Alexander Graham Bell

Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the apparatus that first transmitted speech through long lines of electrified wire, lived from 1873 to 1876 in a house on this spot owned by Mrs. Mary Ann (Brown) Sanders. In these years, though not chiefly in Salem, Bell made fundamental inventions that resulted in the telephone and wrote the specifications of his invincible patent of March 1876. Here he gave lessons in visible speech to Mrs. Sanders's six-year-old grandson, who was born deaf, and superintended the child's education. Compensation for this service was at times his only resource during part of this period. He was made welcome to the attic of the house as his laboratory for evening work, while his daytime work was done at Boston University, where he was a lecturer on vocal physiology, and in a machine shop in Boston belonging to a manufacturer of electrical apparatus. Thomas Sanders, father of the deaf child, became so interested in Bell and had such faith in the value of his inventions that in the four years 1874-8 he advanced the larger part of the money it cost to make the telephone a commercial success, straining his credit and imperilling his own business. Thousands of the first telephones for hire were made with his money. Therefore the house that stood here and the name of Sanders became forever associated with one of the most beneficent inventions America has given to the world. The first public lecture on the telephone, illustrated by the actual electrical transmission of speech to and from a distant place, was the Essex Institute lecture delivered in Lyceum Hall, Salem, on February 12th 1877. The first press dispatch ever sent by telephone proceeded from that meeting to Boston.

Salem, Massachusetts · United States