Description:

Alexander Graham Bell was a Scottish-born prodigy, who later became a Canadian-American citizen and has been credited for changing the world with his inventions. Born on March 3, 1847, Bell patented the first practical telephone. This device completely changed the course of communication and was merely a springboard for other business pursuits: in 1885, he co-founded the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, AT&T, to lay the groundwork for modern-day telecommunications.

Bell's scientific curiosity ranged, however, from telephony to aviation and hydrofoils. He was a great visionary, and even now, a century after his death on August 2, 1922, it seems his legacy is destined to go on and on, inspiring innovation and progress.

The family legacy contributed to the life work of Alexander Graham Bell. His father, grandfather, brother, and he himself had worked on the science of elocution and speech, while his mother and wife were deaf. These instigated his interest in research into hearing and speech, which led to his pioneering work in experiments with hearing devices. This culminated in a dramatic development of events, all of which reached their climax when Bell was granted the first U.S. patent on a telephone on March 7, 1876. Ironically, even though Bell had made this wonderful discovery, he saw it as a disruption to his scientific study and would not have a telephone in his study.

Bell's intellectual curiosity and inventive spirit did not remain within the revolutionary work on the telephone. The latter half of his life was marked by some highly important contributions to totally different types of sciences. He worked on the field of optical telecommunications by considering light as a potential carrier of information, and he pioneered work on hydrofoils that would form the foundation for today's high-speed watercraft. His farsightedness also reached toward the skies, for he had done some pioneering work in aeronautics, helping to launch this new field of flight. He also had a huge influence on the cultural front apart from his works in science and engineering. He served as the second president of the National Geographic Society during the period 1898–1903. He played an integral role in defining its mission and gave his share of impetus to the Society's geographical magazine, which went on to become very famous. Under his leadership, the Society crystallized its position as a preeminent authority on geography, exploration, and scientific discovery.

Apart from his engineering exploits, Bell had a strong interest in the emerging science of heredity. His research on human inheritance, carried out in the late 19th century, was unprecedented for his era. Familiar because of their scope and value, these studies are claimed by many to be Bell's most significant contribution to pure science, apart from his inventions.