47 Fun Facts About Alexander Graham Bell

Which greeting did Bell favour for answering the telephone, before Edison's 'hello' won out?

Ahoy: Edison backed 'hello' instead because, he wrote, it could be heard 10 to 20 feet away.

After a newborn son died in 1881, Bell designed a forerunner of which medical device?

The iron lung: his 'vacuum jacket' was an artificial respirator, built after the baby's lungs had failed.

What were the first intelligible words transmitted by Bell's telephone?

"Mr. Watson—Come here—I want to see you": so Bell's notebook has it, but Watson left 'to see' out of his notes, and it is often quoted that way.

In which city was Bell born on March 3, 1847?

Edinburgh: yet as a schoolboy there, the future inventor was by his own admission a poor student, prone to daydreaming.

Why did Bell's father let him take the middle name 'Graham'?

He begged to have one like his brothers: he chose 'Graham' because he admired Alexander Graham, a former pupil of his father's.

What did the 12-year-old Bell devise for his best friend's family flour mill?

A dehusking machine: he added brushes to the rotating paddles of a machine the mill already had.

Which two members of Bell's immediate family were deaf, profoundly shaping his life's work?

His mother and his wife: Mabel, deaf since a childhood illness, first came to him as a 15-year-old pupil.

What was the phonetic symbol system developed by Bell's father called?

Visible Speech: it was used to help deaf people learn to speak, and Bell himself went on to teach it to deaf pupils.

Inspired by a visit to Charles Wheatstone, what did young Bell and his brother build?

A talking mechanical head: when air was blown through its windpipe, it could say a few recognisable words.

What did visitors believe Bell's Skye Terrier could say after he manipulated its lips and vocal cords?

How are you, grandmama? Visitors believed the terrier said it once Bell had taught it to growl steadily and then shaped its lips by hand.

Which German physicist's book on tone convinced young Bell that people would soon 'talk by telegraph'?

Hermann von Helmholtz: the book also led Bell to study electricity, knowledge he would need for a speaking telegraph.

Which disease killed both of Bell's brothers and prompted the family's move to Canada in 1870?

Tuberculosis: with both brothers gone, his parents feared their last surviving son would succumb as well.

Near which Ontario town did the Bell family buy their farm at Tutelo Heights in 1870?

Brantford: it was at the family homestead there, in July 1874, that the idea for the telephone came to him.

Which famous pupil came to Bell as a young child?

Helen Keller: deaf and blind, she became a close friend of Bell's and visited his home.

What was the 'harmonic telegraph' Bell worked on in the early 1870s meant to do?

Send several messages on one wire: each message would travel at its own pitch, and the work led Bell on to transmitting speech.

In which city did Bell show off his telephone at the 1876 Centennial Exposition?

Philadelphia: Bell only took a booth at the fair at the urging of his fiancée, Mabel.

What did Joseph Henry reply when Bell said he lacked the electrical knowledge to build his invention?

"Get it!": Henry, who had told Bell he had 'the germ of a great invention', also advised him not to publish until it worked.

Which rival inventor filed a telephone caveat at the US Patent Office the same day as Bell's application?

Elisha Gray: which of the two reached the office first is still disputed, and Gray later challenged Bell's patent.

In 2002, the US House of Representatives honoured which Italian inventor's work on the telephone?

Antonio Meucci: the resolution said that if he could have paid the $10 fee to keep his caveat after 1874, no patent could have gone to Bell.

Bell's August 1876 call over eight miles to Paris, Ontario, is often called what?

The world's first long-distance call: it came through on a telephone Bell had set up in a Paris shoe store.

Which company turned down a chance to buy Bell's telephone patent outright?

Western Union: it soon backed a rival telephone system, but settled with Bell and quit the telephone business in 1879.

Which monarch did Bell demonstrate the telephone to in January 1878?

Queen Victoria: she asked to buy the instruments, and Bell offered her a set of telephones made expressly for her.

Which emperor met Bell at the 1876 Centennial Exposition, as Bell demonstrated his telephone?

Pedro II of Brazil: he is said to have exclaimed 'My God, it talks!', and soon had telephones installed back home in Brazil.

