Alexander Graham Bell

Alexander Graham Bell, the man considered to be one of the most important inventors of the 19th century, was born March 3, 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Even though he was not born in Canada, many of his greatest scientific discoveries were made on Canadian soil.

Greatness was in his blood. His grandfather, Alexander Bell, was a respected orator and part-time actor in London, England. He went on to be an influential speech teacher, producing several key writings on the subjects of elocution and speech pathologies.

Bell's father, Alexander Melville, was also a pioneer in the field of elocution, developing "Visible Speech," a phonetic system that used a visual alphabet of symbols of the lip, throat and tongue positions needed to produce certain sounds. The system was instrumental in teaching deaf students to learn how to speak.

The inventing bug bit Alexander Graham Bell early. Described as a grave and serious boy with piercing black eyes, Bell was a bright and precocious student. Perhaps because his mother was a gifted pianist, Alexander displayed an aptitude for all things associated with sound and pitch; indeed, many of his first experiments involved sound. At the age of 14, he and his brother made a speaking apparatus using the voice box of a dead sheep; as well, Bell learned that if he manipulated the mouth and vocal chords of his pet terrier, he could make the dog's growls sound like words.

This early curiosity marked the beginning of Bell's lifelong fascination with sound and speech. Alexander would continue to pursue these interests as a student at universities in both Edinburgh and London, eventually deciding to follow in his father's footsteps as an elocution teacher.

After Alexander's two brothers died of tuberculosis, the Bells decided they should relocate Alexander, who had contracted the disease as well, to a more suitable climate. In 1870, the family immigrated to Canada, settling in Brantford, Ontario, where Alexander fully recovered.

At the age of 23, Alexander relocated to Boston, Massachusetts where he worked to publicize his father's Visible Speech system. In 1872, Bell founded his own school for deaf-mutes and shortly thereafter, he was appointed Professor of Vocal Physiology at Boston University. During this productive period, the highly sensitive Alexander suffered from intense headaches brought on by stress and overwork, and he would often retreat to his family's Brantford estate to rest in the quiet, peaceful surroundings.

It was in Brantford that Bell's greatest idea was born. While relaxing atop the bluff he referred to as "his dreaming place," Bell allowed himself to brainstorm about a "harmonic telegraph" device he was working on. Alexander figured that if he could make an electric current undulate the same way air does when sound is produced, he could definitely transmit speech telegraphically. This daydream became the basis for the invention of the telephone.

Feeling inspired, Bell returned to Boston and began work on his invention. Always clumsy with his hands, Bell needed an assistant to actualize his idea and he found the perfect match in Thomas Watson, a gifted young electrician and model maker. The two laboured on the project for almost a year until a happy accident occurred on June 2, 1875. While Watson worked to loosen a reed that was wound around an electromagnet, Bell heard a noticeable twang, and realized this effect could be recreated with the human voice.

More tinkering followed and the first - now infamous - spoken words, "Mr. Watson, come here, I need you," were transmitted via telegraph on March 10, 1876. Legend has it Bell was so excited by his success that he promptly spilled battery acid on his clothes. After patenting the invention and staging a demonstration of the telephone at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876, Bell went on to form the Bell Telephone Company in 1877.

Despite this remarkable achievement, Bell maintained he was much prouder of his accomplishments as a teacher of deaf mutes than of the invention of the telephone. Throughout his life, he worked closely with the American Association for the Promotion of the Teaching of Speech to ensure deaf people were not marginalized or excluded from everyday life.

In the same year he established the Bell Telephone Company, Bell married one of his former deaf pupils, Mabel S. Hubbard and the couple soon started a family. While vacationing in Canada, Bell discovered Baddeck, Nova Scotia. It reminded him of places from his childhood in Scotland and he purchased land in Baddeck, building a summer home called Beinn Bhreagh.

The Baddeck estate was a source of inspiration for Bell. Free from financial constraints, he devoted the remainder of his life to inventing, and many of his most inspired creations were developed at Beinn Bhreagh. Though he is best known for the telephone, Bell was responsible for several other key inventions, including a photophone (which transmitted speech via a ray of light); an induction balance used to locate pieces of metal in the human body; a precursor of the iron lung; a wax-recording cylinder (the basis for the phonograph); and a hydrofoil boat, known as the HD-4, that was the fastest boat in the world for many years.

Thirty years after Bell's death on August 2, 1922, the Canadian government constructed the Alexander Graham Bell National Historical Site in Baddeck, Nova Scotia, which currently houses the world's largest collection of Bell artefacts and archives.

Bell once remarked "Leave the beaten track behind occasionally and dive into the woods. Every time you do you will be certain to find something you have never seen before."

Canadians are most grateful he followed his own advice.