Alexander Graham Bell Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
47 free Alexander Graham Bell trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Alexander Graham Bell was awarded the first US patent for the telephone on 7 March 1876, refused to keep one in his study, and considered a wireless light-beam telephone his real masterpiece. He taught the deaf, tutored Helen Keller, hunted a bullet in President Garfield, flew giant tetrahedral kites, set a world water-speed record with a hydrofoil at 72 and bred sheep for thirty years hoping for extra nipples. This quiz covers the whole restless life. Easy questions ask what he invented, what he first said down the line and where he was born. Harder ones want the middle name he begged for at ten, the dog he taught to "talk", the rival who filed a caveat the same morning, the sum Western Union turned down, the queen he demonstrated to at Osborne House, the pseudonym he used in National Geographic, the Gaelic name of his Nova Scotia estate and the aircraft that made the first flight in Canada. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's biography of Alexander Graham Bell, and each question carries the sentence that supports it. Made for history and science teachers, telephone nerds and quiz hosts. Related quizzes: Thomas Edison, Inventions and Famous Scientists.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which greeting did Bell favour for answering the telephone, before Edison's 'hello' won out?
Ahoy
Ahoy: Edison backed 'hello' instead because, he wrote, it could be heard 10 to 20 feet away.
Q 02After a newborn son died in 1881, Bell designed a forerunner of which medical device?
The iron lung
The iron lung: his 'vacuum jacket' was an artificial respirator, built after the baby's lungs had failed.
Q 03What were the first intelligible words transmitted by Bell's telephone?
"Mr. Watson—Come here—I want to see you"
"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.
Q 04In which city was Bell born on March 3, 1847?
Edinburgh
Edinburgh: yet as a schoolboy there, the future inventor was by his own admission a poor student, prone to daydreaming.
Q 05Why did Bell's father let him take the middle name 'Graham'?
He begged to have one like his brothers
He begged to have one like his brothers: he chose 'Graham' because he admired Alexander Graham, a former pupil of his father's.
Q 06What did the 12-year-old Bell devise for his best friend's family flour mill?
A dehusking machine
A dehusking machine: he added brushes to the rotating paddles of a machine the mill already had.
Q 07Which two members of Bell's immediate family were deaf, profoundly shaping his life's work?
His mother and his wife
His mother and his wife: Mabel, deaf since a childhood illness, first came to him as a 15-year-old pupil.
Q 08What was the phonetic symbol system developed by Bell's father called?
Visible Speech
Visible Speech: it was used to help deaf people learn to speak, and Bell himself went on to teach it to deaf pupils.
Q 09Inspired by a visit to Charles Wheatstone, what did young Bell and his brother build?
A talking mechanical head
A talking mechanical head: when air was blown through its windpipe, it could say a few recognisable words.
Q 10What did visitors believe Bell's Skye Terrier could say after he manipulated its lips and vocal cords?
How are you, grandmama?
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.
Q 11Which German physicist's book on tone convinced young Bell that people would soon 'talk by telegraph'?
Hermann von Helmholtz
Hermann von Helmholtz: the book also led Bell to study electricity, knowledge he would need for a speaking telegraph.
Q 12Which disease killed both of Bell's brothers and prompted the family's move to Canada in 1870?
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis: with both brothers gone, his parents feared their last surviving son would succumb as well.
Q 13Near which Ontario town did the Bell family buy their farm at Tutelo Heights in 1870?
Brantford
Brantford: it was at the family homestead there, in July 1874, that the idea for the telephone came to him.
Q 21Which company turned down a chance to buy Bell's telephone patent outright?
Western Union
Western Union: it soon backed a rival telephone system, but settled with Bell and quit the telephone business in 1879.
Q 22Which monarch did Bell demonstrate the telephone to in January 1878?
Queen Victoria
Queen Victoria: she asked to buy the instruments, and Bell offered her a set of telephones made expressly for her.
Q 23Which emperor met Bell at the 1876 Centennial Exposition, as Bell demonstrated his telephone?
Pedro II of Brazil
Pedro II of Brazil: he is said to have exclaimed 'My God, it talks!', and soon had telephones installed back home in Brazil.
Q 14Which famous pupil came to Bell as a young child?
Helen Keller
Helen Keller: deaf and blind, she became a close friend of Bell's and visited his home.
Q 15What was the 'harmonic telegraph' Bell worked on in the early 1870s meant to do?
Send several messages on one wire
Send several messages on one wire: each message would travel at its own pitch, and the work led Bell on to transmitting speech.
Q 16In which city did Bell show off his telephone at the 1876 Centennial Exposition?
Philadelphia
Philadelphia: Bell only took a booth at the fair at the urging of his fiancée, Mabel.
Q 17What did Joseph Henry reply when Bell said he lacked the electrical knowledge to build his invention?
"Get it!"
"Get it!": Henry, who had told Bell he had 'the germ of a great invention', also advised him not to publish until it worked.
Q 18Which rival inventor filed a telephone caveat at the US Patent Office the same day as Bell's application?
Elisha Gray
Elisha Gray: which of the two reached the office first is still disputed, and Gray later challenged Bell's patent.
Q 19In 2002, the US House of Representatives honoured which Italian inventor's work on the telephone?
Antonio Meucci
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.
Q 20Bell's August 1876 call over eight miles to Paris, Ontario, is often called what?
The world's first long-distance call
The world's first long-distance call: it came through on a telephone Bell had set up in a Paris shoe store.
Q 24Which British physicist was one of the judges when Bell showed his telephone at the 1876 Centennial?
Sir William Thomson
Sir William Thomson: the future Lord Kelvin hailed the telephone as 'the greatest by far of all the marvels of the electric telegraph'.
Q 25Bell's first ceremonial transcontinental telephone call in 1915 went from New York to which city?
San Francisco
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.
Q 26In 1888, which court upheld Bell's telephone patents against their challengers?
The US Supreme Court
The US Supreme Court: with two justices sitting out, it sided with Bell by just four votes to three.
Q 27What wedding present did Bell give Mabel in 1877?
Almost all his shares
Almost all his shares: he kept only ten, and Mabel went on to manage the family's finances.
Q 28In 1903, Bell travelled to Genoa to bring which man's remains to Washington?
James Smithson
James Smithson: a US Cavalry escort took the coffin to the Smithsonian, the institution his fortune had founded.
Q 29In 1882, Bell, a British subject from birth, became a naturalised citizen of which country?
The United States
The United States: yet he spent his summers in Nova Scotia for decades, and died and was buried there.
Q 30What does Beinn Bhreagh, the name of Bell's Nova Scotia estate, mean in Gaelic?
Beautiful Mountain
The estate overlooks Bras d'Or Lake near Baddeck on Cape Breton Island; he is buried on top of the mountain.