Alexander Graham Bell’s institute for the Deaf and his deaf wife

Alexander Graham Bell (3 March 1847 – 2 August 1922) was an eminent scientist, inventor and innovator who is widely credited with inventing the first practical telephone.

In October 1872 Alexander Graham Bell opened a school in Boston named the "Vocal Physiology and Mechanics of Speech" which attracted a large number of deaf pupils. Working as a private tutor, one of his most famous pupils was Helen Keller, who came to him as a young child, unable to see, hear, or speak. She later was to say that Bell dedicated his life to the penetration of that "inhuman silence which separates and estranges."

While days and evenings were occupied by his teaching and private classes, Bell began to stay awake late into the night, running experiment after experiment in rented facilities at his boarding house. Keeping up "night owl" hours, he worried that his work would be discovered and took great pains to lock up his notebooks and laboratory equipment. His health deteriorated as he suffered severe headaches. Returning to Boston in fall 1873, Bell made a fateful decision to concentrate on his experiments in sound.

Deciding to give up his lucrative private Boston practice, Bell only retained two students, six-year old "Georgie" Sanders, deaf from birth and 15-year old Mabel Hubbard. Each pupil would serve to play an important role in the next developments. George's father, Thomas Sanders, a wealthy businessman, offered Bell a place to stay at nearby Salem with Georgie's grandmother, complete with a room to "experiment". Although the offer was made by George's mother and followed the year-long arrangement in 1872 where her son and his nurse had moved to quarters next to Bell's boarding house, it was clear that Mr. Sanders was backing the proposal. The arrangement was for teacher and student to continue their work together with free room and board thrown in. Mabel was a bright, attractive girl who was ten years his junior but became the object of Bell's affection. Losing her hearing after a bout of scarlet fever at age five, she had learned to read lips but her father, Gardiner Greene Hubbard, Bell's benefactor and personal friend, wanted her to work directly with her teacher.

Later, Alexander Graham Bell invented the first practical telephone. On 11 July 1877, a few days after the Bell Telephone Company was established, Bell married Mabel Hubbard at the Hubbard estate in Cambridge, and shortly thereafter, embarked on a year-long honeymoon in Europe. Although the courtship had begun years earlier, Alexander waited until he was financially secure before marrying. They had four children.