Bell, Alexander Graham

• Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) conducted many experiments and tests which led to his invention of the telephone in the Sanders house, 292 Essex St., presently, the site of the Y.M.C.A. building.
• The Sanders' home was the haven of Dr. Alexander Graham Bell during the period when he was struggling to perfect his invention of the telephone. Bell lived from 1873-1876 in the Sanders' house where he gave lessons in visible speech to Mrs. Sanders' six-year-old grandson who was born deaf.
• Bell's day work was at Boston University where he was a lecturer on vocal physiology and electrical apparatus. Thomas Sanders, father of a deaf child, became so interested in Bell's work and had such faith in the value of his inventions, that in the years 1874-78 he advanced a large part of the money it cost to make the telephone a commercial success.
• On July 11, 1877, Alexander Graham Bell married Mable Hubbard, a former student and the daughter of Gardiner Hubbard, his initial financial backer. Over the course of the next year, Alexander and Mable traveled to Europe demonstrating the telephone.
• The first public lecture on the telephone illustrated by an actual telephone transmission was the Essex Institute lecture, delivered in Lyceum Hall on Feb. 12,1877. The first dispatch ever sent by telephone was to his assistant Mr. Watson who was in Boston.
• More can be found about Thomas Watson who as Graham's assistant in Salem in the book The Telephone Book, p. 55-60

See Also

• Vertical File in Salem Collection - Bell, Alexander G.

• Be-witched in Historic Salem Salem Chamber of Commerce, p. 48(photograph of Sanders' house at 292 Essex St.)

• Puritan City 'Salem and the telephone' by Frances Winwar, p.278-90.

• "100 years ago: a famous phone call in Salem" Salem Evening News, Feb. 11, 1977, p. 1

• The Telephone Book; Bell, Watson, Vail and American Life, 1876-1976 H. M. Boettinger