1847-1922
INVENTOR
The inventor of the telephone was born in a house in South Charlotte Street: there is an inscribed stone beside the doorway. Bell, like his father, was an educator of the deaf. He went first to Canada and then to the United States, where in 1873 he was appointed a professor in the School of Oratory, Boston University.
It was in pursuing his studies on behalf of the deaf that Bell constructed his first rough telephone in Boston in 1875. The instrument that was to revolutionise communications throughout the world was introduced at Philadelphia in 1876 and into Britain and France in the following year.
Bell returned to his native city on visits, and in 1920 was made a freeman of Edinburgh.