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Questions to ask Alexander Graham Bell

9 min read

Alexander Graham Bell (1847 to 1922) called himself a teacher of the deaf first and an inventor second. Strong interview questions cover both: how a speech teacher came to patent the telephone on 7 March 1876, the first words he spoke over it three days later, the rival claims of Elisha Gray and Antonio Meucci, his campaign against sign language, and his late work on kites, aeroplanes and hydrofoils in Nova Scotia. Here are 23 questions with the record and his words.

Bell's life, briefly

Bell was born in Edinburgh on 3 March 1847. His father, Alexander Melville Bell, taught elocution and invented Visible Speech, a set of symbols showing how the mouth makes every sound. His mother, Eliza, was hard of hearing. After his two brothers died of tuberculosis, the family moved to Brantford, Ontario in 1870, and in 1871 Bell went to Boston to teach deaf pupils.

Working nights on a way to send several telegraph messages down one wire, he and his assistant Thomas Watson found a way to send the voice instead. His telephone patent was granted in 1876. He married Mabel Hubbard, a former deaf pupil, in 1877, became a US citizen in 1882, and built a laboratory in Washington and an estate, Beinn Bhreagh, at Baddeck, Nova Scotia. He died there on 2 August 1922. During his funeral, telephone service across North America paused for a minute.

Two ways to frame a Bell interview

Most students interview Bell the inventor, and the questions below cover that. A stronger project also interviews Bell the teacher, because that is how he saw himself, and because his views on deaf education are the most argued-over part of his life today. If your class includes Deaf students, or you are writing for a general audience, handle that section fairly: let Bell explain himself, then say plainly how the Deaf community judges his work.

Questions about family and teaching

  • 1. Your father invented Visible Speech. How did it work, and how did you use it to teach?
  • 2. Your mother could hear little. How did you talk with her?
  • 3. As boys, you and your brother built a talking head that said “Mama”. How?
  • 4. Why did you move from Canada to Boston in 1871?
  • 5. Mabel Hubbard was your pupil before she was your wife. What did she teach you?

What the record says: Melville Bell published Visible Speech in 1867. Bell spoke to his mother by pressing his voice close to her forehead, according to family accounts, and the speaking automaton with his brother Melville is described in later family memoirs. He taught at the Boston School for Deaf Mutes and in 1873 became professor of vocal physiology at Boston University. Mabel Hubbard had lost her hearing to scarlet fever at five; her father, Gardiner Hubbard, became Bell's chief backer.

Questions about inventing the telephone

  • 6. You were trying to improve the telegraph. When did you realise you could send a voice?
  • 7. What happened on 2 June 1875, when a reed stuck on Watson's end of the line?
  • 8. Your patent was filed on 14 February 1876, the same day Elisha Gray filed a caveat. Who got there first?
  • 9. What happened on 10 March 1876, three days after the patent was granted?
  • 10. How did the Emperor of Brazil help make the telephone famous at the Centennial Exhibition in 1876?
  • 11. Western Union turned down the chance to buy your patent. Were they foolish?

What the record says: on 2 June 1875 Bell heard the overtones of Watson's plucked reed through the wire, the first sign that a varying current could carry complex sound. US Patent 174,465 was granted on 7 March 1876. His notebook entry for 10 March records the first intelligible sentence, using a liquid transmitter like the one described in Gray's caveat. The story that Dom Pedro II cried out “My God, it talks!” at Philadelphia in June 1876 is a popular anecdote, not a record. The Bell Telephone Company was founded in July 1877.

Questions about the credit fights

  • 12. Some say you saw Gray's caveat at the Patent Office and copied his liquid transmitter. How do you answer?
  • 13. Antonio Meucci built a talking telegraph years before you. Did you know of it?
  • 14. Your company fought around 600 lawsuits. How did it win them?

What the record says: the charge that a patent examiner, Zenas Wilber, showed Bell Gray's papers rests on Wilber's affidavits of 1886, which contradicted his own earlier statement; historians remain divided. Meucci filed a caveat in 1871 and let it lapse in 1874 for lack of money; in 2002 the US House of Representatives passed a resolution (H. Res. 269) honouring his work. The Supreme Court upheld Bell's patents in 1888. Present all three as genuine disputes, not settled verdicts in either direction.

Questions about the Volta Laboratory and later inventions

  • 15. You called the photophone, which sent speech on a beam of light in 1880, your greatest invention. Why?
  • 16. In 1881 you built a device to find the bullet in the wounded President Garfield. Why did it fail?
  • 17. In 1885 you recorded your own voice on a wax disc. What did you say?
  • 18. Why did a man who invented the telephone spend years flying giant kites?
  • 19. What was it like to watch the Silver Dart fly over the ice at Baddeck in February 1909?
  • 20. In 1919 your hydrofoil boat, the HD-4, set a world water speed record. How?

