Today we sailed into Sydney, Nova Scotia’s 2nd largest city where we once again enjoyed beautiful weather. We boarded a bus for an hour’s drive to visit the Alexander Graham Bell Museum, located in a beautiful setting in Baddeck, a small fishing village on Cape Breton Nova Scotia.
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| Baddeck Village, Cape Breton Island |
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| Alexander Graham Bell Museum |
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| Museum overlooks Bras d'Or Lake |
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| Ronnie with our kilt-wearing guide |
Alexander Graham Bell, a Scottish-born Canadian-American (1847), was an inventor, scientist and engineer. Whenever I've heard his name in the past, I immediately thought of his invention of the telephone. However, the telephone wasn't the only thing he invented. It was a surprise to learn how many things he invented and how many patents he held. The Alexander Graham Bell Museum chronicles his life, his many inventions and holds many artifacts of his work. It not only gives one a picture of him as an inventor but of his personal life as a family man and fellow human being. There was also much to learn about his wife Mabel who was deaf, his daughters and other descendants.
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| replica of his "talking glove" |
In his younger years, Alexander taught at the Boston School for Deaf Mutes, the Clarke School for the Deaf in Massachusetts and the American School for the Deaf in Connecticut. He fell in love with and married one of his deaf students, Mabel Hubbard who was 10 years younger than himself. Deaf since age 5 from scarlet fever, Mabel would in time become accomplished in her own right. Alexander’s mother was also deaf and the inspiration behind his “electrical speech machine,” his name for the first telephone. He was truly a pioneer in the field of deaf education.
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| Mabel and Alexander |
He was also a pioneer for his experiments with flying.
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| replica of the first plane to fly in Canada |
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| tetrahedral kites |
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| let's fly a kite! |
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| early metal detector |
Some of Bell's other inventions include:
Metal detector: to locate a bullet inside of assassinated President James A. Garfield
Photophone: to allow transmission of speech on a beam of light
Graphophone: improved version of the phonograph that could record and play back sound
Audiometer: to detect hearing problems
Some interesting tidbits:
* Bell refused to have a telephone in his study, afraid it might distract him from his scientific work. For the same reason, his children were not allowed to say anything when they came into his office.
* During Bell’s funeral in 1922, every phone in North America was silenced as a tribute to his work.
* Bell held 30 patents - 18 individual and 12 group
“The inventor 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; he is haunted by an idea. The spirit of invention possesses him, seeking materialization.” Alexander Graham Bell
A few random snaps from the museum:
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| device to provide water from human breath |
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| air conditioning blowers |
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| early wall phones |
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| early wooden phones |
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| early switchboard |
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| first telephone link between NYC and Chicago - October 1892 |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Graham_Bell for more information on his fascinating life
Barb: Bell was an interesting man. Like Edison, he was mostly self-educated. He grew up with a grandfather and father who were the best-known elocutionists of that period. They had discovered how speech was made in the throat, and came up with "visible" speech, which provided deaf people (and later others seeking to pronounce words) cues by means of diphthongs, etc. so they could more accurately produce speech. Remember when your teacher taught you how to look at the pronunciation in the dictionary? AG Bell apparently understood how to do things, but lacked engineering skills....so Mr Watson was his partner. Bell's mother was deaf, and he married a deaf woman whose father was quite wealthy and helped him financially.
ReplyDeleteHaving been around deaf people, many are much noisier (think in the kitchen) than hearing people. My friend whose parents could not hear said "Nobody in my house EVER had to use their indoor voice". Maybe Mrs Bell had loud rambunctious kids because she did not hear them and he was trying to give them some manners?
The view there is astounding. What a lovely place.
Karen- what a surprising day- didn’t know we would run into Alexander Graham Bell! Certainly wasn’t aware of how much he accomplished for the deaf. I’ve always been a fan of kites, and you brought alive a fun afternoon at a kite museum in Washington state many years ago.
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