Alexander Graham Bell

"The conception of the telephone took place at my father's residence in Brantford in 1874...the experiment of August 10, 1876 made from Brantford to Paris was the first transmission, the first clear intelligible transmission of speech over the real line, that had ever been made." 

(Alexander Graham Bell, March 13, 1916)

It's hard to believe that an idea as revolutionary as the telephone, was conceived on the banks of the Grand River just six kilometres from my house in Brantford, Ontario.  Alexander Graham Bell, after suffering from tuberculosis, had recently immigrated with his parents from Scotland to Canada.  In 1876, Bell, recently relocated to Boston, Massachusetts, spoke for the first time on his new invention, the telephone, using the famous words "Mr. Watson, come here!  I want to see you!".  Later that year, from his parents' homestead in Brantford, he placed the first telephone call over a telegraph line to nearby Paris, Ontario.  The first public showing of Bell's new invention came at the Philadelphia World's Fair in 1876.

Catalogue for the Philadelphia World's Fair 1876 courtesy 

https://www.pinterest.com/jaynejacobson/peder/.

Like any new invention, the telephone had some wrinkles to iron out, evident in the letter Alexander Graham Bell penned to his parents two years later (http://alinefromlinda.blogspot.ca/2015/09/fledgling-invention-hit-by-lightning-at.html).  After moving away to accept a job as a professor at Boston University, Bell continued to make the journey back to Brantford every summer to visit his parents.  It was during his vacation that he would work on his famous invention.

In 1913, with the approaching of the World Exposition in San Francisco, the AT & T President suggested building a transcontinental telephone system.  The system, completed six months before the Exposition, connected Bell in New York City, with his trusty assistant, Thomas Watson, in Los Angeles (http://alinefromlinda.blogspot.ca/2014/01/the-transcontinental-telephone-system.html).

At Bell's death, in 1922, thirteen million telephones had been sold.  In 1947, on the 100th anniversary of Bell's birth, Canada Post issued a stamp to commemorate the inventor.

http://postalhistorycorner.blogspot.ca/2012/12/1947-alexander-graham-bell.html

"Fledgling Invention" Hit by Lightning at Tutelo Heights

"The date of this letter, just two years after the patent was obtained, demonstrates the exceptional progress and evolution of this fledgling invention." (Bobby Livingston)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9026531/Alexander-Graham-Bell-letter-to-parents-about-telephone-sells-for-92000.html

It was on the shores of the Grand River at Tutelo Heights, Ontario, named after a Native tribe who migrated there after the Revolutionary War, that Alexander Graham Bell first conceived the idea for the telephone in 1874.  It was in a Boston laboratory that Bell, speaking to his assistant Thomas Watson, first transmitted speech through a telephone in March of 1876.  That July, back in Tutelo Heights, near Brantford, Bell first successfully transmitted speech over a telegraph line.  Four months later, the inventor, now a professor of speech at Boston University, received the telephone patent (http://www.brantford.ca/residents/WorkingLearning/Learning/BrantfordHistory/Pages/AlexanderGrahamBellBrantford.aspx).

Two years later, in 1878, Alexander Graham Bell wrote a letter to his parents in their Tutelo Heights home to demonstrate the ins and outs of telephone wiring.  He explained:  "I was quite troubled by the accident at Tutelo Heights," referring to a recent lightning strike on his parents' 10.5 acre property.  "The accident shows that the earth terminals of your telephone line are defective for the current found a shorter path to the ground through two of your poles than by the proper path." (www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2083066/Alexander-Graham-Bell-drawing-telephone-auction.html) 

Bobby Livingston, a representative for the auction company which sold Bell's letter in 2012, stated: "The early mechanics of the device [telephone] were complicated and required extreme attention to detail, without which results could be disastrous -- even fatal."  Bell wanted to make sure that his parents did not have such results.  He even included a detailed diagram of two telephones in his letter.  

Even so, Livingston points out the success of Bell's contraption:  "The date of this letter, just two years after the patent was obtained, demonstrates the exceptional progress and evolution of this fledgling invention."

Bell Homestead at Tutelo Heights, now part of Brantford, circa 1870's, courtesy http://www.museumsontario.ca/museum/Bell-Homestead-National-Histor.