Effect of Alexander Graham Bell on Today's Society, with Bibliography

The importance of Alexander Graham Bell on today's society is visible, or rather audible, everywhere. First and most importantly, Alexander Graham Bell was a prolific teacher of the deaf. He considered this to be his true life's work, but only one of the many important things he did. With his great research of speech and sound, he would become one of the greatest inventors of all time. His own definition of an inventor is "a man who looks upon the world and is not contented with things as they are. He wants to improve whatever he sees, he wants to benefit the world." suits him well. Every thing that he did had an impact on someone, and it was true that he wanted to improve the world.
Alexander Graham Bell was born Aleck Bell in Edinburgh, Scotland, Melville and Eliza Symonds Bell. His father, Melville Bell, invented Visible Speech, a code of symbols for all spoken sounds that was used in teaching deaf people to speak. His mother, Eliza Bell, was deaf, this lead Melville and Alexander to exploration in the subject of teaching deaf people. Alexander Bell studied at Edinburgh University in 1864 and worked with his father at University College, London, from 1868-70. During this time, he became deeply interested in the study of sound and the mechanics of speech, inspired in part by the audio experiments of German physicist Hermann Von Helmholtz, which gave Bell the idea of telegraphing speech.
When young Bell's two brothers died of tuberculosis, Melville Bell took his family to the healthier climate of Canada in 1870. From there, Aleck Bell went to Boston, Massachusetts and in 1871 and joined the staff of the Boston School for the Deaf. In 1872, Bell opened his own school in Boston for training teachers of the deaf. In 1873 he became a professor of vocal physiology at Boston University, and he also tutored students as a side job.
Bell's interest in speech and communication inspired him to research the transmission of sound over wires. In particular, he... [continues]

Read full essay