Hello, This Is Alexander Graham Bell Quiz

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Answer: Mama

So amazing. Bell was only 16 at that time. Their father also became highly intrigued by their project and bought all the equipment they requested, spuring them on by promising a large award if they succeeded. People came from miles around to see this new Bell invention, another step forward in Bell's lifelong devotion to the production of sound.

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.

Answer: A telephone

It's true, and very, very amusing for all of us who know how annoying the constant ringing of a telephone can be. But how comical is that fact? Bell went on to live a long and productive life, and always with the purpose of improving the life of mankind providing the motivating factor for his work.

He died in Nova Scotia in 1922 at the age of 75. As his funeral came to an end, "every telephone on the continent of North America was silenced in honour of the man who had given to mankind the means for direct communication at a distance." I think this great man gave the world much, much more than that.