Which British physicist was one of the judges when Bell showed his telephone at the 1876 Centennial?

Sir William Thomson: the future Lord Kelvin hailed the telephone as 'the greatest by far of all the marvels of the electric telegraph'.

Bell's first ceremonial transcontinental telephone call in 1915 went from New York to which city?

San Francisco: the 3,400-mile call came nearly four decades after Bell's first two-way conversation, held over about two miles of wire.

In 1888, which court upheld Bell's telephone patents against their challengers?

The US Supreme Court: with two justices sitting out, it sided with Bell by just four votes to three.

What wedding present did Bell give Mabel in 1877?

Almost all his shares: he kept only ten, and Mabel went on to manage the family's finances.

In 1903, Bell travelled to Genoa to bring which man's remains to Washington?

James Smithson: a US Cavalry escort took the coffin to the Smithsonian, the institution his fortune had founded.

In 1882, Bell, a British subject from birth, became a naturalised citizen of which country?

The United States: yet he spent his summers in Nova Scotia for decades, and died and was buried there.

What does Beinn Bhreagh, the name of Bell's Nova Scotia estate, mean in Gaelic?

The estate overlooks Bras d'Or Lake near Baddeck on Cape Breton Island; he is buried on top of the mountain.

Which invention did Bell consider his greatest, even greater than the telephone?

The photophone: in 1880 it sent a voice about 200 metres on a beam of light, a forerunner of today's fibre optics.

Bell developed an early metal detector in 1881 to find a bullet in which wounded US president?

James A. Garfield: the probe never found the bullet, and Garfield later died of infection.

Which shape of cell did Bell stack together to build his giant kites?

Tetrahedral: Bell chose the shape because its cells joined into structures that were both light and strong.

Which aviation group did Bell head, formed at Baddeck in October 1907 with his wife's money?

The Aerial Experiment Association: it was Mabel who suggested turning Bell's young helpers into a formal research group.

Which aircraft made Canada's first powered aeroplane flight, from the ice at Baddeck in February 1909?

The Silver Dart: yet when it was later demonstrated to the army at Camp Petawawa, the government lost interest.

Which animals did Bell spend decades breeding on his Nova Scotia estate?

Sheep: the breeding work grew out of Bell's deep interest in heredity.

The Bell Telephone Company, founded in 1877, evolved into which telecoms giant?

AT&T: its Bell System held a near-monopoly on US telephone service until an antitrust breakup in the 1980s.

Which publication did Bell's money help keep afloat in its early years?

Science: it later became the official journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in 1900.

Which French prize, worth 50,000 francs, did Bell win in 1880 for the telephone?

The Volta Prize: Bell used the money to set up a laboratory in Washington, whose profits later funded a bureau for the deaf.

What happened for one minute as Bell's funeral ended in 1922?

Every phone in North America was silenced: a fitting tribute to a man who refused to have a telephone in his own study.

Who issued a commemorative £1 note for the 150th anniversary of Bell's birth in 1997?

Royal Bank of Scotland: its note even shows sign language, a nod to the work with deaf people that he valued above his inventions.

Which Canadian detective series has featured Bell, played by John Tench?

Murdoch Mysteries: in one episode, Bell helps Murdoch find out who killed an inventor at a convention.

Bell served from 1898 to 1903 as the second president of which body?

National Geographic Society: he hired Gilbert Grosvenor, and together they made photographs central to its magazine.

How did Bell's Washington laboratory improve Edison's phonograph?

Wax instead of tinfoil, and incised grooves: engraving the sound into wax gave a clearer recording than Edison's indented foil.

In June 1875, what did Bell's assistant pluck, making a sound that pointed Bell toward the telephone?

A stuck reed: with no transmitter switched on, its vibration alone induced a current that carried the sound.

In 1871, Bell moved to which city to teach at a school for deaf children?

Boston: the fathers of two of his pupils there, Thomas Sanders and Gardiner Hubbard, went on to fund his experiments.

The Bells opened a school at their Nova Scotia estate using which teaching method?

Montessori: the Bells became keen promoters of the method, which had only just reached North America.