Universal Encyclopedia
Who was Alexander Graham Bell?
Alexander Graham Bell (1847–1922) was the Scottish-born inventor awarded the first US telephone patent in 1876; his famous first call — 'Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you' — launched the Bell Telephone Company and the global telephone network.
Last updated: October 2026
The son and grandson of elocutionists, he devoted his life to the deaf — his mother and his wife were both deaf — and the telephone grew out of his experiments with visible speech and the transmission of sound. He would call it an intrusion on his real work.