Alexander Melville Bell
Alexander Melville Bell | |
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Washington D.C., U.S. | |
Resting place | Rock Creek Cemetery Washington, D.C., U.S. |
Education | University of Edinburgh |
Occupations |
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Employer | various universities |
Spouses | Eliza Symonds (m. 1844)
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Children | Melville James Bell (1845–70) Alexander Graham Bell (1847–1922) Edward Charles Bell (1848–67) |
Parent(s) | Alexander Bell (1790–1865) Elizabeth Colville (d. 1856) |
Signature | |
Alexander Melville Bell (1 March 1819 – 7 August 1905)[2] was a teacher and researcher of physiological phonetics and was the author of numerous works on orthoepy and elocution.
Additionally he was also the creator of Visible Speech which was used to help the deaf learn to talk, and was the father of Alexander Graham Bell.[3]
Biography
Alexander Melville Bell was born in
In 1868, and again in 1870 and 1871, Melville lectured at the
Prior to departing Scotland for Canada Melville Bell had published at least 17 works on proper speech, vocal physiology, stenography and other works. Besides instructing at Queen's College he also lectured in Boston, Montreal, Toronto, London, and other universities including a series of 12 lectures at Boston's Lowell Institute.[7] When the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall (later King George V and Queen Mary) called on Brantford for a visit, Melville was asked to greet the dignitaries at the public event. He became a Fellow of the Educational Institute of Scotland, the Royal Scottish Society of Arts, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, as well as obtaining memberships in other societies.[7]
Alexander Melville Bell was married twice, first to Eliza Grace Symonds in 1844 with whom he had three children, and then to Harriet G. Shibley.[7][4]
Visible Speech
In 1864 Melville published his first works on
Melville's works on Visible Speech became highly notable, and were described by Édouard Séguin as being "...a greater invention than the telephone of his son, Alexander Graham Bell".[10] Melville saw numerous applications for his invention, including its worldwide use as a universal language. However, although heavily promoted at the Second International Congress on Education of the Deaf in Milan, Italy in 1880, after a period of a dozen years or so in which it was applied to the education of the deaf, Visible Speech was found to be more cumbersome, and thus a hindrance, to the teaching of speech to the deaf compared to other methods,[11] and eventually faded from use.
Other contributions to the education of the deaf
In 1887, his son, Alexander Graham Bell, sold off the intellectual assets owned by the
Death and tributes
Melville Bell died at age 86 in 1905 due to pneumonia after an operation for diabetes,[3] and was interred in Washington, D.C.'s Rock Creek Cemetery adjacent to the Hubbard • Bell • Grossman • Pillot Memorial, alongside his wife and other members of the Bell and Grosvenor families.
The Bell House at Colonial Beach, Virginia was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987.[14]
The voice of Bell, citing a sentence from Hamlet, can be heard at the Smithsonian Institution, as extracted from an 1881 graphophone recording.[15]
Publications
The following are some of the more prominent of the 93 publications authored or co-authored by Melville Bell:[10][16]
- Steno-Phonography (1852)
- Letters and Sounds (1858)
- The Standard Elocutionist (1860, and nearly 200 other editions), including a viewable 1878 edition (below) published by William Mullan & Son, properly cited as:
- David Charles Bell, Alexander Melville Bell. Bell's Standard Elocutionist: Principles And Exercises, W. Mullan, London, 1878.
- Principles of Speech and Dictionary of Sounds (1863)
- Visible Speech: The Science of Universal Alphabetics (1867)
- Sounds and their Relations (1881)
- Lectures on Phonetics (1885)
- A Popular Manual of Visible Speech and Vocal Physiology (1889)
- World English: the Universal Language (1888)
- The Science of Speech (1897)
- The Fundamentals of Elocution (1899)
References
- ^ "Volta". Archived from the original on 14 November 2016.
- ^ "The Bell Family". bellhomestead.ca. Retrieved 27 September 2013.
- ^ a b "Alexander M. Bell Dead. Father of Prof. A. G. Bell Developed Sign Language for Mutes". The New York Times. 8 August 1905. Retrieved 21 July 2007.
- ^ a b Ancestry.com Historical Person Overview: Alexander Melville Bell. Retrieved May 2017
- ^ a b public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Bell, Alexander Melville". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 3 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 684. This in turn cites John Hitz, Alexander Melville Bell (Washington, 1906). One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the
- ^ Bruce 1990, p. 420.
- ^ a b c Whitaker, A.J. "Bell Telephone Memorial", City of Brantford/Hurley Printing, Brantford, Ontario, 1944. PDF.
- ^ Winzer 1993, pg.192
- ^ Winzer 1993, pg.193
- ^ a b c Winzer 1993, pg.194
- ^ Winzer 1993, pg.195–203
- ^ Bruce 1990, pp.412–413
- ^ 1634–1699: McCusker, J. J. (1997). How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States: Addenda et Corrigenda (PDF). American Antiquarian Society. 1700–1799: McCusker, J. J. (1992). How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States (PDF). American Antiquarian Society. 1800–present: Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. "Consumer Price Index (estimate) 1800–". Retrieved 29 February 2024.
- ^ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. 9 July 2010.
- ^ "The Volta Laboratory and the Smithsonian – Hear My Voice, Albert H. Small Documents Gallery, Smithsonian's National Museum of American History". Retrieved 15 November 2015.
- ^ Chisholm 1911.
Sources
- Bruce, Robert V. Bell: Alexander Bell and the Conquest of Solitude. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1990. ISBN 0-8014-9691-8.
- Alexander Graham Bell, Encyclopædia Britannica, 2010. Retrieved 24 May 2010.
- Winzer, Margret A. The History Of Special Education: From Isolation To Integration, Gallaudet University Press, 1993, ISBN 978-1-56368-018-2.
Further reading
- Curry, Samuel Silas. Alexander Melville Bell: Some Memories, With Fragments From A Pupil's Note-Book, School of Expression, 1906.
- Patten, William; Bell, Alexander Melville. Pioneering the Telephone in Canada, Montreal: William Patten, 1926.