Lecture Date: February 2, 2016
The story of Alexander Graham Bell’s invention of the telephone is an enthralling drama. How did this speech therapist, who had never attended university, win the race to develop and patent a “talking telegraph” that would make his fortune?
Born in Edinburgh, Bell originally dedicated himself to helping the deaf. It was his knowledge of how human speech and hearing works that allowed him to invent the telephone before his many rivals got there.
But there is much more to this eccentric, obsessive man than his best-known invention. He also investigated how to transmit speech along light waves, how to distill fresh water from sea-water, and how to re-inflate collapsed lungs by means of an early version of an iron lung. In Washington, he became the esteemed head of the National Geographic Society, and a regent of the Smithsonian Institute. He was in at the birth of aviation, and supervised a team of young men (“Bell's Boys”) who made important contributions to the early history of flight. In his final years, he built a hydrofoil that broke all speed records for water craft.
Throughout his life the inventor remained committed as a teacher and advocate to the interests of the hearing-impaired. While living in Boston during his twenties, he taught a deaf fourteen year old to improve her articulation – and despite himself, he fell in love with her. Mabel Hubbard Bell would give her beloved Alec the stability and security he required to explore his genius.
Drawing on the extensive Bell archive, which includes the letters exchanged between Mabel and Alec during frequent separations, Ms. Gray brings new insights to the story of Bell’s passion for invention.
Speaker: Charlotte Gray
Charlotte Gray, who lives in Ottawa, is one of Canada’s best-known biographers and historians, and author of nine acclaimed books of literary non-fiction. Her award-winning bestseller Reluctant Genius: Alexander Graham Bell and the Passion for Invention is currently in production as a television miniseries.
She has written eight other bestsellers, including most recently The Massey Murder, which won or was nominated for most major Canadian non-fiction awards. The television miniseries, Klondike, broadcast on Canadian and US Discovery Channel in January 2014, was based on Charlotte’s 2010 award-winning bestseller Gold Diggers, Striking It Rich in the Klondike. Gold Diggers is also the basis for a PBS documentary.
Born in Sheffield, and educated at Oxford University and the London School of Economics, Ms. Gray worked as a political commentator, book reviewer and magazine columnist before she turned to biography and popular history. An adjunct research professor at Carleton University, in Ottawa, she holds five honorary degrees and is a member of the Order of Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. She is a regular guest on television and radio programs.