Alexander Graham Bell Trivia

1. In which country was Bell born?

From Quiz Hello, This Is Alexander Graham Bell

Answer: Scotland

Bell was born in Edinburgh in 1847, one of three sons, to Professor Alexander Bell and Eliza Grace née Symonds. His father was a noted teacher and researcher of physiological phonetics, which deals with the acoustic production of speech. It isn't too hard then to realise how his father's work impacted and influenced Bell's later interest in all aspects of sound.

From Quiz Alexander Graham Bell

Answer: Scotland

Yes, the telephone was called an 'Ameche' for a time in the 40's because Don Ameche played Bell in the movie version, but the real Bell was a Scotsman.

From Quiz Hello, This Is Alexander Graham Bell

Answer: A middle name

I think that's funny and so like a child to want to be the same as his brothers. Bell's two siblings were Melville James Bell and Edward Charles Bell. Bell himself, the middle son of the two was only baptised Alexander Bell. I imagine, with boys being boys, that his two brothers would have tormented him mercilessly about this, and so, by the age of ten, Bell had had enough and begged to have that extra name. Accordingly, in what obviously was a close and loving family, his parents, on his 11th birthday, ceremoniously allowed him to adopt the middle name Graham. This came from Alexander Graham who was one of Dr Bell's patients and a close family friend.

From Quiz Alexander Graham Bell

Answer: Teacher of the Deaf

Not only did Bell follow in his father's footsteps(the elder Bell's work in Visible Speech for the Deaf inspired Shaw's Pygmalion) but Bell's mother and wife were also deaf!

From Quiz Hello, This Is Alexander Graham Bell

Answer: Tuberculosis

Melville died in 1870, aged twenty-five, and Edward died in 1867 at the age of nineteen. By the time he himself was a young man, Bell's own health began to fall prey to that terrible illness and it was at that stage that his parents, grief-stricken at the loss of two of their sons, and in an effort to protect their remaining child, decided to relocate to live in Canada, a place were Bell's father, in an earlier sickness, found to be very beneficial for his own health.

From Quiz Alexander Graham Bell

Answer: Elisha Gray

Yep, Bell beat Gray to the patent office!

From Quiz Hello, This Is Alexander Graham Bell

Answer: His mother

This once again, would prove a motivating factor on Bell's work. The research he carried out on hearing and speech would eventually lead him to the invention of the telephone, and he would go on to also become a noted teacher in institutions for the hearing impaired and an instructor of those who taught at these facilities. All his life, Bell was fascinated by the properties of sound. For example, as a child, and interested in acoustics even at that age, he taught himself to play the piano, simply by concentrating intently on the differences in the acoustics of the notes, rather than reading them. He became expert at copying all the different tones of people's voices and would perform amazing voice tricks to delight all who knew him, when the mood was upon him. His father also taught the three boys to concentrate on sounds and the creation of symbols associated with each sound, rather than on visible writing of the words themselves. Bell became so proficient at this method that he occasionally took part in his father's lectures, astonishing audience with his grasp of many languages (including Gaelic and Sanskrit) simply by the use of matching symbols to sounds.

From Quiz Alexander Graham Bell

Answer: Thomas Watson

'Mr. Watson, come here, I want you!' cried Bell when he spilt acid on his pants. The other Watson hung out with that detective...

From Quiz Hello, This Is Alexander Graham Bell

Answer: A flour mill

At the time, wheat was being dehusked in mills in what was a very laborious process. Because he played so often at the mill with his friend, Bell was an on the spot observer of this process. He gave it some thought, and at the astonishingly young age of twelve, invented a simple machine that dehusked the wheat far more easily. This invention was used for years afterwards in the mill, and, as a reward, his friend's father gave both boys a workshop at the mill to carry out other experiments and inventions on various aspects of the world in which they lived, and which were so irresistible to Bell's insatiable curiosity.

From Quiz Alexander Graham Bell

Answer: National Geographic

It was in the 1880's that Bell was one of the founders of the society and the still-popular magazine.

From Quiz Hello, This Is Alexander Graham Bell

Answer: Manual finger alphabet

This is so moving that it made me a bit tearful on reading it: For hours, Bell sat beside his mother every day, keeping her informed by this method, of the conversations taking place around her. He also developed, before she became completely deaf, his own method of conversing with her by modulating his voice so that its rise and fall was eliminated and the one steady and slow sound was spoken close to her forehead. This awesome love and concern for his mother lit the way for Bell to study the world of acoustics.

From Quiz Alexander Graham Bell

Answer: Nova Scotia

Nova Scotia, of course, means New Scotland!

From Quiz Hello, This Is Alexander Graham Bell

Answer: His grandfather

This year was spent living in London with his grandfather, Alexander Bell, and the two spent hours together every day in discussions and studies. It was here that the old man, who also had spent a lifetime working in the area of elocution and speech, taught his grandson his distinct method of clearly understood speech. From this impetus, Bell became a student-teacher and following this, he entered the University of Edinburgh.

From Quiz Alexander Graham Bell

Answer: light bulb

The light bulb was {Edison's;} Bell was involved in aviation and hydrofoil design, and his photophone, while an initial flop, pointed the way to fiber optics.

From Quiz Hello, This Is Alexander Graham Bell

Answer: A dog

The family's pet dog was a Skye Terrier called Trouve. Bell firstly taught the dog to growl continually (I hate to imagine how) and he would then reach his fingers into the long-suffering animal's mouth and manipulate various parts of its mouth and vocal cords. Eventually he got the dog to produce something that sounded like "Ow ah oo ga ma ma" which Bell solemnly assured all the astounded visitors who came to see the "talking dog" were the words, "How are you, Grandma?" These entertaining, and highly amusing, early experiments with sound production led Bell on to begin his first serious experiments with sound production. It was from this time onwards that he not only began to produce academic papers on the results of his findings, he concentrated much of his time as well on serious training and teaching and bringing easier communication to the world of the hearing impaired - and then eventually onto the telephone and many other follow up truly astonishing inventions.

From Quiz Alexander Graham Bell

Answer: Tetrahedron

Bell's work with the tetrahedron(four-sided trianglular solid) preceded Buckminster Fuller's Geodesic Dome by decades.

This is category 24525

= Top 5% Rated Quiz, Top 10% Rated Quiz, Top 20% Rated Quiz, A Well Rated Quiz
= added recently, = Editor's Pick = FunTrivia Editor = Gold Member
Teachers / educators: FunTrivia welcomes the use of our website and quizzes in the classroom as a teaching aid or for preparing and testing students. See our education section. Our quizzes are printable and may be used as question sheets by k-12 teachers, parents, and home schoolers.

 ·  All questions, answers, and quiz content on this website is copyright FunTrivia, Inc and may not be reproduced without permission. Any images from TV shows and movies are copyright their studios, and are being used under "fair use" for commentary and education.