Alexander Graham Bell

American inventor and teacher of the deaf, most famous for his invention of the telephone. Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, Bell immigrated to the United States in 1871. There he began teaching deaf-mutes, publicizing the system called visible speech, which shows how the lips, tongue, and throat are used in the articulation of sound. In 1872 Bell founded a school for deaf-mutes, which subsequently became part of Boston University. In 1874, while working on a multiple telegraph, Bell developed the basic ideas for the telephone. His experiments with his assistant Thomas Watson finally proved successful in 1876. The Bell Telephone Company was organized in 1877.