Alexander Graham Bell 1847-1922
At Brantford and Baddeck...

Alexander Graham Bell, the many-faceted genius, was not a Canadian nor did he invent the telephone in Brantford, Ontario. He was born in Scotland, and the first proven voice message over wire occurred in a Boston attic on March 10, 1876.

Bell with grandson hauling in the tetrahedral kite at Baddeck, Nova Scotia, 1908 [Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site]

Brantford is, however, a vital part of the telephone story as, in 1874, Bell had there devised the principle of the telephone. And Canadians have another legitimate claim to Bell because, for 37 years, he visited or resided in Baddeck, Nova Scotia—sometimes for as much as six months of the year. There at his home in Cape Breton called Beinn Bhreagh (Gaelic for beautiful mountain), where he and his wife Mabel are buried, he invented and developed other projects benefiting flight, medical science, audi-ology, and genetics.

In Brantford Bell proved that voice could be carried over long distances. While visiting his parents at the Bell homestead in August 1876 he achieved this on three separate occasions: first, from their Tutelo Heights home to the general store and telegraph office in Mount Pleasant, just south of Brantford; next evening from the telegraph office in Brantford to the family homestead where a party was being held for his uncle; third, on August 10, from the local boot and shoe shop in Paris, Ontario,that doubled as a telegraph office, to the family homestead some 13 kilometres (7 miles) away.

A reporter for the Brantford Expositor who was present at the second call listed 16 of the most prominent visitors before paying scant attention to the telephone demonstration. On the third occasion townspeople in Paris crowded into the shop and were thrilled and fascinated when, after some crackling and static, they heard singing and a recitation of Shakespearean verse form the Bell home. The young teacher of the deaf and “visible speech” had changed the world!

Beinn Bhreagh, A. G. Bell's sprawling estate on Nova Scotia's Cape Breton Island, is surrounded by a rugged headlands and salt lochs which reminded him of his native Scotland. The large house, styled after a French chateau, made Beinn Bhreagh a gathering place with a great outdoor laboratory for genetic, aviation and marine experiments [Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site]

In 1885, Bell, with his wife, Mabel, visited the Bras d’Or Lakes region of Cape Breton where Mrs. Bell’s father had mining interests. It reminded him of Scotland and he immediately arranged to buy a property that became not only the site of a sprawling mansion to accommodate numerous famous guests but also a centre for labs and workshops. There, hiring many localresidents to work on his projects, Bell explored his eclectic interests. Some considered him a crackpot or cranky, but mostadmired him as a cheerful and beloved genius, an extraordinary eccentric humanitarian.

Bell was fascinated by the sheep that were included with the property he had bought. Observing that those with more than two nipples produced more twins, he believed this could be an important means of increasing wool and food production. Thus he launched enthusiastically into a study of sheep that continued for the rest of his life.

A note in Mabel’s diary while they were visiting England in 1877 indicated Bell’s early interest in flying. “Alec ... saw some seagulls flying and since then has been full of flying machines.” A week later she added, “Flying machines to which telephones and torpedoes are to be attached occupy the first place just now from observations of the seagulls.”

Helen Keller was a favourite friend of Dr. Bell. Here she is viewed with her mentor and Annie Sullivan (standing), her teacher [AGB National Historic Site]

It was 1891, however, before Bell became committed to flight development. His friend, Samuel P. Langley, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., invited him to see his models. Bell enthusiastically noted, “I shall have to make experiments upon my own account in Cape Breton. Can’t keep out of it.”

Gilbert Grosvenor photo of HD-4 hydrodome, forerunner of today's hydrofoil, undergoing first test run on Baddeck Bay, 1919. Bell's invention held the world speed record of 70 mph that year [Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site]

But Bell did not pursue the idea to the exclusion of everything else. He continued his work with and for the deaf, made speeches, attended scientific events, developed a type of artificial respiration apparatus—forerunner of the artificial lung—and probed the distillation of fog to make fresh water, all the while making copious notes about flight. Late in 1894, he began tests on wings and propeller blades. When Langley invited him, in 1896, to witness the first trials of a steam-powered, propeller-driven aeroplane model, Bell photographed the event and wrote to Langley, “I shall count this day as one of the most memorable in my life.”

That same year Bell launched into experiments with kites. This became his undoing as far as developing a successful flying machine but led to his discovery of the tetrahedron attributed to Buckminster Fuller decades later. Fuller agrees it was Bell’s discovery! Invited to see Bell’s notebooks at the National Geographic Society (Bell was a founder and, in 1898, its second president), Fuller describes Bell’s notebooks as “almost like the Leonardo books,” adding, “I was astonished to learn about his discovery of what I call “the octahedron-tetrahedron truss.”

Bell’s kites were the talk of Baddeck: dozens of local people were employed to build and test them. Helen Keller, whom Bell began to teach when she was only six, was among the Baddeck visitors to fly them, one of which, in December 1905, lifted a workman 30 feet off the ground.

Encouraged by his experiments, in 1907 Bell, with Mabel’s financial support, formed the Aerial Experiment Association and hired some bright young men to assist him. J.A. Douglas McCurdy, a local boy whose father often worked for Bell, was just graduating from the University of Toronto; he persuaded his fellow grad, F.W. (Casey) Baldwin, to join him in working for Bell.Two Americans were also hired: Glenn Curtiss, who made motorcycles and motorcycle engines at Hammondsport, New York;and Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge, sent to Baddeck by the United States Army.

More kites were built; one carrying Selfridge crashed in the bay in 1907. He escaped uninjured but became the first fatality of modern aviation while flying with Orville Wright in 1908. Curtiss later founded a successful aircraft company. When McCurdy,at 23, flew the Silver Dart over the lake at Baddeck in February 1909 he was the first in the British Commonwealth to fly an aeroplane.

The failure of more kite experiments led Bell and Baldwin to hydrofoils. As early as 1901, Bell wondered about constructing boats that utilized the air to lift them out of the water, and by 1908 he and Baldwin together had developed a model to travel under its own power. The achievement was not the first since one had been tested under tow in England as early as 1861. Among those experimenting with hydrofoils by the early 1900s was Enrico Forlanini of Italy. During a world tour in 1911, Belland Baldwin rode in Forlanini’s boat in Italy, and on returning to Canada, Bell secured the Italian’s patents and others belonging to an American inventor and launched into hydrofoil development with renewed enthusiasm.

With Baldwin as designer and engineer, and Bell as advisor, their HD-1 and HD-2 were built and tested in 1912, the first reaching a speed of 50 mph. The second and the third failed because of structural defects, and Bell switched his interest to hydrofoil sailboats which also failed. During World War I, Bell, as a United States citizen, felt he should not develop machines in Canada that might be used in war; thus it was 1918 before the HD-4 was tested and 1919 when it travelled 70.86 mph — a world record for the next decade. Bell, however, never took a ride in it and failed to interest either the United States or British navies into developing it as a submarine chaser.

The HD-4 was dismantled in 1922, the same year Bell died at Beinn Bhreagh at the age of 75. He was buried in a coffin made by his workmen. When the funeral was held at Beinn Bhreagh two days later — August 4 — at the time of his burial at 6:25 pm, all telephone service in Canada and the United States stopped for one minute.