What the record says: France's Volta Prize of 1880 paid for his Washington laboratory, which he ran with Charles Sumner Tainter and his cousin Chichester Bell; they improved sound recording. The Garfield detector was confused by the metal springs of the bed. The 1885 disc was identified by the Smithsonian in 2013 using optical scanning. Bell's Aerial Experiment Association built the Silver Dart, flown by J. A. D. McCurdy on 23 February 1909, the first powered flight in Canada. The HD-4 reached about 114 kilometres an hour.

Hard questions: deaf education and eugenics

  • 21. Why did you believe deaf children should be taught to speak and lip-read rather than sign?
  • 22. In 1883 you warned that deaf people marrying each other might create a “deaf variety of the human race”. What did you want done?
  • 23. You later supported the eugenics movement. How do you answer people harmed by it?

What the record says: Bell's Memoir upon the Formation of a Deaf Variety of the Human Race (1883) urged against residential schools, sign language and deaf intermarriage, though it did not call for laws banning such marriages. He founded what became the Volta Bureau and the Alexander Graham Bell Association to promote oral teaching. The 1880 Milan Congress of educators, where he did not speak, voted for oral-only teaching, and sign language was pushed out of many schools for decades. Many Deaf people today see Bell as a figure who did lasting harm. He was honorary president of the Second International Congress of Eugenics in 1921.

Sample answers from the record

Bell left few quotable public statements, so stay close to his notebooks and recordings.

For question 9:

“Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.”
Bell's laboratory notebook, 10 March 1876 (Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers, Library of Congress)

Continue the answer from the same entry: he wrote that Watson came and said he had heard and understood what was said.

For question 17: the 1885 disc ends with the words “hear my voice, Alexander Graham Bell”, and a transcript in his hand, kept with the disc at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, confirms it.

For question 22, paraphrase the 1883 Memoir: he feared that schools and marriages that brought deaf people together would produce more deaf children and a separate community, and he recommended oral schooling and mixing with hearing people instead. Name the document, and add the Deaf community's response.

Questions he could not answer

  • Mobile phones, the internet and cochlear implants all came after him.
  • He did not found AT&T. He co-founded the Bell Telephone Company in 1877, from which AT&T grew.
  • He answered the telephone with “Ahoy”, not “Hello”, which Edison championed.
  • “When one door closes, another opens” is credited to him on many posters, but its source is uncertain. Do not use it without a citation.
  • Speaking from 1876, he knows nothing of his later laboratory, the 1885 recording or the Silver Dart.

For more on how he compares with another inventor of his day, read Edison vs Bell.

Rehearse the conversation

Since Bell spent his life on how voices travel, practising your interview aloud suits him. You can talk with an AI recreation of Alexander Graham Bell on Yuga, by voice or text. It is built from his papers and the historical record, and it is meant to answer the hard questions on deaf education honestly, but it is a recreation and can be wrong. Cite the notebooks, patent and Memoir, not the app.

Where to find Bell's own papers

  • The Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers at the Library of Congress, including the 1876 notebook pages, scanned.
  • US Patent 174,465, Improvement in Telegraphy, on Google Patents.
  • The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, which holds the 1885 recording and Volta Laboratory materials.
  • Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site in Baddeck, Nova Scotia, run by Parks Canada.
  • Charlotte Gray, Reluctant Genius (2006), and Robert V. Bruce, Bell: Alexander Graham Bell and the Conquest of Solitude (1973).

Questions people ask

What are good questions to ask Alexander Graham Bell?
Ask how teaching deaf pupils led him to the telephone, what happened on 2 June 1875 and 10 March 1876, how he answers Elisha Gray's and Antonio Meucci's supporters, why he opposed sign language, what the photophone did and why he spent his last years on kites, aeroplanes and hydrofoils.
What were the first words on the telephone?
According to Bell's notebook entry for 10 March 1876, he said “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.” Watson, in another room, heard and came. Sounds had passed through the apparatus before then, but this is the first sentence recorded as clearly understood.
Did Alexander Graham Bell steal the telephone?
Historians do not agree. Elisha Gray filed a caveat on the same day as Bell's patent, and Bell's first successful transmitter resembled Gray's design. Antonio Meucci had earlier built a telephone-like device. The Supreme Court upheld Bell's patents in 1888, but the debate over credit continues.
Why is Alexander Graham Bell controversial in the Deaf community?
He campaigned for teaching deaf children only through speech and lip-reading, opposed sign language and residential schools, and in 1883 warned against deaf people marrying each other. Many Deaf people see that campaign as having suppressed sign language and harmed generations of deaf children.

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